journal of public affairs education - NASPAA *The Global Standard ...

the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (UWO) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and atIndiana University-Northwest (IUN) in Gary, Indiana. Appropriately titled“Badgers & Hoosiers: An Interstate Collaborative Learning ExperienceConnecting MPA Students in Wisconsin and Indiana,” their article provides acompelling definition of collaboration as an egalitarian concept and presents aninteresting case – one where students and faculty generated a community oflearners, even at a distance, by using digital communications.In terms of interpretive, reflective, critical, or theoretical exploration, my owncontribution [Margaret Stout], titled “Enhancing Professional SocializationThrough the Metaphor of Tradition,” explores using the metaphor of traditionto foster specific public-service attitudes in students of public administration,while simultaneously helping them make sense of the diverse ideations presentedin the field’s theories. According to the article’s typology, professionalsocialization may promote a Constitutional view of the administrator asbureaucrat, a Discretionary view of the administrator as entrepreneur, or aCollaborative view of the administrator as steward.In terms of case study, Donna Lind Infeld provides a unique comparative casevia her experiences as a Fulbright Scholar who worked with a Chinese facultymember, Dr. LI Wenzhao, in the classroom at Renmin University of China inBeijing. The case considers cross-cultural differences and the related importanceof specific teaching elements in the public administration curriculum. Herresearch identifies the following: (1) Chinese students’ English and academiclistening skills, (2) teaching with cases, (3) the “good” teacher, (4) the “good”student, (5) Chinese conceptions of teaching, (6) questioning, and (7) groupwork. Overall, Infeld’s reflections on the quality of academic life in the twoenvironments are most interesting, and offer a poignant counterpoint to ourfield’s predominately American perspectives.In terms of creative pedagogy, Diane Kimoto, Jenny Frasco, Lorne Mulder,and Sylvia Juta’s explication of using public service announcements (PSAs) as aninnovative tool in the MPA classroom could not provide a better categorical fit.The piece, titled “Operation PSA: The Action Learning of Curiosity andCreativity,” replicated and expanded the YouTube/NASPAA “Speak Truth toPower” video challenge to create 90-second PSAs for explaining a policy problemand its potential solution. The resulting pedagogical approach inspires creative,active learning and collaboration, while building research, problem-solving,communications, and technology skills that are critical to administrative practice.Equally creative is Bruce Neubauer & Shelley Stewart’s paper on the use ofRockwell Arena software for modeling government processes, appropriatelytitled “Introduction of Government Process Modeling With Rockwell ArenaSoftware.” Many professors of organizational theory and public managementstruggle with static images of organization charts and work-flow charts tocommunicate and analyze the complex and dynamic nature of today’s agenciesand networks. This paper offers an alternative approach to modeling thesestructures by using service-oriented architecture software that is intuitive andrelatively easy to operate.viJournal of Public Affairs Education