Author Jim Henson Talks Texas Politics and How to Make Polling a Game-Changer in the Classroom

Jim Henson is a name I’ve often heard echoed in the metaphorical halls of Soomo Learning. As the author of Texas Politics, one of our earliest and best-selling webtexts, he’s been our longtime partner and collaborator. He’s also—from what I’d been told—something of a character, an engaging speaker and a master storyteller.

So I was thrilled when the opportunity came up to interview Jim for this blog. I was given just one piece of advice: don’t make a joke about the name. There’s no relation between this Jim and the creator of the Muppets, but there is one similarity between them—both Jims are entertaining.

Meeting Jim

Jim joined the interview running late from a previous interview he had given. It was 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. He was pressed for time. The next day, he quickly told me, he was leaving for Croatia.

I thought we’d have to condense our conversation down to a quick chat, but what ended up happening was the opposite. We started talking, and I forgot all about the time. My coworkers were right. Jim is an engaging speaker. He’s been teaching political science for over 30 years, and I’d bet he’s never had a single student nod off during a lecture.

In addition to being the author of Texas Politics, Jim is also the co-founder and director of the Texas Politics Project. The project is part of the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches. They regularly survey registered voters in the state and were one of the first academic organizations in Texas to do so on a sustained basis.

Jim’s experience in conducting polls gives him a unique perspective on teaching political science, and it’s something that’s deeply influenced the Texas Politics webtext.

But I’ll let him tell you more about that himself, in his own words.

Why Jim Started His Own Polling Organization

Thanks for speaking with me today. It’s a delight to finally get to meet you. I’ve heard your name so many times working at Soomo. Everyone here loves you.

Thank you, John. That’s great to hear. I’ve been working with Soomo people for a long time. The feeling is mutual.

So, the Texas Politics Project—tell me how it got started. What was the impetus for creating your own organization—and so much work for yourself?

[laughs] When we started back in the early 2000s, the focus was on producing quality online education materials. During that time, there wasn’t much available. I was working at UT. I had gone to graduate school there, and when I became a faculty member, I found I shared a common experience with several of my peers. And that is: we weren’t from Texas. The state is so dynamic. And many higher ed institutions were tasking instructors like us to come up with online content on the state’s politics. So the Texas Politics Project really grew out of a strong need—for students and instructors—for effective digital materials.

So it seems like instructors and students were ill-equipped to delve into this material. How did the Texas Politics Project evolve to focus so heavily on public polling?

Nobody else was doing it at the time–not regular, non-partisan polling. So we decided to try it with a civic organization in Texas, and frankly, it got a ton of attention. The phone was ringing off the hook. And so, I pitched the idea, and we got some tentative funding. The bottom line is that we were trying to fill a gap.

What Public Opinion Teaches Us

How important is polling in the specific context of learning about the politics of a state?

Every introductory government class has some aspect of public opinion in it. And there are a lot of ways to talk about public opinion. But producing the polls and the data ourselves and then having access to it and being able to use it for a wide variety of purposes was a game-changer.

And what a crucial time to start measuring public opinion yourselves.

Oh yes. When we started, we had a Texan president, and Texas politics itself was going through a big transition. We were witnessing the beginning of the era of Republican dominance in the state. I benefited from my partner, Daron Shaw, who was a public opinion person from day one and had experience working with Republican candidates, including President George W. Bush. And when we were shopping the idea around, reporters in the state were urging me to do it. They were just like “Yeah, every time somebody does a poll in Texas, we get assigned to write a story, but there’s not very much.” One senior reporter in Dallas at the time said, “If you guys did this and it was branded, not as a media poll, but as coming from an academic institution like UT, everybody would cover it.” And he was totally right.

So, you’ve been doing public opinion polling since 2008. What have you learned in that time?

For one, I’ve gotten a lot better at it. When we started, I was kind of the junior partner and participant. My colleague Daron had so much more experience. But this many years later, we’ve now done almost 70 polls in this series, and members of our team, which now includes our colleague Joshua Blank, do even more side projects. I’ve learned a lot about the art and craft of polling. And I’ve gained a deeper knowledge of the science and the academic component of it. It’s been an unexpected growth experience for me—both intellectually and professionally. I have a much deeper appreciation for how public opinion fits into the bigger picture of politics now.

I’ve learned a whole lot about the underlying currents of the state’s collective mindset in the culture and how that plays out in specific issue areas and why Texans might seem very conservative in one domain and not another. And this is something I’ve thought a lot about as I’ve worked on this latest round of Investigations [for the Texas Politics webtext]. I’m underlining for students the ways political actors use polling and, more broadly, how they incorporate public opinion into their considerations.

Jim’s Journey to Texas

You mentioned you’re not from Texas yourself. How did you end up here?

I grew up in Southern California. I came to Texas as a first-generation college student. I wanted to experience a different place. And I didn’t know much about the state. I was interested in Latin America at the time and American politics. And, to be honest, the music scene in Austin attracted me, too. I was a record store guy and a bit of Dead Head. That’s the Grateful Dead playing right now in the background, actually.

In other words, you followed the music.

In a way, yes. When I left California, I went to one more Dead show and got into a lot of alternative jazz. It’s all geek music. I actually missed your first message because I was at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival. To this day, music is so important to me. I put it on while I work. I find it helps open me up cognitively, especially if it’s something immersive. I’m spending long hours at the computer working on the next edition of the Texas Politics webtext. Music helps get me in the right headspace for that.

Engaging Intro Students with Political Science

The Texas Politics webtext is designed for intro students. What do you find most rewarding—and challenging—about teaching them?

There’s a unique dynamic when you’re teaching intro students and when you’re producing content for them. You’re thinking about how to engage them and how to make content that will resonate with them. Like so many things, the rewards and the challenges are closely related. Most intro students are not interested in the classes they have to take. The challenge comes from that, and the reward comes from knowing that you’re doing something important. Teaching students about political science has a lot of civic importance. Engaging and illuminating them helps make them informed members of the polity.

Engagement is a challenge we hear echoed again and again. Let me ask you. If most students aren’t interested in political science, why were you?

My interests formed in my college career, in the early-to-mid 80s. I got involved in activism around U.S. foreign policy. I was by no means a full-time committed activist. I went to my share of marches, but I was a more committed Dead Head than activist. [laughs] But I wanted to know what was going on. And there was definitely a social component to this. I made friends with people who had similar interests. And like what often happens with social groups, we all fed each other’s interests and got more involved. That eventually grew into a deeper and more intellectual pursuit. It put me on the path of going to graduate school after being a first-generation college student.

And what have you found to be the value in studying political science? What is it that you want to share with students?

Ideally, the goal is to give them a roadmap and some tools for understanding the journey they’re on. Engagement with politics contributes to a more rewarding sense of membership in your community. You can understand why something is happening on the city council or why something you care about isn’t getting attention. You can learn what your choices are and what gives you the potential and limits on your ability to affect change.

Would you say that education in politics is an antidote to political apathy?

If you asked me that 20 years ago, I would have answered “yes” unambiguously. But the context is a little different now. Politics have evolved through changes in technology that have raised the bar for what we want students to walk away with. It’s not only about civic engagement. It’s also about giving them more tools to be more analytical and use more critical thinking to understand information and the ground rules of the political system.

Partnering with Soomo Learning

We’re running out of time here. But before we end, I want to talk to you about the Texas Politics webtext that you’ve authored. What initially attracted you to Soomo Learning? Why partner with us?

I don’t want to be too catty here, but as we were developing online resources for teaching Texas government, we were approached by a few of the big publishers. We talked with them. And then we talked to the folks at Soomo, many of whom are still at the company. It was obvious to me that with Soomo, there was a much greater emphasis on student learning. And the Soomo platform was technically so much better, so much more intuitive and welcoming to students. Soomo’s design and engagement strategies were just better, more immersive. And they’re also very sophisticated in how they approach student learning, like the frequent low-stakes reinforcement they use. You want to knock out as many barriers to student resistance as you can, and that’s what Soomo does.

Using Polling in the Classroom

The whole company is going to blush when they hear this, Jim. But let’s move on. So you’ve got this great webtext that takes advantage of the polling data you conduct. Tell me how you use that data to facilitate student discussion around current political events.

Yeah, the key there is to not get too locked up around debates about polling. You want to make sure students understand the nature of polling, the challenges, the underlying mechanics of it. But you have to move through that as quickly as you can. You want to make them comfortable with creative use of the data and looking at group differences on issues that are illuminating. I use polling to draw them closer to topics they’re engaged with, have heard about, or are relevant to them. And you have to take advantage of the fact that your students are part of the universe of public opinion, which is what we’re doing with our new comparison poll feature in Texas Politics.

I was just about to mention that. Do you want to explain what that feature is?

It’s our newest feature and maybe my favorite in the whole book. It’s a poll, embedded in the text, that shows the student how their response compares to their classmates’ responses and data from state and national-wide polls. It’s anonymous, so students will feel comfortable answering honestly. And it generates a chart when the student answers, so they can easily compare their perspective to others’.

I’ve played around with it myself. I think students will love it.

It’s going to be a hit. It’s useful to instructors and really engaging for students. It’s something I wish I always had. As an instructor, you can run in any number of directions with it—whether you’re trying to make a point about the subject or you’re just trying to get the student engaged in a classroom situation. It’s a really flexible feature.

Jim’s Favorite Page in Texas Politics

Speaking of things you love about the webtext, do you have a favorite page or investigation activity?

That’s like asking a parent to pick their favorite kid. [laughs] We do have a new investigation about how interest groups use polling that I’m excited about. It presents public opinion in a really effective way. It’s useful in thinking about different attitudes people have, the technique of polling, why wording matters. It’s also got some concrete examples of how interest groups leverage polling results for their own ends. It illustrates how polling is used in the political system in a way that requires thoughtful attention.

That seems so connected to the content students encounter throughout the webtext.

Definitely.

It looks like we’re out of time today. This has been so great, Jim. Thanks again for sitting down and talking with me.

My pleasure.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Texas Politics webtext, visit soomo.co/txp. And for more on the Texas Politics Project, head over to texaspolitics.utexas.edu.