Bethenny Flora here. I'm back now to tell you a little about the assignments that
we expect from you for this policy class. You notice that this is very reading
intensive and so we have a couple of things here to help you pace with your
reading assignments and also help you digest the key themes and the key
important topics that we want you to distill from the readings. I know Dr.
Noland has gone over, in quite a bit of detail, what these readings are about and
he's identified some key pieces of each reading that he would like for you to
hone in on. What I want to do now is to talk about the assignments that will go
along with the readings for the class. The first thing that you probably saw
here on the syllabus and is the fact that we all we are asking you to
conduct a weekly reading analysis. So about a three-page brief of key things
or common themes across the readings or maybe even just some things that struck
you as very interesting, fascinating things that you would want to explore
further if you could. So each week you will upload your reading analysis to the
Associated discussion forum in d2l. Again this is for you to stay on track with
the reading, it's for us to see some of those ideas that are emerging to you
from the reading and then we're hoping in my my true intent is that you will
bring those summaries to our weekend sessions so that you'll have guides
there in front of you as we embark upon these policy panel discussions. So there
are a couple of things going on there, encouraging you to read but also
preparing you for the weekend panel seminar sessions where you are talking
about the readings. The second piece that we will have you do in this class is
this policy crosswalk. Now we want you to think about policy at three different
levels and across three different domains. I've already referenced that Dr.
Rich Rhoda, Dr. Brian Noland they're truly the experts in higher education
policy and I see them as being able to bring us to places to understand more
about national and state level policies. In particular related to access,
affordability, and accountability. What this policy matrix assignment does we
hope for you
is prepare you to think on your feet, to talk on your feet about local
policies. So those are institutional specific policies, statewide policies, and
federal policies so we want you to be able to consider for instance the
interplay of these policies. For instance financial aid. We have local finance
financial aid and initiatives right on our campuses, we have statewide financial
aids, such as Tennessee Promise, and then we have some national financial aid such
as the Pell Grant and so the ability to talk on your feet, stand on your feet, and
talk about these different levels of policy is very important for you and
then we want you to be able to do that across the key main areas of access,
affordability, and accountability. The triple-a as we call it. So you will build
your own custom crosswalk.
So, you'll take the first few weeks of the class to think about what are some
local policies that I think would fit here, you'll have one in each box so one
local for access, one state for access, one federal for access, and then the same
across the accountability and affordability and in the following weeks,
weeks 4 through 13, you will take one of those and then really give us a summary about
it, give us the background, the impetus and I realized when I wrote that you may
not know the impetus for the policy and if you don't know you can't find it,
make something up. I mean it's important for us to see that you could think
through what could have created that. So guess, use the literature, and your
research and if you really cannot find the impetus for the origin for the
policy using informed response and hypothesize why you think that policy
came into play.
Then we want you in that policy summary to talk about any impacts or
implications or outcomes from the policy based on what you have found in your
research and of course what's a good policy analysis without this discussion
of both intended and unintended consequences and so we want you to be
able to spend a little bit of time thinking through some of the unintended
or anticipated unintended consequences, especially at those local level policies
that could happen if you put a policy like that in place that the institution
or that has happened
hopefully that you have in the literature that you can see and point to
that has happened in response to one of these local level policies. One example
that I put in your matrix is a workload analysis policy and I cited a community
college. I think it's important for you all as policy connoisseurs to be able
to articulate the good, strong, intended outcomes of a workload analysis policy,
but also maybe some of those unintended consequences that could happen from
putting that into play. And then lastly in that policy analysis we do want you
to spend a little bit of time talking about how you might amend the policy or
make an adjustment to the program. So that policy analysis crosswalk is a very
important piece of your learning in this class along with the readings that we're
having you do come prepared for those weekend seminar sessions to bring what
you've worked on to date in both of those areas so that we can talk about
them and get to know you a little better then. I look forward to these. I hope you
enjoy this i know it is a lot of reading and a lot of writing, but we do really
believe you'll benefit from it.
I'll see you online soon. Thanks.