GV924 The Politics of Public Policy Assessment Spring Presentation | University Of Essex

Presentation

Every student in GV924 is expected to deliver a short presentation. The presentation contributes 10% to the final mark for the module. Due to the large number of students in the module, not every presentation can be delivered in class. To accommodate and assess all students, some students will pre-record online presentations. Both online and in-class presentations are assessed on the same criteria.

Selection of presentation topics, time, and format

In Weeks 16 and 17, students are allocated to presentation slots. A presentation slot is a combination of a topic, the week in which the topic is presented, and the format of the presentation (pre-recorded online video or in-class presentation). For example, the slot “17d (CLASS) Private actors” means that a presentation on the topic “Private actors” is delivered in class during the seminar in Week 17 as the fourth presentation.
During a time window in Weeks 16 and 17, students are given the opportunity to select a presentation slot on Moodle. The selection is done on a first come, first served basis. Students may trade presentation slots with each other up to the day before the second seminar session (i.e., until Thursday, 25 January 2024, 23:59).

The module supervisor may reallocate presentation slots to students in order to ensure that all in-class slots are filled, to balance the number of students per topic, or to allow students with registered disabilities to select into presentation formats or times that are suitable for them.
Presentations start in Week 17 and end in Week 25. There are five presentation topics per week, numbered a to e and defining the order in which presentations are held in class. The total number is 45 different presentation topics, and each of them is available as an in-class and online presentation, with sometimes more than one online slot available.

I encourage all students to choose presentations in early weeks in order to be done with this part of the assessment as quickly as possible and to be able to focus on the remaining assessments.

I further encourage all students to prioritise in-class presentations because they may be less work to prepare and will offer an opportunity for interaction with peers. If some in-class presentation slots remain open after the selection window has closed, I will redistribute some of the students with online presentations to in-class presentations in order to ensure a smooth running of the module.

All students are expected to comply with their assigned presentation slot, even if they have other preferences. All students are expected to prepare and deliver their presentation in a self-reliant way and keep track of their individual deadline and obligation to submit their work on Moodle.

Expectations for a presentation

Each and every presentation must be for five minutes. Deviations of about 30 seconds up or down are tolerated. If a presentation takes less than four minutes and 30 seconds or more than five minutes and 30 seconds, this will negatively impact the mark. If an in-class presentation takes more than five minutes and 30 seconds, I may end the presentation even if the topic has not been fully presented. I encourage everyone to practise their presentation ahead of time. Timing one’s presentation is an important skill.
The presentation is an individual assessment. Group work is not permitted.

I expect students to carefully read all mandatory and optional reading assignments for the week in which their presentation is due and use these readings as a major part of the contents of the presentation. In some cases, students may wish to, or need to, consult resources beyond the reading list and do their own research to deliver a better and more comprehensive presentation. It is not necessary to include all readings of the given week in the presentation. Rather, I expect you to focus on the reading(s) relevant to your specific presentation topic, possibly enriched by additional resources if it helps you.

Based on a given presentation topic, I normally expect the presentation to contain a selection of the following things (though the presentation does not have to be structured in this order):
1.    definitions of key terms related to the topic,
2.    a summary of the readings on the given topic,
3.    examples to make the topic easy to understand,
4.    a discussion of the relevance or implications for the politics of public policy, and
5.    a conclusion with follow-up questions we should discuss in class.

Some presentation topics do not lend themselves very well to these criteria, for example software presentations. Please adapt your presentation as necessary.

A good presentation introduces a topic to an uninitiated audience and makes few assumptions about prior knowledge. In a good presentation, the speaker furthermore avoids reading out a prewritten script and instead talks fluently in a way that is similar to a TED talk. Think of whom you are trying to convince of what, and design your presentation accordingly.

The main element of a presentation should be the oral talk, but I also recommend using a few slides to support your talk. Slides should be used sparingly, however. Avoid a wall of text, and instead include a few main key words to structure your talk. Make the presentation visually appealing, but don’t let the slides distract the audience from your talk. If in doubt, consult online resources (perhaps on YouTube?) on how to make a good presentation and convince your audience. An excellent presentation will contain discussion points or open questions on the last lecture slide, which will offer departure points for further discussion later in the seminar.

The purpose of the presentations is two-fold. They are supposed to enrich the seminar by providing an introduction to the week’s topic as a foundation for in-class discussions. And they are supposed to improve and assess the presentation skills of students as these skills are essential for a career in public policy.

Delivering your in-class or online presentation

In-class presenters may use the hardwired computer installed in the seminar room (the “lectern PC”) to make the transition between the five presentations on a given seminar day as smooth as possible. You may, however, use your own laptop if you wish, but you are expected to figure out the display settings on your own. Try out the hardware in the room on a previous occasion if you want to be sure the technology works in the way you expect it to work. Connecting your own laptop may be sensible, for example, for software presentations.
I recommend preparing slides using Powerpoint or LaTeX beamer. But you are free to use other technologies as long as you take responsibility for your presentation working properly.

In-class presenters are expected to be in the seminar room a few minutes before the seminar starts in order to set up their presentations in time. They should find seats close to the front and manage the progression of the five presentations autonomously. After each presentation, the respective presenter should address the class and ask for clarification questions. Clarifications should be provided straight away if necessary, but longer discussions are postponed to the discussion part of the seminar.

In-class presenters should share their slides with the class and the marker on Moodle. There is a Moodle activity called “Presentation slides and links”. You are responsible for submitting your slides (if you present in class) or the link to your video (if you pre-record your presentation online) to this activity before the seminar (i.e., by 11:00 Friday in the respective week of the presentation).

The “Presentation slides and links” activity on Moodle is a forum-type system where each student can only make one single post. This post needs to be made on time before the presentation is due, otherwise I may penalise the mark or, in severe cases, report the assignment as not submitted. I will mark the presentation right there and provide feedback. Do check back in this activity to see your mark and feedback. I aim to provide this feedback on the same day or, in rare cases, on the next day. At the end of the module, I will transfer the grades to the administrative office. Please note that FASER is not available to you for the presentation. You must submit your work through this activity on Moodle.

All students are strongly encouraged to view each other’s online presentations in addition to the presentations in class. All students have access to the “Presentation slides and links” activity and should check regularly to watch for new contents.

Online presentations should be as similar as possible to in-class presentations. However, some adjustments may need to be made at the discretion of the presenter.

Students with online presentations should ideally include both slides and a talking head in their video. You will pre-record the video, store it online, and share a link to the video with the class as outlined above. There are four ways in which you can include both your talking head and your slides in your presentation: by recording them as two separate video streams on Panopto (the recommended way); by including a small talking head as a picture-in-picture overlay, for example using a Zoom meeting recording or via Panopto; combining a 4:3 slide set with a narrow talking head side by side using a video editing software; or alternating between talking head and slides (also requiring multi-track video editing). I strongly recommend all students to use Panopto.

Panopto is the video recording, editing, and storage solution the University of Essex uses. I have used it previously to record lectures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students do not normally have video recording privileges on Panopto, but I have created a special “assignment” folder on Panopto, where all participants of GV924 can record, edit, and share their presentation videos. You can either record your videos on your computer or phone and then upload to Panopto (not recommended) or record both your slides and your talking head right there in the Panopto web interface (called Panopto Capture) or downloadable app (recommended). I strongly recommend recording the slides and your talking head as two parallel video input streams and your microphone as your audio input stream. Once you have recorded these

simultaneously, you can also edit your video by trimming the beginning or end or cutting out parts from the middle in order to get your video into a good shape and hit the target of about five minutes. Panopto is a fully online solution and lets you copy the link to your video, which you can then share with the class on Moodle as outlined above. If, for some reason, you cannot or do not want to use Panopto, you can also use other services like YouTube. However, Panopto with two separate video streams for your talking head and slides is strongly recommended and has been tried and tested at this University. The link to the Panopto video assignment folder is 

https://panopto.essex.ac.uk/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx?folderID=1df9c079-b903-48 23-9054-b0fc011b9e85. Please browse the online documentation of Panopto, including their tutorial videos, to learn how to record presentations on Panopto (for example, here: https://support.panopto.com/s/article/How-to-Create-a-Video-Using-Panopto-Capture).

When you share your video link with other students, you must ensure that the video is available to other University members or the public. Do a test run by sending the link to another student and asking them if they can access the video without any problems.

When you submit the video link, you do not need to submit the set of slides along with the link because the slides are visible in the video. However, all students, whether in-class or online presentation, must submit the presentation slot label along with the link or slides so the marker and other students can easily identify what topic is being presented. Ideally, the slot label should appear in the title/subject of your message.

All materials must be submitted by 11am on the morning of the presentation, and they must not be submitted prior to 0:00 on the same day, in order to prevent collusion or inspiring other presentations.

Policy case outline

The second assignment in this module is a policy case outline and is worth 30% of your final mark in the module.

The policy case outline should contain between at least (and close to) 1,500 words and no more than 2,000 words as an upper limit.

The policy case outline contains an introduction, literature review with case study background on a specific policy process in a country or inter-, supra-, or subnational polity of your choice, including expected political conflicts, and an outline of planned research on the case.
You will describe the significance of the case for theoretical advancement of the field of public policy and formulate expectations of what you may find by looking into the case.

The policy case outline serves to introduce a specific policy process or conflict that you will later try to analyse in the final report using the theories and methods from GV924.

