Assessment instructions were not clear. Sufficient effort was not made to ground theory in reality, and it felt like the lectures took a long time to only say very little. Tutor did not contribute to our understanding of the content, and instead spent the whole time only asking questions. Guest lecturer Keane only covered half of what he was supposed to each week. For example, in a lecture about liberalism and its critics, conservatism was barely mentioned, if at all. (I'm as progressive and left-wing as can be, so I do not say this because I somehow like conservatism.) I don't understand how such an influential ideology was not really mentioned. The same can be said for the week on authoritarianism and democracy. He basically covered the contexts of his new book on a specific form of despotism, and nothing else.

If I could give this course a zero, I would. Research Report: 0/5 The task was so confusing with absolutely no actual detailed instructions on how to structure the task. The instruction was all after the nitty-gritty detail. Basically, the question was like: How can x political literature be applied to y political issue? What are the benefits and limitations of using that literature? First of all, the tutor (also the unit coordinator), could not define clearly what he meant by literature. It took constant follow-ups to finally work it out. Second of all, there was a very slippery slope in the assessment that was super deceitful: "N.B. We aren't fishing for the 'correct' matching of an approach to an issue. In fact, less obvious pairings might offer interesting insights or the opportunity to be critical." This was not the case. For example, if you couldn't determine the relationship between constitutionalism and house prices, your project was pretty in the gutter. Tutor (0.5/5) While he is calm and respectful, he seems very jaded in tutorials. Gave no enthusiasm and passion to the subject. Brought zero new knowledge in to help develop our discussions. He did not make his marking expectations clear. He did not provide sufficient feedback that told us exactly where we needed to improve. The worst part was the take home exam where he just assigned us numerical marks with no feedback as if that wasn't up for discussion. Avoid Sascha if you can. There was another tutor I disliked: (forgot his name) but please avoid him if he makes fun of your answers during class and liked to poke holes and ridicule people rather than help them. Lectures (0.5/5) If the lectures just purely focused on Australian politics, I would've been fine with that because it is specific and actually grounded in contextual specific examples that would've been useful for the research report and take-home essay.

really interesting and well organised, although only six students received an HD so the marking is rather difficult - otherwise great

Was not organised very well at all. Some lecturers were more interesting than others, but overall not a very well organised unit.