Research shows that a cohesive classroom community, or the relationships built between students within a classroom setting, leads to a long list of positive student outcomes in higher education. This research seeks to better understand how to build cohesion in a classroom community, a goal that has become even more urgent given the student…

Public administration has a long tradition of close connections to the field of political science. As the field of public administration evolved from a basic politics administration dichotomy, it became evident that the distinction between politics and administration was nebulous at best. As such, public affairs students need exposure to, and…

The issue of teaching staff perpetrating sexual misconduct is prevalent within academia, and more specifically, in graduate education programmes. In the United States (U.S.), 24.2% of women and 15.6% of men report being sexually victimised as undergraduates on a college campus in just the last 2 months (Jouriles et al., 2020); and, 1 out of every…

This article outlines how Master of Public Administration (MPA)/Master of Public Policy (MPP) programs can integrate a project-based learning opportunity to study curricular design and accreditation needs in their quantitative courses. Bridging together theory and the practical implications of data collection and analysis is important for…

Across all social science disciplines, but in particular public administration, there is a shared concern about the costs of using traditional random samples to generate data, and its impact on researchers' ability to engage in "quality" research. As a result of these costs, more academics, practitioners, and students are turning to…

In order to cultivate students to be able to participate in public affairs and make decisions about socioscientific issues (SSI), a web-based module was designed for students to collaboratively engage in the decision-making (DM) process. This study attempted to identify students' discourse characteristics that might lead to formulating an…

Making online education effective and engaging has been a policy priority in the higher education (HE) sector since the COVID-19 pandemic arose in 2020. Based on an online survey and qualitative interviews, we examine experiences of HE students and teachers in Hong Kong, and provide recommendations that can enable countries/economies to leverage…

This study analyzed individual peer-review assessment data to understand the contributions of individual team members to in-class permanent-team outcomes, social loafing and loss of social interdependence among team members, and the achievement of team-lecture hybrid (TLH) instructional strategy learning outcomes in a team learning environment. A…

This longitudinal study examines the impact of involuntary and prolonged online education on the mental health (anxiety and stress) of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. An electronic questionnaire was administered to 6,242 students enrolled in public affairs courses in four Jordanian universities. When compared with the…

The general growth in public affairs programs offering hybrid and online courses to reach a wide variety of students, along with the necessity of doing so during a global health pandemic, calls for an investigation of best practices in teaching public affairs statistics and research-oriented courses. These courses often require the use of a…

This study examines the nature of sustainability education in public affairs programs. First, through web content analysis of NASPAA accredited MPA/MPP programs, and second through web survey of program directors, data were collected on perceptions about sustainability education and public administration, demand for sustainability education,…

An integral part of a public affairs education is our ability as educators to adapt and respond to the skills needed for a diverse and changing workforce. Historically, public administration programs have been responsive to an ever-changing workforce by the way we deliver curriculum (e.g., face to face, online, hybrid). This paper invites us to…

A growing literature highlights the benefits of playing the classic board game Diplomacy in international relations (IR) courses. But how exactly can it help students to learn not only about different IR theories, but also about what it means to "use" a theory in the first place? To address this question, I highlight my experiences…

Despite the near global consensus on the importance of ethics education in public affairs programs, a lot of challenges are faced in implementation. The aim of the current research paper is to identify the perception of faculty in public affairs programs about why, what and how they teach ethics in their programs, the hurdles they meet, and their…

Diversity, cultural competency, and global awareness are three broad and mutually reinforcing conceptual themes in the literature of American public affairs education that are rarely implicitly interconnected. A primary challenge has concerned how to teach these themes, either separately or in unison, when designing courses and curricula to…