Public Policy: Course Enrichment Component

Summary: The experiential learning log contributes the Course Enrichment Component to ENST20750 and is defined here. The log counts as six points toward your grade and is due on June 26, 2014.

Introduction

Public Policy supports the Ramapo College Mission Statement commitment to a Course Enrichment Component. This course requires that all students demonstrate a capacity to interpret public policy affairs related to the themes of ENST207 as reported in the public media.

You must demonstrate the fulfillment of an experiential learning component as the required Course Enrichment Component for Public Policy, ENST20750. Create a MS Word file within which you maintain a journal of your experiential learning as defined here.

Each student will document experiential learning through the log that is submitted on or before June 26. The log counts as six points toward the final grade. Expect to demonstrate at least five hours of effort, or at least thirty minutes per week, to this assignment.

The Experiential Learning Log

Choose carefully a topic or two in national public policy of interest to you, such as climate change, inequality, energy, the concerns of women, aspects of environmental policy, or social welfare. You may focus on more than one policy area. After you identify such topic(s), track them throughout the summer semester. You are encouraged to select policy topics that are of interest to you, perhaps as a career choice. You may use a diversity of sources from the current media. The New York Times can be a very useful source for your log but consider a diversity of reputable sources.

Your log should provide a series of dated entries that demonstrate your outside reading. Each entry should include:

  1. The title of the entry, the source, and the author such as: "Vatican sustainability summit urges action on ecological devastation", National Catholic Reporter by Dan Misleh
  2. A link to the entry so that I might follow-up: http://ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/vatican-sustainability-summit-urges-action-ecological-devastation (or embed the link in the text with control-k command in MS Word);
  3. The date reported or accessed, such as: May 20, 2014 (use both dates if the dates are not the same);
  4. A brief summary of the article that explains the point of the reading, typically a paragraph or two;
  5. Your brief response, the essential component that tells me how you are thinking in policy terms. Your response is the critical ingredient. There is no right or wrong response: What matters is a thoughtful response of perhaps two paragraphs or more. You conclusion, insight, and judgment provide the pay-off of this experiential learning exercise.

Your response should speak to public policy themes. I estimate that each entry will take about thirty minutes, so anticipate a total of ten entries or more, at your discretion. This is the equivalent of five hours of your work. Please distribute the entries evenly throughout the summer semester, ideally two per week but no more than five in a single week --- do not procrastinate in this or any assignment in the short, intense summer semester.

Initiating and Maintaining the Log

Please send to me an email by the end of the day on May 29 that informs me of your choice of topics for this assignment and at least a single entry in the format immediately above. An advantage of Microsoft Word is that you easily include drop links into the document.

Conclusion

Please regard your log as a learning opportunity that supplements and complements the class learning. Make this a convincing learning experience.

This assignment should be finalized and sent to the instructor as an email attachment by the end of June 26, 2014.

© Wayne Hayes, Ph.D. | ™ ProfWork | wkhayes@gmail.com
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