A typical policy proposal could have the following elements:

• An introduction, in which you outline which case you chose. This should include sectoral, geographic, and temporal limits, for example the politics and policy of inheritance taxation in the United Kingdom during the Conservative governments between 2014 and 2024 or the case of obesity health policy in Scotland since the introduction of the sugar tax. In this introduction, you need to argue why the case you chose is an interesting case to apply the policy frameworks and approaches from the module. For example, you could argue that one can expect fierce political conflicts at the agenda-setting stage due to the opposing interests and policy beliefs of manufacturers/retailers/Conservatives and charities/experts/police/doctors, which invites an application of discourse network analysis or the advocacy coalition framework, or you could argue that the case lends itself to veto player analysis at the decision-making stage due to the interesting institutional constellation of veto players on the issue, or similar references to the literature from the module.
• A literature review on the case you chose. This should include a brief summary of the state of knowledge on this policy in the political science or other social science literature. If there are scant resources because the case is very specific, you may find somewhat relevant literature on similar cases, for example in a different polity, time, or sector, which could be used to portray your case as an interesting contribution to the literature. In the literature review, try to outline how analysing the case with the approaches from the module may enhance our knowledge and why it could be societally important to understand policy change or stalemate in this case. For
  example, if your case was social care policy, you could cite any relevant literature on the topic, especially relating to the place and time you are interested in, and argue that it is a pressing question due to population ageing, departure of care workers due to Brexit, increasing economic inequality in times of inflation and therefore greater need for care in the event of disability, homelessness, or old age, potentially supported by references or evidence. It would be ideal if you could portray the significance of the case both for society and for the policy studies literature, supported by references like in a typical literature review.
• A research design section on which framework, theory, or approach from the module you are going to apply to this case, how this contributes to our understanding of policy making, and based on what data (if any) you are going to analyse the case. For example, you could argue that you are going to apply discourse network analysis due to the expected competing policy belief systems in the contentious policy subsystem you are examining. You could then pick a specific time frame and newspaper or parliamentary process with speeches as a data source. For example, if your case was obesity policy in Scotland, you could apply discourse network analysis to newspaper coverage of your case by using the keywords “obesity” and “obese” and “body mass index” and “overweight” in order to identify articles in The Scotsman by accessing the Nexis database through the University of Essex library. Or, if your case was higher education policy in England during the current Conservative government, you could apply the narrative policy framework to speeches by Members of Parliament during the policy process of the Higher Education Act 2016, which are available through Hansard, the free, official report of all Parliamentary debates in the UK. Or, if you were planning to do a theoretical analysis based on the literature, then you could outline which approaches and what kind of information your analysis will entail. You should ideally check what data and/or literature are available and how you are going to analyse them to ensure that your plan is feasible before you write down how you are going to do the analysis. (Pro-tip: If you are going to use text data sources, do not over-promise because empirical research takes time. Pick only a few speeches or a manageable set of newspaper articles, perhaps before or after a key event.)

Here are two examples of published articles that contain similar sections. These articles are longer and contain more jargon than expected, but they should convey the idea of a policy case study in principle:

•  Fergie, G., Leifeld, P., Hawkins, B., & Hilton, S. (2019). Mapping discourse coalitions in the minimum unit pricing for alcohol debate: a discourse network analysis of UK newspaper coverage. Addiction, 114(4), 741-753.
• Buckton, C. H., Fergie, G., Leifeld, P., & Hilton, S. (2019). A discourse network analysis of UK newspaper coverage of the “sugar tax” debate before and after the announcement of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 1-14.
  The point of the policy case outline is to prepare for the final report (the last assignment of the module), for which you will conduct the analysis you are outlining here.

In addition to the general marking criteria, which are available on the Moodle page for GV924, the following marking criteria will be applied:

1. Is the case interesting and relevant for academic literature or for society, and is this well argued?
2. Is the case well-defined and specific?
3. Does your literature review include the relevant literature?
4. Does your outline convey a clear idea about the specific steps of the research you are planning for the final report, including theories, methods, data, and access to the data if necessary?
5. Are you using terminology and approaches (theories, frameworks, methods, definitions etc) from the module literature in designing your research? Work that does not clearly relate to the module contents will be heavily penalised.

You must submit your policy outline on FASER. The deadline is Tuesday, 20 February 2024 at 9:45.

Final report

The final report is a written document of at least (and close to) 2,000 words and up to an upper limit of 2,500 words + (optionally) up to five figures or tables. Before you draft it, you need to analyse the case you presented in your policy case outline, for example using discourse network analysis or other approaches taught in the module. The report contains a discussion of the methods and approaches you used, the data you analysed, the results of your analysis, including how they advance theory in the field of public policy, and conclusions that address strengths and limitations of your work and questions for future research.

If the case you chose originally (for the policy case outline) does not work well for your analysis or you did not perform well, you are free to choose a different case and may include brief new case details in your report.

The policy case outline and the final report together should ideally aim to form something that resembles an article as you would find it published in public policy journals, such as the

Policy Studies Journal, Policy & Politics, Public Administration, Review of Policy Studies,
Social Policy & Administration, Environmental Communication, Governance, Public Administration Review, Policy Sciences, the Journal of Public

Policy, and similar journals, just a bit more condensed. See also the two articles referenced above under “Policy case outline” as examples.
In addition to the general marking criteria, which are available on the Moodle page for GV924, the following marking criteria will be applied:

1. Does your final report embody scientific thinking about the politics of public policy?
2. Does your final report clearly speak to approaches and contents covered in the module and on its reading list?
3. Does your final report contribute to the literature on the politics of public policy or the case you chose by providing clear and original results?