Teaching Experimental Political Science – Reloaded

For many decades, experimental methods in political science played the role of a “Sleeping Beauty”. Browsing through the top journals of our discipline, this has changed to the greatest possible extent. In recent years we have had a growing demand for teaching experimental methods within the scope of university courses. In 2012, I wrote an article entitled “Teaching Experimental Political Science” for the European Political Science journal. In contrast to that article, I would now argue that methods in social science should be taught based on student’s projects. This paper therefore updates my old paper and presents alternative teaching concepts. I will argue, that experiments in political science should be taught by giving a general introduction to the topic, presenting design examples, discussing specific problem and making the students work on small group projects.