Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota
Capstone Workshop – Political Advocacy in the Public Interest
PA 8081 Section 15552, Fall 2015
This syllabus includes administrative information, course learning objectives, answers to a series of questions you might have about the course, and an explanation of the ways in which you will be assessed. Contact me immediately if you have questions about the course or the contents of the syllabus.
Class Location and Meeting Time
Room: Carlson School of Management 1-136
Time: Tuesdays, 6:00 p.m. – 8:45 p.m., September 8 – December 15, 2015
Instructor
Greg Lindsey Professor, Humphrey School
Office HHH 295C, 301 19th Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55455
Office hours Tuesday afternoons; as arranged
HHH office (612) 625-3375
Home (651) 699-2308 (before 9:00 p.m.)
Mobile (651) 271-2246
Course Prerequisites
Core HHH courses in HHH Master of Public Policy (MPP), Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP, Master of Public Affairs (MPA) or Master of Science in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (MS-STEP) degree programs.
Policy on Accommodation of Students with Disabilities
Consistent with law and with University of Minnesota commitments, policies, and procedures, the Humphrey School provides reasonable accommodations to persons with documented disabilities to ensure equal opportunity to achieve success in their graduate education. Accommodation is your right, and we affirm it, but it is your responsibility to claim it. Students seeking accommodations must work with the University of Minnesota’s Office of Disability Services to determine appropriate accommodation. If you seek accommodation for a disability, please contact me immediately to ensure that appropriate accommodation is provided as soon as possible in the semester. We will work with you and the Office of Disability Service to ensure you have every opportunity to succeed.
Course Structure
PA 8081 Capstone Workshop – Political Advocacy in the Public Interest is a one-semester course that will fulfill the professional paper or capstone requirements for the Humphrey School ’s MPP, MPA, MURP, or MS degree programs. With the exception of discussions near the beginning of the class, PA 8081 is entirely project based. Your entire effort will be devoted to completion of the research projects you outline at the beginning of the semester in response to a problem statement provided by your community partners.
Frequently Asked Questions about Capstones
What is a capstone course?
A capstone course is a culminating experience – a course designed to provide opportunities for students to integrate and apply knowledge from their core, concentration, and elective courses, to gain insight into the meanings of professionalism and professional practice, and to reflect on the norms of a discipline or profession. In the Humphrey School, capstones have been designed to give students exposure to the planning, policy-making, and political processes through projects and other assignments. You will learn by practicing analytic and communication skills learned in this and other courses, through feedback from clients or partners, and from reflection on your experiences.
Why are capstone courses required?
Capstone courses are required to provide students the opportunity to demonstrate they can integrate and use knowledge and skills learned in other courses in the curriculum. Most courses in the curriculum focus on particular bodies of knowledge and typically do not provide opportunities to integrate knowledge across courses or to reflect deeply on the meaning of professional work. Most of you probably are familiar with Bloom’s taxonomy of learning that classifies questions or tasks in learning by increasing levels of abstraction and complexity (see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy, accessed 8/9/15). The levels in Bloom’s taxonomy are:
• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation
In other courses in the curriculum, you may have been asked to complete tasks at the higher levels of this taxonomy, but only with respect to the knowledge domain of that course and its prerequisites. For example, in a course on public finance, you may have been asked to synthesize information about the revenue producing potential of alternative tax mechanisms with information about equity effects of those same mechanisms in order to identify optimal financing strategies for new public programs. This course differs in that you will be expected to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information from all relevant courses as well as new information acquired particularly for this course. You will be expected to do so with respect to an unfamiliar topic within a strict time frame while working with team members you may just have met and partners or clients who will have more professional experience than you have. We require team projects because virtually all professional work is undertaken collaboratively with colleagues. Few, if any, other courses in the curriculum have such broad and ambitious objectives as do capstones.
