The Benefits of Introducing Prolog or Database Applications in a Public Personnel Course

• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X9401400413
• Author: Bruce J. Neubauer
• Published date: 01 October 1994
• Date: 01 October 1994
• Subject Matter: Articles

TEACHING
NOTE
The Benefits of Introducing Prolog
or
Database Applications in a Public
Personnel Course
Bruce J. Neubauer
ursuant to the National Association of Schools of Public Administration
and Public Affairs recommendations regarding the effective incorporation
of computer skills into the public administration curriculum (Kraemer et al.,
1986; Kraemer and Northrop, 1989), I have been experimenting with teaching
various computer applications in a number of courses. As in the case of many
other public administration educators, I am in a situation in which it is not
feasible to have a stand-alone course in computer applications in public admin-
istration. Teaching in a small undergraduate program I have the opportunity to
instruct the entire curriculum, and to experiment with various ways to incorpo-
rate computer skills into public administration undergraduate education.
It is useful to have a carefully planned strategy for this integration of
computer skills so that students are exposed to a variety of practical computer
applications while completing the core public administration courses. Ideally,
the task of each computer assignment should convey both new computer skills
and traditional core knowledge. The acquisition of computer skills should be
coincidental to the accomplishment of the core instructional task, and not detract
from such learning. The time spent teaching computer skills should not take
away
from the time devoted to the presentation and discussion of traditional core
materials of public administration.
At present the four major kinds of computer applications which students
need to acquire are communications (including word processing, networking, and
desktop publishing), spreadsheets, data bases, and artificial intelligence (including
expert systems). What is a logical strategy for integrating these four kinds of
applications into the core public administration courses?
Spreadsheets, entailing the display and management of numerical infor-
mation, are a natural to be integrated into the core budgeting and public finance
course. Some
aspects of networking and desktop publishing can be included in
the common
Introduction to Public Administration course. It follows, then, that
we
may want to explore the possibility of incorporating either artificial intelli-
gence (AI) or database management into the core personnel course. The purpose
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of this brief article is to suggest some of
It is desirable that students have
the implications of teaching either AI
some
exposure to artificial intelligence
or database in the public personnel
because they are preparing to work in
administration course, and to report
public agencies which are increasingly
on my own experience of having in-
likely to be utilizing automated infor-
cluded an assignment in PROLOG (one
mation systems. When they enter these
of the two major AI languages) in a
agencies our...