Redesigned discussion prompts
Three weeks of discussion board prompts from a graduate public policy course (LPSC 7311, Strategizing Public Policy), rewritten with the Four Levers.
Why these work: none of these prompts can be fully answered by a generic AI tool or by a student who skipped the readings. Each one needs content that only exists after the reading is done and the group has met: real examples from students' own lives, specific cited details, and classmates' input from that week.
Prompts by Linda Kowalcky, CSSH Director of AI Curricular Transformation. Built with her Discussion Prompt Redesign Checklist, which you can use on your own prompts.
The Four Levers at a glance
Week 2 · Policy design principles & loan forgiveness
Individual pre-discussion post (before your group meets)
Choose one “fundamental principle” of policy design from the Peters chapter. Then:
- Name a specific, real policy you interact with: at your workplace, in your household, or a program you've used or administered. Explain how that principle shows up (or is violated) in that policy. Be concrete: what does the principle look like in practice, not in the abstract?
- Separately, look at the federal student loan forgiveness example from the reading. Identify one specific design element that changed between the Biden and Trump administrations' approaches. Using Peters' framework, explain why that particular element was the one that had to change. What does the shift tell us about the principle at stake?
- Cite the principle by name and page number from Peters in your post.
Group discussion (after all members have posted)
Compare the real-world policies each of you identified. As a group, pick the two examples that best illustrate the same principle operating in different domains (for example, one from a workplace, one from a government benefit). Report out: what does the pairing reveal about how that principle operates across contexts?
| Lever | How it's applied |
|---|---|
| Anchor | A personal or workplace policy replaces “which principle resonates with you” |
| Trace | The loan-forgiveness comparison requires identifying and explaining the specific changed element, not just noting that change occurred |
| Textual reference | Principle name and page number required in the individual post |
| Peer dependency | The cross-comparison and pairing can't be done without real, specific peer examples |
Week 3 · Massachusetts housing waitlists
Individual pre-discussion post
Your readings include the Glaeser and Carson-Cisneros proposals, plus two 2023 news reports on the Massachusetts housing waitlist crisis:
- “A nightmare of epic proportions”: Thousands of Mass. residents languish on subsidized housing wait lists (Boston Globe, July 7, 2023)
- Mass. has a huge waitlist for state-funded housing. So why are 2,300 units vacant? (WBUR, September 19, 2023)
Pick one specific design feature from either the Glaeser or Carson-Cisneros proposal. Then:
- Cite a specific detail from the Globe or WBUR piece (a number, a named process, a described bottleneck) that illustrates the underlying cause your chosen feature is meant to address.
- Explain the mechanism: why would that specific feature fix that specific cause? Don't just assert that it would help; trace the causal link.
Group discussion
Share your chosen feature and its mechanism with your group. As a group, compare all the features members selected and identify which one, or which pairing, would do the most to reduce the vacancy-while-waitlisted problem described in the WBUR piece. Justify your group's choice by referencing at least two members' specific reasoning.
| Lever | How it's applied |
|---|---|
| Anchor | Kept as is: the proposals and articles are already specific and named |
| Trace | “Identify features” is upgraded to require the causal mechanism linking a feature to a cited cause |
| Textual reference | A specific cited detail from the Globe or WBUR article is now required, not optional context |
| Peer dependency | The group must synthesize and justify using peers' specific reasoning, not just report 1–2 ideas |
Week 4 · Communicating public policy (climate change)
Group discussion (core unchanged; already strong)
In your group, share an example of a significant communications challenge related to climate policy. Identify: who is the audience, and why is reaching that audience difficult?
Individual post (revised)
Review the Scholars Strategy Network guidance on policy memos and best practices for clear communication. Then:
- Name one specific piece of guidance (a numbered tip, a named principle, a heading from the document), not “advice” in general.
- Apply it directly to the audience your group identified above: would this specific guidance work for that audience? Why or why not? Your answer must reference the specific challenge your group described, not a generic climate-communication scenario.
| Lever | How it's applied |
|---|---|
| Textual reference | Must name a specific tip or heading from the SSN guidance, not general advice |
| Trace | Must explain why the guidance would or wouldn't work for the specific audience, not just what advice was helpful |
| Peer dependency | The post can't be written without the group's own discussion from that week |