Journal of Public Affairs Education

The diversity of types of degrees offered by NASPAA member programs creates both challenges and opportunities. One of the most vexing of these challenges concerns the identity of our field. In this address, I suggest that bringing public values to bear upon the analysis and management of organizations, programs, and policies should be a core element of the identity of NASPAA and its member programs. At the same time, it appears that to date we have not been entirely successful in helping society incorporate public values other than economic efficiency into public policy and management. In addition to sharpening the identity of NASPAA and its members, doing a better job of helping society incorporate public values other than economic efficiency into public policy and management can help reverse the erosion of the role of government that we have witnessed over the past four decades.

The development of student-learning assessment systems is a resource- and time-intensive process. Instituting a comprehensive assessment system is especially important in Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) programs, due to the emphasis on skill-based education. This paper details the development of an assessment system in the MPA program at California State University, Long Beach, and reports some preliminary data collected from this new system. An argument is presented for the use of a holistic, rather than a layered, assessment system.

This article explores how the metaphor of tradition can help educators foster specific public service attitudes in students of public administration, while simultaneously helping their students make sense of the diverse ideations presented in the field’s theories. This is of particular value because public administration is experiencing an identity crisis related to competing interpretations of legitimacy and associated role conceptualizations. In fact, the explication of multiple traditions throughout the program of study could help educators better achieve forthcoming accreditation mandates to demonstrate firm emphasis on public values.

Online education has increased exponentially in the past five years and is now considered part of mainstream higher education. It has significantly changed bricks and mortar institutions, but has the change been effective? One of the most common concerns regarding online education is the physical separation between teachers and students (Robertson, Grant, & Jackson, 2005; Moore, 1997). In order to bridge the physical distance of online education, Shin (2003, 2002) argues that universities should enhance transactional presence. However, little is known about transactional presence and online public administration courses. This study examines Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) student perceptions of transactional presence with two groups: faculty and peers. Findings support previous research of no significant difference between teaching mediums in regards to student perceptions. Contrary to previous studies, neither ethnicity nor gender appear to play a prominent role in whether students are satisfied with the contact they have with peers or with faculty.

After spending fall semester, 2007, on a Fulbright Scholarship at Renmin University of China, Dr. Infeld examines her experiences in light of the literature about teaching in China. Six aspects of teaching in China are discussed, including (1) Chinese students’ English and academic listening, (2) teaching with cases, (3) the “good” teacher, (4) “the “good” student, (5) Chinese conceptions of teaching, and (6) questioning. Descriptive examples are used to explore differences between teaching public administration to first-semester graduate students in China and in the U. S. The “Lessons on American Teaching Style,” developed by Dr. LI Wenzhao, a junior faculty member who assisted Infeld in her classes, are shared to provide insight from a Chinese perspective on the difference in teaching styles. A secondary objective of the paper is to encourage public administration scholars to apply for Fulbright Scholarships to teach in China, or elsewhere around the world.

Collaborative learning projects are a widely used instructional strategy in Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) classes, because participating in them leads to increased student learning and helps students develop the ability to work in selfdirected teams. In this article, researchers report on three collaborative learning projects involving students of graduate-level, public administration programs in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and in Gary, Indiana. They describe the projects, assess students’ responses to them, and offer recommendations for instructors who might be interested in implementing similar activities across programs, state lines, or national borders. The authors found that the projects served as a critical bridge to course concepts by broadening their students’ perspectives on the study and practice of public administration, and by challenging them to reflect on their own activities and behaviors in a theoretical context.

The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s (NASPAA) YouTube public policy challenge (NASPAA, 2007) asked students to create 90-second videos or public service announcements (PSAs) that frame current problems and offer solutions. “Operation PSA” similarly discusses this communication medium as a useful classroom tool that warrants incorporation into more public administration programs across the nation. Building upon Dewey’s (1916) belief that learning occurs during instances of communication and Revans’ (1980) emphasis on collaborative communication for action learning, the article details the steps and tools necessary to creating thought-provoking PSAs, the manner in which to distinguish between potential and realized learning, and current challenges and future directions when considering PSAs as educational tools.

Students in a core Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) course were taught to model and simulate selected business processes of government agencies and nonprofits with Rockwell Arena software. Each student or pair was asked to document an existing government process, in order to model and simulate a variation of the process, with a goal of improving service quality and/or lowering costs. Students found it challenging to make the transition from a simple model, taught as an example, to modeling and simulating real processes on the computer. Experiences are reported and suggestions are provided to others who may want to use Arena software to introduce process modeling into the Public Affairs and Administration curriculum.