I took this course with Professor Rowe over summer as an online course. Professor Rowe required weekly discussion posts with one response to our peers' posts each week. There was also a midterm and final. The midterm was worth 30%, final 40%, and discussion posts 30% with the lowest one dropped.

Professor Rowe's lectures had accompanying slides but were also discussion-style. Overall, the theme in this class was encouraging students to form their own opinions on public policy issues based on issues and events presented in the readings. So while the exams were open-book, for the most part they were not questions that had easy answers.
The actual amount of assigned work in the class was not much, but between the readings and the lectures and sometimes extra videos, it's easy to fall behind (specially since this is an online class.) As long as you make a schedule and do the readings gradually, it won't become too much. If you try to cram right before the exam, it would definitely be an overwhelming amount of information to try to digest. The average for the first exam was around a 73 (unsure of the exact number or the average of the final.) Each exam had a multiple choice section, short answer section, and essay section.

The readings mostly came from public policy journals, research, and newspaper articles, as well as the assigned books. While the books aren't used in their entirety, they are awesome to have for students who want to learn more.

Overall, this class is awesome and Professor Rowe is very engaging. However, if you do take this as an online class, be sure to stay current with the readings, and know how to budget your time on essays for the exam.