A peek into the Policy Challenges class

4-Policy-Challenges

Photo credit: Roman Constantin Skorzu

As part of the PP5401 Policy Challenges module, we held a TED-talk style presentation about the wicked problem of corruption.

For the presentation, we formed groups of six students each. The students in our group came from different nationalities and backgrounds. Each group was assigned to a specific country – China, India, Malaysia or Australia, and a specific public policy discipline – Politics, Economics or Public Management. This was to see if we can prove that certain disciplines better address and tackle corruption in a particular country. In this way, some groups looked at corruption in China from the Economics perspective while some groups looked at Australia from the Public Management view.

All presentations had to be six minutes short, and it had to summarize the most important facts and solutions according to the country and discipline. Since we were given free rein in the design of our presentations, many of us had creative ideas such as videos or even role-playing to demonstrate our opinions and solutions.

While we had fun being creative in our presentations, we still were able to participate in in-depth discussions and were able to form mindful solutions for the wicked problem of corruption. We also learned how to defend our solutions against critiques from other groups. At the end of the day, we understood that each public policy discipline has its importance and justification of addressing the problems in the world that we have today. It also helps that the Policy Challenges module is taught by three professors – Prof Zeger, Prof Kanti, and Prof Dodo from the three disciplines. This teaching structure gives us a broad overview and helps us to appreciate the various challenges in Public Policy.

Looking forward to the next class!

View photos of the class in the LKY School’s Facebook photo gallery.

This article is written by Roman Constantin Skorzus on 29 September 2015. He is an MPP candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.