Teaching Resources Guide for Public Affairs and Administration

Teaching is an essential aspect of programs in public affairs and administration. Our students look to our faculties for substantive, enlivening courses. But effective pedagogy cannot be taken for granted. Although faculty members are both producers and consumers of pedagogical innovations, beyond
the publication of textbooks those learning resources often enjoy only limited distribution. This compendium is an effort to bring together a broad array of teaching and learning resources in public affairs and administration, and to make each directly available via a web link. .

Case Studies

The cases featured on this website are narratives of citizen-driven initiatives that involve citizens in the measurement of government performance. Each case is presented in three formats:

The Case in Brief is a one-page summary of the key concepts of the initiative. It exposes students to the basic elements of the citizen-driven effort and is useful when instructors can devote no more than about 30 minutes to the topic, but want students to be aware of what is occurring in the field. 

The Teaching Cases are longer and provide enough information to generate meaningful discussions and debate about the various initiatives over the course of at least one hour. The length is appropriate for in class assignments where students break into groups, read the case in class and respond to questions provided at the end of the case, or ones generated by the professor or other students.

 The Detailed Cases are more appropriate for take home assignments where students are asked to critique the different projects. What do they see as the strengths and weaknesses? What would they do differently if they were the city manager or mayor? The detailed cases can provide a framework for students who might be asked to develop a citizen-driven performance measurement system for a jurisdiction that does not have one.

Additional Resources are provided for each case such as: teaching notes, charts and graphs, detailed survey results and other useful inks.

Teaching Notes