Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Module: Week 16 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, one 75-minute review session (no workshop, no discussion, no quiz, no assignment this week)
Objectives covered: cumulative — all eight objectives (Weeks 1–15): the discipline & its subfields; power, authority, legitimacy & the state; ideologies & normative theory; regime types & constitutions; institutions (legislatures, executives, judiciaries); American government & political participation; the comparative method; international relations & political economy.

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 16 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that drips out when the module opens. This is finals week — it runs differently from a normal week. Dates below assume the section's Tuesday/Thursday pattern with the in-class review on Tue Dec 15; the Final window opens Mon Dec 14 and the exam sits Thu Dec 17, with the term ending Fri Dec 18. Adjust day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 16 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 16: Final Review & Exam

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

Heads-up: this is finals week, so it runs differently. There is no quiz, no discussion, no assignment, and no Political Analysis Workshop this week — the comprehensive Final replaces all of them. The week is built to get you ready: we spend our review session walking the whole course arc once more, you work through a three-part prep kit, and then you sit the exam.

The Final is cumulative over Weeks 1–15 (Objectives 1–8) — the discipline and its five subfields; power, authority, legitimacy, the state, and the social contract; the ideologies and normative theory; regime types and constitutions; legislatures, executives, and judiciaries; American government as a case study; parties, elections, and public opinion; the comparative method; and international relations and political economy. The midterm already covered the first half (Objectives 1–5, Weeks 1–7), so the Final leans heaviest on the post-midterm material — Objectives 6–8 (Weeks 9–15) — but the earlier concepts are the foundation the later material is built on, and they are fair game throughout.

The week's big question

"Across the whole arc — from 'what is political science?' to global political economy — can I name the thinkers, concepts, cases, and institutions correctly; read a contested political question fairly; and reason from evidence to a well-supported claim?"

By the end of the week you will have walked all eight objectives once more, identified the terms and cases most likely to appear, practiced the analysis moves the final rewards, and shown what a full semester of political science has built.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can work through each of these out loud, you are ready.

• [ ] Describe the discipline and its toolkit (Obj 1) — the five subfields; concept application, argument analysis, evidence evaluation, the comparative method; empirical vs. normative claims.
• [ ] Explain power, authority, legitimacy & the state (Obj 2) — power vs. authority vs. legitimacy; Weber's three types of legitimate authority; the state's four criteria; internal vs. external sovereignty; Hobbes vs. Locke vs. Rousseau on the social contract.
• [ ] Compare ideologies and normative theory evenhandedly (Obj 3) — liberalism, conservatism, socialism and others, defined neutrally; the left–right spectrum's limits; Mill's harm principle; Rawls vs. Nozick.
• [ ] Compare regime types and constitutional structures (Obj 4) — democracy (direct/representative, electoral/liberal) vs. authoritarianism vs. totalitarianism; what constitutions do; separation of powers vs. checks and balances vs. federalism; the rule of law.
• [ ] Analyze political institutions (Obj 5) — legislative functions; parliamentary vs. presidential vs. semi-presidential systems; head of state vs. head of government; judicial review and Marbury v. Madison; diffuse vs. concentrated review; judicial independence.
• [ ] Explain American government and participation (Obj 6) — federalism (enumerated/implied/reserved powers; supremacy; McCulloch); FPTP vs. runoff vs. PR vs. mixed; Duverger's law; margin of error and sampling; delegate vs. trustee.
• [ ] Apply the comparative method (Obj 7) — most-similar vs. most-different designs; the "many variables, small N" problem; competing explanations of democratization; how governance indices are built and what they can't tell you.
• [ ] Explain the IR paradigms and political economy (Obj 8) — realism, liberalism, and constructivism, evenhandedly; anarchy vs. chaos; the U.N. Charter's core commitments; states-and-markets as a spectrum; the empirical record on global poverty kept distinct from policy debate.

What's due this week, and what to do

Work these in order — each one prepares you for the next. This is the finals-week list; there is no quiz, discussion, assignment, or Political Analysis Workshop this week — the Final stands in for all of them.

There is no Quiz 16, no Discussion 16, no Assignment 16, and no Political Analysis Workshop 16 this week — the Final stands in for all of them. The Study Guide, Exam-Prep Tutorial, and Practice Final are your prep kit; the Final is what's graded.

