Reading List of the Week – The Political-Economic Governance of the European Union, Goldsmiths, University of London
This week’s Reading List of the Week is from Goldsmiths, University of London. The Political-Economic Governance of the European Union list is for module PO71034A taught in the Politics and International Relations department. It is a well-structured, detailed list which includes a complete unit outline.
The academic Professor George Menz who created the list told us, “The reading list attempts to cover the history, theories, and policies of the European Union. The policy domains are chosen for reasons of timeliness, acuity, and relevance. There are also two sessions on the single currency, as this is the most pressing issue in EU politics and may well turn out to be decisive for the future of the integration process in general.”
Although the list is long and contains many items, it is very well organised and allows the student to identify themes, weeks and reading importance easily. The first section in this list contains the unit outline, with contact information, syllabus, aims and outcomes, which helps provide a real context to the resources, as well as providing all key information for the course in one place. The first part of the list also contains the section below, directing the students to the books they are recommended to buy for the module.
Below this section is a list of additional readings for the duration of the course, such as journals, along with “A list of Journal Abbreviations (used in the lecture section of the reading lists)”. Delivering information such as this to students, in the place where they will come across it makes the student’s experience with reading lists much more straightforward and cuts out any time-consuming search tasks they may have to do otherwise. In the list students will also find useful notes on how to avoid plagiarism, attending seminars, contributing to discussions and attendance expectations.
The list is then divided up by lecture topics. Within these sections, the academic has used sub-sections to group together items by media, topic or importance. This helps students to work through the list and enables them to plan their reading tasks, as well as making it easier to revisit the list and identify any items afterwards. After each section is a group of questions to help focus the students study or to prepare for upcoming lectures or seminars.
Adding this detail here is a great alternative to emailing, or including in lectures, as this gives the academic to present the topics along with the resources required to find the answers, and the flexible and up-to-date nature of Talis Aspire Reading Lists allows them to keep this relevant and make changes where necessary.
Do you have a list you’d like to share? Send an email to rloftheweek@talis.com or tweet us the link, @Talis with the hashtag #ReadingListoftheweek
