Teaching State Public Policy: Distance Learning and “Converged” Instruction

Abstract

Distance learning technologies may be regarded as the means to accrue instructional economies, but more importantly they create opportunities for enriching the higher education learning experience in imaginative, mixed-media ways. This article describes an experimental course on State Public Policy taught at Virginia Tech's Center for Public Administration in which spatial, temporal, pedagogical, and study-practice distances were transcended by a coordinated strategy of converged instruction. The course design sought to establish a multiple yet focused set of connections between students disbursed throughout the state on the one hand and the policy-making process in the state capital on the other, thereby immersing the class in the realities of intense legislative-session politics and policy.