A note on the AI prep tutorial: the Exam-Prep Tutorial works like every weekly tutorial — the chatbot drafts and quizzes you, and you judge its work against what we covered. AI routinely invents quotations, misattributes ideas to the wrong thinker, fabricates court cases or misstates their holdings, swaps the social-contract thinkers, garbles the IR paradigms, and slants contested questions toward one side; catching that is part of being ready. AI is allowed only for this prep tutorial — not on the Final itself.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late — and the exam window is firm at the end of term, so don't let it sneak up. If life happens, reach out before the deadline.

How to succeed this week

• Review actively, not passively. Don't re-read your notes — do the moves. Sort empirical from normative. Match the thinker to the idea. Match the case to its holding. Source the document. The Study Guide and Practice Final are built for exactly this.
• Learn the classic swap-traps cold. Political science's recurring exam challenge is confusable pairs: Hobbes vs. Locke vs. Rousseau, parliamentary vs. presidential vs. semi-presidential, realism vs. liberalism vs. constructivism, Marbury vs. McCulloch. The matching items on the Final test exactly this.
• Lean into the post-midterm material. The midterm already tested Objectives 1–5, so the Final weights Objectives 6–8 (Weeks 9–15) most heavily — judiciaries through political economy. But the earlier foundations (power and legitimacy, the ideologies, regime types) are the ground those later units are built on, so keep them sharp.
• Remember the two gates this course has held all term. Every fact, quotation, and case in the Final has been verified against the record. Every contested question tests what a position claims, never which position is right — no item asks you to pick the "correct" ideology or party.
• Use the prep kit in order. Study Guide → Exam-Prep Tutorial → Practice Final. The tutorial finds your weak spots; the timed practice final tells you whether you have fixed them.

You have already done the hard work across fifteen weeks. This week is about pulling the whole arc together and showing it. Come to the review session ready to think out loud — and bring your questions. See you Tuesday.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Module 16

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 0 days), i.e., Mon Dec 14, 2026 (the day the Final window opens) — not before. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled post date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Mon Dec 14."

Subject: Week 16 — Finals week: the whole discipline, one last time

Hi everyone,

Here we are — the last week. This one is different from the rest: it is finals week. There is no quiz, no discussion, no assignment, and no Political Analysis Workshop — the comprehensive Final takes their place. Everything this week is built to get you ready and then let you show what fifteen weeks of political science has built.

Here is the shape of it: our review session (Tue Dec 15) is a fast, complete pass across the whole course — from "what is political science?" through international relations and political economy. The exam is cumulative over Objectives 1–8; because the midterm already covered the first half, the Final leans heaviest on the post-midterm material (Objectives 6–8) — judiciaries, American government, comparative politics, IR, and political economy — but the earlier story (power and legitimacy, the ideologies, regime types) is the foundation the later material is built on, so keep it warm. Several items test thinker-to-idea and case-to-significance matching, and several test whether you can correctly state what a contested position claims without the item asking you which side is right.

Your prep kit, in order: work the Study Guide first, then run the Exam-Prep Tutorial with an approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and submit the share link, then sit the Practice Final timed to find any soft spots.

The dates that matter:
1. Final — window opens Mon Dec 14; the exam sits Thu Dec 17 (25% of your grade; 25 items, 100 points; AI not permitted).
2. Exam-Prep Tutorial — submit your chat share link before the Final closes.
3. In-class review — Tue Dec 15; come with questions.
4. The term ends Fri Dec 18.

A word as we close the term. When we started in Week 1, the question was simple: what does it mean to study politics systematically? Political scientists apply concepts precisely, analyze arguments for their claims and premises, evaluate what evidence does and doesn't show, and compare cases the way a laboratory compares conditions — all while being honest about the line between what evidence can settle and what it can't. You have done exactly that, every week, on some of the discipline's central texts and data: the Declaration of Independence, Leviathan, the Communist Manifesto and Burke's Reflections, On Liberty, Federalist No. 51, Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Constitution, a real UK election, a real Pew poll, a real democracy index, the U.N. Charter, and the long-run record on global poverty. Each time you sourced a document, read a dataset for what it does and doesn't show, caught the AI's fabricated quote or invented case, and built an argument that engaged the strongest opposing view, you were doing what political scientists do.

This last exam is not about cramming. It is about pulling the arc together — naming the thinkers, concepts, cases, and institutions correctly, and reasoning fairly from the evidence. You have done the hard part already. Come with questions Tuesday.

Thank you for a genuinely engaged semester.

Prof. Halloran