by with Comments Off on The Good Vibes and Pedagogical Innovations of the 2022 International Studies Association Conference in Nashville: A Blog Post

The last two years have really been something, amiright? The last time I was able to gather in person and talk about pedagogy with my colleagues was at the American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning Conference in New Mexico in February, 2020. If only we would have known what was just around the corner, I think we would have stayed out a little later and toasted a little harder.

The crew at the New Media Pedagogies: Content and Delivery panel at ISA 2022

And maybe that’s why the 2022 International Studies Association Conference in Nashville felt so great. It wasn’t the first in-person conference I have been to recently; I was at near-empty zombie APSA in Seattle in 2021. But it was the first in-person conference where I have had full panels, plenty of coffee meet-ups, and 48 hours inside a strange, self-contained dome of mid-American consumerism.

I am all about the importance of human connection in online classes (I wrote a whole book about it), but before this conference, I don’t think I really understood the importance of human connection in terms of my own colleagues, mentees, and collaborators. I have missed this!

Dinner with colleagues at Martin’s BBQ joint in Nashville. Spoiler alert: not super vegetarian friendly!

Not only have we all been longing for human connection these past two years, but many of us have also been working incredibly hard to deliver high-quality content to our students under incredibly trying circumstances. And so, I bring you a blog post to summarize both some of the neat pedagogical innovations I learned about at ISA and to share some of the joy I felt there.

Pedagogical Innovations

ISA is a great place to think about pedagogy and to learn from smart and dedicated professors. ISA publishes International Studies Perspectives, which has great pedagogy articles, and also hosts pedagogy workshops as part of the conference. I wasn’t able to attend those this year, but I have really enjoyed those in the past and I continue to use some of Victor Asal’s games in my International Politics classes. I also hear that a few episodes of The Teaching Curve Podcast were recorded at this conference (you can check out past episodes on the ISA YouTube page).

My two big takeaways in terms of pedagogy may seem contradictory. First, from my informal conversations with colleagues and the panels I attended, it seems like everyone is feeling burned out. The pandemic has taken a lot out of us and it feels like caring for our students and caring for ourselves is a zero-sum game right now.  

Second, so many people are doing really cool things in their classrooms! I learned so much from the pedagogy panels I attended and from the colleagues I talked with. I am excited to try some of these ideas and I can’t wait to see some of these papers in print.

Ruth Castillo, Sarah Fisher, and Kayce Mobley have created a whole folder full of resources on how to teach students about Media Literacy that they are sharing in Google Drive. Carrie Humphreys and Adnan Rasool are “tricking” students into learning about world politics through “knowledge layering,” essentially sneaking in theories of IR and levels of analysis layered with pop culture. They are having fascinating and engaging conversations in their classes like: if you had to write a show about the US exit from Afghanistan from three levels of analysis, how would you pitch it? Megan Becker is teaching her students to use codebooks and really understand the way data are produced, coded, and analyzed.  Amanda Rosen is having her students do real archival research.

My takeaway here is that International Studies is a leading voice for innovation in teaching (which, incidentally, is what I argued in my conference paper) and that the cool things we are doing in the classroom should also move into our classes that we teach online.

The Joy of Human Connection

It was so good to connect with real humans again! One of the key themes of my book is the importance of human connection—how critical building rapport is for student success. I saw the academic conference equivalent of that playing out at the ISA 2022 conference this past week as faculty, grad students, and friends got together, sometimes after going years without seeing each other in person. I loved hugging friends old and new and—a surprise treat for me this time around—I got to sign copies of my book! That warmed my heart in ways I wasn’t expecting.

If you want to see the exuberance of a joyful human connecting at ISA, check out Brent Steele’s Twitter timeline from those few days.

And if you want to laugh about the bizarre world we lived in for the week, I highly recommend Georg Löfflmann’s“Expedition Log.”

Thanks for the memories, #ISA2022! And for all the things I learned, too. Can’t wait for next time!