From another more pragmatic perspective, capstones are required because they help meet requirements for accreditation of two of our professional degree programs, the MPP and the MURP. Academics and practitioners who help evaluate our programs for accreditation expect that students have an opportunity to integrate knowledge gained in classes and to reflect on the meaning of professional practice. We have the same expectations for students in the MPA and MSES programs, regardless of accreditation.
What general types of learning will occur?
This course is designed to help you learn in five domains of professional work: empirical, methodological, theoretical, interpersonal, and ethical. You will gain empirical knowledge: new facts, for example, about chemical dependency and its effects on child-rearing. You will practice different methodologies to produce policy relevant information – these likely will include literature reviews and basic statistical analysis. You will explore theories that serve as a lens for ordering and interpreting particular facts and provide a basis for selection of methodologies. You will gain new interpersonal skills through your work with your teammates and your partners or clients. And in wrestling with complex problems and questions of fact and value, you will gain new insights into the ethical dimensions of professional practice.
How will this course be taught?
PA 8081mostly will be self-taught in that you will learn by listening, doing (action), practice, and reflection. I will provide guidance and serve as an advisor or coach. Your partners or clients also will provide useful feedback and constructive criticism. You will be provided some reading materials that may help you with certain tasks, and I will discuss with you how to approach your learning and your project. I will review and critique your written work and your practice presentations. Our class sessions will involve discussions of team progress.
In addition to scheduled class sessions, you will need to meet independently in teams to discuss work assignments and to collaborate on tasks. When you are working in teams, how you assign tasks will be up to you; so will how frequently you meet. The critical issue is to begin work on tasks early, to stay on task, and to always save time for analyses and for revising and rewriting your project report.
Capstone Learning Objectives
To complete this capstone successfully, you and your teammates must demonstrate the ability to complete a project within one semester that meets your partners’ expectations, fulfills their needs for information, and helps them further their mission. Your specific objectives are to:
· Write a research plan or scope of work to inform public action on a public problem;
· Produce information and evidence-based recommendations that will improve public understanding of a problem and/or enable effective public action;
· Explain why recommendations will further public objectives and interests;
· Prepare a clear, succinct technical report or memorandum for a community partner;
· Prepare a poster that clearly and succinctly summarizes a project;
· Make a short, engaging professional presentation for your partners and others;
· Work effectively with teammates;
· Work effectively with external partners or clients.
Capstone Project Alternatives
We have several project alternatives for fall 2015:
· Carver County: County Bicycle and Pedestrian Traffic Count Program,
· Crow Wing County Community Services: The Family Preservation Program,
· Minnesota Parks and Trails Council: Building Evidence for Trail Advocacy: Monitoring Trail Use on Minnesota’s Regional Trails,
· Minnesota State Fire Chief’s Association: Minnesota Firefighter Staffing, Recruiting, and Retention Study – Phase II ,
· Office of Abdi Warsame, Ward 6, City Council, Minneapolis: Downtown Mentor Program for Cedar Riverside Youth, and
· North Shore Forest Collaborative: Outreach and Education for Lake Superior Forest Restoration
Additional information about these options partners is attached and included on our Moodle Site.
Capstone Assignments
Your assignments are to complete the following tasks by the dates in the schedule of activities.
· Review the problem statements and do some background research;
· Prepare and propose a scope of work that outlines research to be completed during the semester;
· Conduct research and complete the tasks outlined in your scope of work;
· Prepare draft and final professional reports and a poster summary of your research;
· Present your findings to your partner and to other professionals; and
· Reflect on your own performance as well as the performance of your peers and teammates.
