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Badgers & Hoosiers: An Interstate Collaborative Learning Experience ConnectingMPA Students in Wisconsin and Indianafull-day Saturday sessions that met every three weeks, from February 2 throughthe end of April. It became necessary to map out a time-and-action calendar inearly January, in order to ensure that students had appropriate time frames forcompleting various components of the assignments, and that the classes wouldhave some uniformity as the shared project evolved.We determined that interactive logistics, which had proven somewhatunwieldy in the fall semester, primarily should take the form of direct contactbetween student partners from each class. The assignment for each class usedU.S. Census and other factual data for an analysis (community scan) of thepartner school’s community. A one-on-one telephone interview with acounterpart in the other class used a structured interview form developed bythe instructors.Because the UWO semester started later, students there received names and e-mail addresses of their IUN counterparts, and were instructed to contact thempromptly for interviews that lasted 30 minutes and longer.Another consideration in designing the collaborative project was determiningthe final products to be generated by students from each campus. Based onexisting coursework and class schedules, the assignments varied in theirimplementations. At the conclusion of the community-scan component, andfollowing an analysis of interview data, IUN students were required to producean analysis of their group’s self-organizing behavior, and to reference conceptsfrom course lectures and interpretations of the Bolman and Deal “frames”(2003). Students were asked to compare the way their group established itsmethod of tackling assignments with key characteristics of the organizationalframes they studied in class. Several students noted that analyzing their ownorganizing behavior helped clarify course concepts from organization theory.Results showed that two of the teams adopted the bureaucratic frame (withone person directing the project, assigning tasks, and monitoring progress),while two other teams clearly were comfortable with strategies from the humanresource frame (where each team member assumes a role that fits the project’sneeds, and works with a high level of autonomy).Two other teams operated a little more chaotically, and completed theirprojects by improvising and adapting to changes in the environment, and inresponse to other team members’ participation levels. These team membersrecognized that their divergent interests and unpredictable behaviors encouragedorganizing strategies that were characteristic of the political frame: bargaining,negotiation, and coalition-building.None of the groups recognized in its behavior the hallmarks of the symbolicframe — to build and identify with a shared culture. Some students postulatedthat their involvement with one another was of too short a time for these subtlerdistinctions to emerge. Everyone ultimately agreed that the “Organization asTheater” concept existed in all groups.354 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Badgers & Hoosiers: An Interstate Collaborative Learning Experience ConnectingMPA Students in Wisconsin and IndianaThe UWO class incorporated community scan information and an analysis ofthe interview data into a mini-social-science research project that was submittedat the last class meeting, in addition to being sent back to IUN. While notstatistically significant, their findings included the observation that IUNstudents had many reasons for entering a graduate program, and that theprimary value of completing the degree program was because of its applicabilityto their work situations. Beyond this, IUN students believed that the primaryvalue of public administration is to improve society.STUDENT RESPONSEIn a 2005 Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE) article, Alice Schumakerreported on her empirical study to investigate the perspective of 100 MPAstudents at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on group projects. Although hermain thrust was to identify the skills developed during group projects thatmost successfully transferred into the workplace, the point most applicable tothis undertaking was Schumaker’s observation that “[P]art of the joy ofgraduate education is to build friendships and professional relationship,” andthat “[I]nstructors should be aware of opportunities to foster studentfriendships” (p. 33).Since our earliest efforts to engage classes in shared learning activities,students have been intrigued by the idea of interacting with students fromother institutions. For example, even though they had no direct interactionwith one another after the chopstick exercise, our students enthusiasticallyparticipated in discussing similarities and differences between the two groups’responses, and the students’ perceptions of being connected to the conceptsexplored in each class.During the fall of 2007, in the first full-blown attempt to involve our classes ina single, integrated, collaborative-learning project, students in both classesdisplayed confusion over what the project was supposed to accomplish and howit was to be logistically managed. Although writing and submitting an abstractfor consideration by the ICMA publication, seeking feedback from groupmembers in another class, and giving feedback on this feedback all wereappropriate assignments for both classes, the logistics of implementing theseactivities was a nightmare that nearly made management of the project takeprecedence over its substance. Students were further confused by the fact that theinstructors used the collaborative project to implement somewhat different goalsin the two classes.Responses to critiques of the abstract from colleagues in partner classes weregenerally positive, but both instructors observed a bit of competitive “chestthumping”on each side throughout the project. For instance, an IUN group’sresponse to the critique of their abstract by a UWO class in the fall semester of2007 included the following comments:Journal of Public Affairs Education 355
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