 In my experience, the most progress that I've had is in the quality of their written work. So I have my students write several different short briefing papers throughout the course, up to, well, a minimum of four to five and sometimes more. And so in each paper, I ask them to distill a particular questionnaire issue and explain it and critique it in maybe two to three pages. And what I see at the beginning of the term is that it's difficult for students to capture an argument in that short of a format, in part because they've been encouraged to write more and more and more in other classes, including some of my other classes. But I tell them that in this particular class, the idea is to be concise and to be clear. And that takes practice. And I tell them, I practice at it all the time as well. So as they get to their second, third, fourth briefing paper, I find that they tend to be much, much stronger and just getting to the point. But getting to the point in a way where their explanation is clear. And that's a very, very difficult balance. I have my students review each other's writing a lot and sometimes review each other's verbal presentations a lot. And I think that that process also helps them improve upon their own writing and their own presentation because they're able to see what's good and what's not so strong in another student's work. And sometimes it's easier for them to review a peer's work and to review an authority figure's work. And I think that contributes to their ability to improve upon their own writing and their own speaking skills. One of the reasons why I developed the course and the way that I did, and this ties back to some conversations we have been having in our department, is that how can we make our classes more directly applicable to the student's workplace needs? And one of the things that we thought we should do is maybe give students some concrete takeaways that they can bring to perspective or actual employers. So one of the reasons why I have them do written briefings is because on the base of my research I've realized that a lot of employers like to see short writing samples, right? Because they want to see that the applicant can write but write in the way that's applicable to the needs of the workplace, which tend to be different than the needs of the academy. So I tell them, you know, if you write strong papers this is something that you can take into your portfolio and instead of writing a whole new thing when you're applying for a job or applying to grad school you have something that you have ready to go. And I also have been experimenting with trying to get my students to record their oral presentation so that they can do the same. So if they have a digital portfolio that you need to send somewhere they can include that presentation capsule with them. And the feedback that I've got from students is that this has been very useful for them as they've been thinking about the employment opportunities in front of them. And I think this is useful to the department because we've been as a collective thinking about how we can get our students to think critically about politics and public life but also how they can take those skills outside of the university in ways that seem relevant to the rest of their life, their life outside of political science. And I think to the extent that I can tell I think this has been a good step in that direction. And I'm hoping that not just in future iterations of this class but in my other classes as well I can think of ways in which I can make my teaching more useful to students in that sort of tangible way. Which is not to say that the tangible material job related value is the only point of a political science education far from it but it is an important need that our students have and that we should seek to fulfill.