JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - National ...

Putting Yourself in Their Shoes:
The Analysis of Real-World Disputes Through Group Field Projects
issue that I address each semester — which is born out of excitement. Because
talented young people are working on projects related to very salient public
issues, stakeholders and other interested parties get excited about seeing the
results and enlisting students to help with their problems. This, of course, is
flattering and exciting to the students, as well as to the faculty member. I try to
address each of these issues as they come up, and take the time to deliberate
with my students about what they should and should not contribute. In one
case, a local journalist who had been following the story wanted to do a story on
the group and have access to the group project. In another case, parties in the
dispute wanted a copy of the project so they could learn more about how to
approach it. Others wanted to know what other parties were thinking.
In each case, there is the opportunity for the projects to be useful to others
and to have an impact on the community. However, my advice is to proceed
with caution. One obvious issue is what to do with information that involved
parties say can appear in a report, but that also must remain confidential —
even though it easily could be traced back to them. Another is the potential for
plans and strategies to unintentionally be turned over to another side of the
dispute. There also is the potential for a document to include errors. In each
case, groundwork early in the semester helps students communicate what they
are hoping to produce, what they can deliver, and what potential harm might
occur. When interviewing, they should give participants a choice of what to say
or not say. I ask students to consider whether they wish to call the assignment a
class project that remains in the students’ and instructor’s possession, or whether
it should be a document that can be requested and seen by all.
CONCLUSION
The development and implementation of these field projects has been among
the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career. I have learned a lot from
studying real-world disputes and my students have learned much more about
how to approach societal problems, how to fashion public policy, and how to
anticipate the consequences of decisions that they and others might make.
While I go to great lengths here to point out potential problems and an example
of a project that led to some added work, I should point out that the vast
majority of projects begin and end smoothly, with no real glitches or issues.
While I have no direct measures of project effectiveness, our course evaluations
ask students to rate the effectiveness of outside assignments. Other than short
reflection papers on in-class simulations, this is the only outside assignment, and
it represents about 80 percent of the assignments done outside of class. The
outside assignments rating averaged 4.3 (of 5). Forty-two percent of the
students rated outside assignments “almost always useful,” and another 42
percent rated them “usually useful.” The remaining students rated outside
assignments as “sometimes useful.”
Journal of Public Affairs Education 547