Small and medium-scale online courses in International Relations

This paper will present experiences, aspirations, and challenges of teaching International Relations online. As a course coordinator, the author has been working on the development of closed eLearning courses on the German platform “Virtuelle Hochschule Bayern” (vhb) and has also supervised online courses. The paper will draw on these experiences with small- and medium-scale eLearning courses. Key aspects touch upon the following questions: How can we make eLearning interesting as well as instructive for students? How can the ‘seminar character’ of traditional classroom courses be transferred to and implemented in online seminars? How should a course be structured and what kind of supervision is needed to ‘keep students at it’ and reduce drop-out rates? Are there issues that are better suited for eTeaching than others? Especially now that the enthusiasm of the recent boom in MOOCs seems to have leveled out, it is important to study experiences with eLearning also on the small- and medium scale. These forms of eLearning (which often include blended learning formats) will be essential for the further development of Political Science teaching at the university level in the near future. Two eLearning courses on “Regionalism and Global Governance” and “Security Threats in International Politics” will be presented.