Sorry, I haven't done the Reading! Five Teaching Tools for Activating Students to Work with Texts

Many docents will probably know the situation that something like 80 percent of their students come to class having not done the assigned reading. That phenomenon is immensely annoying to most faculty members: What to do with a classroom full of blank stares, with seemingly no one prepared to answer the well-thought-out question asked about the reading? Methodical-didactical research has developed a number of nice teaching tools which are effective and easy to implement, among them hidden abstracts, peer examinations, text puzzlings, powerpoint karaokes, and combat readings. Aim of the paper is to introduce these tools briefly and to discuss the practicability for a political science seminar. In contrast to “ordinary” conference papers, this contribution is designed as a hands-on presentation: We will test the didactical tools and discuss their benefits.