The Expert TA – American Government

A Complete Solution for Teaching American Government

What is included with the platform?

(New) Edit the Open Stax Textbooks: Utilized our intuitive editor and then easily distribute your customized version of the text via our eReader.
3rd Edition Compatible: While authoring the soon-to-be-released 3rd edition, author Glen Krutz designed a series of additional assessments exclusively for the Expert TA platform.
eBook Integration: As they are working a given problem students can click a link that will take them to the specific section in the book related to that topic.
Textbook Questions: Every question from both the second and third editions of the OpenStax American Government textbook is included.
Additional Advanced Questions: In each chapter, 15 to 20 automatically-assessed engaging question types such as Drag-and-Drop Labeling, Sorting, Ranking, Arguments, etc.
Test Bank: OpenStax’s collection of additional questions that are not available publicly.
Cost: Free for instructors and just $35 per semester per student.
Problem Library: Table of Contents with problem counts

(New) Editable eBooks with OpenStax

As a proud partner of OpenStax we aim to enhance their materials and offerings by providing technology solutions that they may not have themselves. Currently there is no way directly via OpenStax for instructors to customize or edit the texts in an eReader format.

We are happy to help the adopters of these texts by now providing such an editor and corresponding eReader. Instructors will be able to rearrange, rewrite, change/add images, add new sections/chapters, or easily do more advanced things like embed videos. With a subject like American Government, many instructors value the idea of being able to put in links to news articles, video clips, etc. in order to relate a given topic to current events.

Your edited version of the textbook will be distributed through an eReader and available to students from the main class management page in Expert TA. If you are interested in learning more about this, use the form provided at the top of this page to contact us.

Webinar Recording

On July 27^th, 2021 Expert TA and OpenStax offered an overview of the new 3rd edition of the text, as well as the online homework and testing platform that is now available to accompany the book.

Note: You can mouse-over the video and click the icon in the bottom right to watch the video full-screen.

Presenters
Dr. Glen Krutz: Lead Author
Courtney Raymond: OpenStax Marketing Manager
Dr. Jeremy Morton: Expert TA, CEO and Founder

Engaging Question Types

Example Problem: Use the interactive area below to drag and drop points of support into one of two sides of an argument. I would prefer that the private sector/government take the lead when deciding how to allocate scarce common goods such as water.

Studies show that students retain more information when concepts are brought to life with educational exercises that are more interactive. For example, when students actively construct arguments (shown left), they remember the experience more readily than if they simply selected a multiple choice answer.

Immediate Feedback helps students who are making mistakes get back on track. In the animation to the left, notice the provided feedback when an incorrect answer is submitted.

Traditional question types, such as Multiple Choice and True/False, still have an important role in assessment but are more effective when combined with more interactive materials.

Expert TA has designed our online homework platform to contain an appropriate combination of traditional and interactive questions.

Drag-and-Drop labeling, shown to the right, is one example of interactive questions that get students more involved in the learning process.
Ranking: Students actively order elements related to their order in history, relative significance, etc.
Sorting/Categorizing: Students group items based on specified criteria such as the question shown above.
Identify Feature: Students point-and-click on an area or areas of a given image to identify a specific element or feature.
Matching/Pairing: Items are moved to be paired with their corresponding relational “mate”.

About the Book

Senior Contributing Authors
Glen Krutz (Content Lead)
Sylvie Waskiewicz, PhD (Lead Editor)

OpenStax and lead author Glen Krutz have developed the third edition of the book, released in the Fall 2021 semester. Dr. Krutz has worked exclusively with Expert TA during the process to develop an online homework accompaniment that aligns with the book fully, in both scope and sequence.

American Government is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American Government course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American Government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them.

About the Author

Dr. Glen Krutz serves as dean of the University of Colorado Boulder College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). He is also a professor in the Department of Political Science. As dean of A&S, he leads CU’s largest college, which provides instruction to all CU students and includes dozens of degree programs in the humanities, fine and performing arts, social sciences, and natural sciences and mathematics, as well as a variety of centers serving the entire university.

His teaching and research fields are political institutions, public policy and administration, and research methods. His books include Hitching a Ride: Omnibus Legislating in the U.S. Congress (The Ohio State University Press), Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers (University of Michigan Press), and the popular and free open-source text American Government (OpenStax/Rice University). He has two book projects in the works—one on disengagement in the U.S. Congress and the other a history of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Indian Affairs. An award-winning instructor, Krutz continues to teach regularly in Boulder..

A Stress-Free Semester

You and your students should be thinking about political science, not about course set-up and technological configurations. Expert TA knows this and has gone to great lengths to make the entire experience as smooth as possible.

Simple Registration: You share a registration link, students go through an easy three-step process, and they are enrolled and taking assignments.
LMS Integration: Instructors can synchronize grades with their LMS grade book. For students, single sign-on provides access to all the course materials from one location.
A Commitment to Customer Service: The company was created on the idea of building great educational solutions, but to the Account Managers at Expert TA we think of ourselves first as a customer service company.

Expert TA is easy to use, provides great value, and gets the job done at a better price; it really does a good job. The problems are a cut above what I have seen in other web-based homework. They are more complex and detailed. They have more different parts and each one of the problems addresses another aspect of physics.
Hector Mireles, Associate Professor of Physics, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA

I went with Expert TA because I had been using a publisher’s system and all of the answers to all of the questions were available on Google.
Simon C. Capstick, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL