Enhancing first-year politics teaching through an evaluation of the entry-level 'political literacy' of undergraduates at a 'new' and an 'old' university

Educators at the University of Southampton and Sheffield Hallam University have used an online questionnaire and follow up focus groups to establish how much students embarking on courses in business, management and politics know about current affairs and to explore some of the pedagogic and procedural issues associated with research of this kind. The project has confirmed that while the 'political literacy' of politics students may be greater than that of other students, if designed with care such projects can been used to stimulate interest amongst students in general. In other words, they can serve a variety of purposes including those of generating research data, contributing to educational resources and motivating students.