JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - naspaa

Badgers & Hoosiers: An Interstate Collaborative Learning Experience Connecting
MPA Students in Wisconsin and Indiana
The UWO class incorporated community scan information and an analysis of
the interview data into a mini-social-science research project that was submitted
at the last class meeting, in addition to being sent back to IUN. While not
statistically significant, their findings included the observation that IUN
students had many reasons for entering a graduate program, and that the
primary value of completing the degree program was because of its applicability
to their work situations. Beyond this, IUN students believed that the primary
value of public administration is to improve society.
STUDENT RESPONSE
In a 2005 Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE) article, Alice Schumaker
reported on her empirical study to investigate the perspective of 100 MPA
students at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on group projects. Although her
main thrust was to identify the skills developed during group projects that
most successfully transferred into the workplace, the point most applicable to
this undertaking was Schumaker’s observation that “[P]art of the joy of
graduate education is to build friendships and professional relationship,” and
that “[I]nstructors should be aware of opportunities to foster student
friendships” (p. 33).
Since our earliest efforts to engage classes in shared learning activities,
students have been intrigued by the idea of interacting with students from
other institutions. For example, even though they had no direct interaction
with one another after the chopstick exercise, our students enthusiastically
participated in discussing similarities and differences between the two groups’
responses, and the students’ perceptions of being connected to the concepts
explored in each class.
During the fall of 2007, in the first full-blown attempt to involve our classes in
a single, integrated, collaborative-learning project, students in both classes
displayed confusion over what the project was supposed to accomplish and how
it was to be logistically managed. Although writing and submitting an abstract
for consideration by the ICMA publication, seeking feedback from group
members in another class, and giving feedback on this feedback all were
appropriate assignments for both classes, the logistics of implementing these
activities was a nightmare that nearly made management of the project take
precedence over its substance. Students were further confused by the fact that the
instructors used the collaborative project to implement somewhat different goals
in the two classes.
Responses to critiques of the abstract from colleagues in partner classes were
generally positive, but both instructors observed a bit of competitive “chestthumping”
on each side throughout the project. For instance, an IUN group’s
response to the critique of their abstract by a UWO class in the fall semester of
2007 included the following comments:
Journal of Public Affairs Education 355