Learning through Action: How MPA Public Service Team Projects Help Students Learn Research and Management Skills

Abstract

Experiential learning has become increasingly common in graduate public affairs programs. This article presents a student-led classroom/field model that integrates public service team projects into two first-year core MPA courses and has been effective in challenging full-time adult students to learn and use research and management skills. The authors describe the public service team projects and the role they play in student learning, and they present students’ accounts of how the projects contributed to their learning and clients’ accounts of the value of these projects to public service organizations.