Schedule for Project MilestonesMeeting / Topics / Activities / Assignments
09/8/2015 / · Capstone Preparation Workshop
· Introductions and orientation
· Project selection / · Read syllabus and problem statements
09/12/2015 / · Capstone Preparation Workshop / · Discuss projects with peers, clients during week
09/15/2015 / · Finalize scopes of work
· Discussion and review of methods / · Submit draft scope(s) of work to partners/clients
09/22/2015 / · Team meetings with instructor / · Depends on challenges encountered in research
09/29/2015 / · Discussion of challenges, progress
· Team meetings with instructor / · Submission of FIRST DRAFT PROJECT REPORT to instructor
10/06/2015 – 10/27/2015 / · Discussion of challenges, progress
· Team meetings with instructor / · Submission of SECOND DRAFT PROJECT REPORT to instructor
11/3/2015
– 11/24/2015 / · Discussion of challenges, progress
· Team meetings with instructor / · Submission of THIRD DRAFT PROJECT REPORT to instructor and partner/client
12/1/2015 – 12/15/2015 / · Team meetings with instructor
· Team presentations for partners (locations to be determined) / · Submittal of FINAL PROJECT REPORT(S) to instructor and partner/client
· Submittal of peer evaluations & reflections
Assessment of Performance and Grading
Your grade will be based primarily on the quality of your final report and poster. I also will take into consideration the quality of your presentations to the client and our observations of your individual contributions to the group effort during the semester. In addition, I will take into consideration scores you assign to each other and feedback from partners. A form you will use to evaluate your colleagues will be distributed to you.
My assessment of the quality of your final report will be based primarily on professional experience (e.g., reviewing technical reports, research monographs, and grant proposals for agencies, consulting firms, and journals; grading papers written by graduate students). I may use grading templates or rubrics to assist in evaluation of particular criteria, but my use of these tools will not change the fact that my assessment of your work ultimately will be value-laden and subjective. Subjective assessments are not necessarily arbitrary, however, and they are the primary method of assessment in the professional world. For example, agencies frequently issue requests for proposals for consulting support, and firms bid in response to them. Their selection of contractors is a systematic but ultimately subjective process in which cost of services is balanced against other factors such as perceived quality of proposed services. More relevant to our class, professionals routinely make judgments about the quality of reports submitted to satisfy contractual requirements or to support policy initiatives. Aside from obvious errors of fact or objective analysis, these judgments are inherently subjective and involve application of professional norms. This class is designed to simulate aspects of these types of processes.
Here are scenarios that illustrate how I will use professional norms to assign grades:
· “A” Scenario. A team defines a research question clearly; proceeds from a well written plan of work; meets with the partner/client regularly to ensure that the research remains relevant; executes original data collection (e.g., survey research, key informant interviews) or well defined analyses of existing data; prepares final draft reports for review; revises and rewrites draft reports; and summarizes recommendations clearly in presentations. The team meets all deadlines, submits a final report that adds value to the client, provides new understanding of a problem or course of action, is well organized, includes no typographical errors, and includes appropriate citations and supporting material in appendixes. In addition, the team makes no errors of fact in its presentation or its report and bases all conclusions on evidence and sound logic. The final report and poster present a story that is clear, cogent, and persuasive.
· “B” Scenario. A team defines an ambitious research agenda; proceeds according to a well written plan of work; meets with the client regularly to ensure that the research remains relevant; executes original data collection (e.g., survey research, key informant interviews) or well defined secondary analyses of existing data; generally meets deadlines but runs out of time to revise and rewrite draft report; and submits a final report that is generally well written but still a first draft. The draft is imbalanced, for example, with more of the paper devoted to a literature review than to the analyses, more of the paper devoted to analyses than to conclusions and recommendations, or with results critical to conclusions buried in the appendix rather than in the body of the report without any textual reference to their location. Although the research may be excellent, these team members receive grades of B because it is evident the team ran out of time to polish the document, the final document isn’t accessible or easily interpreted, or the document includes typographical errors or inconsistencies in style. The final report may be serviceable, but the client must go to considerable effort to make use of the findings because the story it tells is not clear or cogent, the logic used to develop recommendations from analyses is not readily apparent, and the conclusions do not reflect the richness of the research and analyses completed during the semester.