Week Three- Class Reflection

It was great to be in class last night.  I felt a little out of place because I don't know people too well, so I need to try to be more social, remember names, etc for next week!

I really love the discussions in this course and how much I learned about the content but also from each other.  When we discussed the Fowler definitions, it was great to hear what definitions stood out to others.  The instructor at TNCC was also drawn to the definition I liked (compromise and leading to more problems) although he through the use of problems could be type o.  I liked it because compromise (while important) can often water things down and doesn't necessarily fix the problems it had meant to and, in fact, create additional problems.

Talking about coupling helped a lot too, especially the examples others provided-- airport, circus, where there is a center than influences everything (air traffic control, circus master) and the outside things (planes, elephants) don't change the overall picture and how things run.  My example of law school ranking was a little muddle, but I think your perception of where you are in the law school system also influences whether you think you are tightly or loosely coupled to rankings.

This diagram helped me the most:

For the group work, the prompt was to look at policy process (ch 1) first and then through lens of each of four theoretical frameworks (ch 12).  Here's what our group came up with-- it made sense for me but not necessarily other group members, but I like to look at things linearly (first column) and put things in neat, tidy boxes (even if that always can't happen- I will still try) with the other columns.

	Competing Values	Policy Types	Institutional Choice	International Convergence
Issue Definition
Agenda Setting
Policy Formulation
Policy Adoption
Implementation
Evaluation

I loved the conversation our group had about assessments.  It was great to have K-12 perspective, higher ed perspectives, and even my perspective at the law school.  When I was working in undergrad/liberal arts, I would have said absolutely no to national assessments in college.  Now from the law school side, I am not too sure.  Maybe there needs to be something unifying what skills and abilities students graduate with. I see too much variation in writing and speaking abilities in the law school admissions process to not feel like more of our students should be better prepared when coming to law school.

The fishbowl was a really interesting exercise.  I would be nervous to be in the hot spot, but I always wanted to speak up during the conversations.  The conversation about the Culver article mirrored my own ideas that it wasn't as successful as intended since all schools didn't participate and inputted only the data they wanted to share.  CHEV wants tight coupling and the institutions want loose (I didn't think about that when reading since I didn't read the coupling articles at that point).  The fishbowl overall was great.  It was really interesting to be an outside and have that perspective.