This article introduces how to teach an interactive, one-semester-long statistics and programming class. The setting also can be applied to shorter and longer classes as well as introductory and advanced courses. I propose a project-based seminar that also encompasses elements of an inverted classroom. As a result of this combination, the seminar supports students’ learning progress and also creates engaging virtual classes. To demonstrate how to apply a project-based seminar setting to teaching statistics and programming classes, I use an introductory class to data wrangling and management with the statistical software program R. Students are guided through a typical data science workflow that requires data management and data wrangling and concludes with visualizing and presenting first research results during a simulated mini-conference.

Active learning is an important component of political science instruction in which instructors use innovative active-learning techniques across the subfields. These methods are crucially important in methods courses, which contain some of the most difficult and important topics for the discipline, making it optimal for conveying challenging concepts using active-learning approaches. This article describes an active-learning exercise to engage students with operationalization, research design, data collection, and analysis. Students develop an observational study for a “fast” food delivery service. They operationalize the dependent variable—“fast delivery”—and determine which independent variables will impact delivery speed. Students collect data when the instructor orders food and has it delivered to the classroom. This exercise moves away from abstract concepts found in political science journals and makes research design more concrete, relatable, and engaging.

Recent research suggests that many faculty members believe that their students are lacking the information literacy (IL) skills needed to be successful in their college career. Reports also suggest that there is a broader issue about the uncertain position of IL in the university curriculum. This article uses data from a worldwide survey of political science faculty to better understand how widespread this perception is, what is being done about this perceived problem, and what steps can be taken to encourage faculty to implement IL training in the classroom. We find that faculty believe that there is a problem but many are not explicitly teaching IL as part of their courses. We also find that faculty members who have received IL training are far more likely to include it in their courses. This leads us to suggest that IL training should be provided at the faculty level, which will have positive downstream effects on the IL training that students receive. We also contend that IL deserves a more prominent place in the university curriculum.