Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Western Carolina University: Public Policy Analysis (Chris Cooper)/Course description

Course description
The course is designed to introduce you to some analytical tools necessary for policy analysis, explore strategies for making policy analysis relevant to the policy debate, and develop some understanding of how policy analysis fits into the overall policymaking process. As you will see, this class will cover both theory and practical application. I don’t teach theory to torture you (although that may be a side benefit): knowing theory makes us better practitioners.

Most class days will be divided into three sections. First, we will discuss people skills for policy analysis. It is difficult to imagine practicing policy analysis without some understanding of people skills. Second, we will talk about the policy tool for the day. At the beginning of the semester, this may be a tool to understand policy in a general sense. Later in the semester, this section of the class will introduce a new method of analyzing policy (frequently using Excel). Third, to learn more about specific policy areas and to better understand how to communicate about policy with the broader public, we will be part of the Wikimedia Public Policy Project (a nationwide project to improve the quality of policy entries in Wikipedia) and part of most class days will be devoted to this project.

By the end of the semester you should:

1)	Understand what policy analysis is and how policy analysis can improve governance. 2)	Understand the role of people skills in policy analysis and be able to identify how your people skills can be improved. 3)	Be able to identify how policy is made. 4)	Understand when forecasting and cost-benefit analysis are appropriate and apply the proper technique to analyze policy in the proper situation. 5)	Be more adept at using statistics to analyze policy. 6)	Understand and apply the steps to analyzing policy. 7)	Understand the strengths and weaknesses of surveys and experiments in policy analysis. 8)	Be a better consumer of policy analysis. 9)	Understand the similarities and differences across different types of policies. 10)	Understand how to communicate about policy with a variety of audiences.

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