Thread by @raulpacheco

I have been asked about how I do “workshops” in social science courses. I have to explain something first.

As most (all) of you know, I left CIDE this summer and moved to an Associate Professor position at FLACSO.

This move meant that, while no longer full time CIDE faculty,

... I still had course and student supervision commitments. I was not about to ditch my colleagues and students and leave abruptly. Thus (with the approval of FLACSO), this semester I continued teaching the courses I had promised I would, and supervising my CIDE thesis students.

One of my leftover CIDE courses is Public Policy Analysis. This is a third year course (5th semester), which I teach in English (because I want/wanted to prepare my students for an international, globalized world).

My 2019 syllabus is available here: raulpacheco.org/teaching/publi…

Re: question on the workshop activities. This is what the Policy Design week looked like:
- I invited Dr. Mara Sidney to give a guest lecture.
- I assigned her work alongside Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram on social construction of target populations and policy tools

That was for one of the 2 hour blocks (this class was 4 hours a week, 2 hours/day, 2 days/week).

The second 2 hour block was entirely dedicated to workshopping: doing the work of policy analysts, but inside the classroom: preparing briefing cards, reports, analyses, etc.

Some weeks, I gave them BOTH 2 hour blocks (4 hours in total) to work on a workshop policy analysis problem.

For example, this is a policy plan to solve homelessness policy. Definitely too complex to tackle in ONE 2 hour session. I give them plenty additional time if need be.

Deliverables are always "look-alike" - that is, as real as they can be. For example, this is a request for a memorandum to the President of Mexico.

This one is a CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis).

Obviously, it should be presented in a policy memo format.