WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Amy E. Smith and Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano
Amy E. Smith is an assistant professor at the John W. McCormack Graduate
School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Her research applies organizational behavior and theory concepts to issues in
public management, particularly in the areas of government regulation and the
use of data in government. Her recent research has been published in the Journal
of Public Administration Research and Theory, the American Review of Public
Administration, and Economics of Innovation and New Technology. Amy holds
a PhD degree from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the
University at Albany. Dr. Smith is the corresponding author for this article; she
can be reached at AmyE.Smith@umb.edu.
Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano is a computational social scientist with the Decision
and Information Sciences Division of Argonne National Laboratory and a research
fellow at the Computation Institute of The University of Chicago. Ignacio holds
a PhD degree from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the
University at Albany, and his research has been published in academic journals
such as the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Government
Information Quarterly, and the System Dynamics Review. Dr. Martinez-Moyano
can be reached at imartinez@anl.gov or at martinez-moyano@uchicago.edu.
APPENDIX A
Data Collection Questions
1. If you were offering advice on the best way to teach statistics to
students in practitioner-oriented master’s degree programs, what
activities would you say are essential for addressing the challenges of
designing and/or selecting tools effective for learning? (For example,
software, textbooks, examples, in-class exercises, projects, course
content and level of detail, etc.)
2. If you were offering advice on the best way to teach statistics to
students in practitioner-oriented master’s degree programs, what
activities would you say are essential for addressing the quantitative
underpreparedness and math anxiety of students?
3. If you were offering advice on the best way to teach statistics to
students in practitioner-oriented master’s degree programs, what
activities would you say are essential for addressing students’
tendency to want to memorize instead of understand?
4. If you were offering advice on the best way to teach statistics to
students in practitioner-oriented master’s degree programs, what
activities would you say are essential for addressing the low levels of
motivation, participation, and engagement of students.
136 Journal of Public Affairs Education