CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

Over the course of my career in legal education, I’ve developed positive relationships with colleagues at other schools. Several of my distant colleagues have become my friends. But for purposes of this post, my focus is on my professional relationship with them as teachers.

I speak monthly or so with several law teachers from around the US and Canada. My “teaching partners” teach a wide variety of courses – first-year requirements, upper level electives, clinics, legal writing, and seminars.

My teaching partners facilitate my professional development in several ways.

•    First, each of my “teaching partners” is a dedicated, thoughtful legal educator. In every conversation with them, I get insight into teaching and learning.
•    Second, since they teach at other schools, they often have a perspective that is shaped by the culture at their schools, which may be quite different from the culture at my school. Their perspectives give me a broader view of legal education.
•    Third, because they are not at my school, I can whine and vent in ways I may not want to do with colleagues at my school.
•    Fourth, when I hear about their interactions with their students and colleagues, I learn more about my relationships at my school.
•    Fifth, we help one another brainstorm potential responses to the professional challenges come with being a teacher.
•    Sixth, they offer generous feedback on my scholarship about teaching and learning.
•    Seventh, they have become my co-authors for books and articles on legal education and my co-presenters in faculty development activities.

I could go on. Suffice it to say that my teaching partners are highlights of my professional life.

For those committed to continuous improvement in teaching, like-minded colleagues at other schools can be a wonderful asset. Our willingness to connect and support one another on a regular basis is a gift we give and receive.

The Center for Engaged Learning in the Law (CELL) plans to publish a short book on law teaching and learning this fall with the Carolina Academic Press. The goal of the book is to provide a handy and concise reference guide from the perspectives of practitioners, students and teachers. While much of the book will be taken from posts on this blog, additional contributions are sought. Comments on the following topics are especially desired:

I.    Before Class Begins – Course “Under Construction”
a.    Syllabus
b.    Materials
c.    Resources – Phone Numbers, Web Sites, Books and People
d.    Evaluation
e.    What Students Say
f.    What Practitioners Say
g.    “To Do” Lists

II. During Class
A.    Communicating With Your Mouth Shut
a.    Physical Layout
b.    Other Mechanical Issues
B.    Communicating With Your Mouth Open:Questioning Techniques
C.    Innovation
D.    What Students Say: Do’s and Don’t’s
E.    What Practitioners Say: Do’s and Don’t’s

III.    After and Outside Class
h.    Mobile learning
i.    Other learning
j.    Innovations
k.    What Students Say
l.    What Practitioners Say
m.    Technology Tips and Resources

IV. Inspiration

V. What Practitioners Say Law Schools Should and Should Not Do

VI. Helpful Resources: Helpful Law Teaching Web Sites; and
Helpful Books & Articles

Comments should range from one sentence to one page and can be submitted as a comment to this post or to sfriedland2@elon.edu or jlaw@elon.edu. You will be notified by September 1st if your contribution will become part of the book.

thanks,

Steve Friedland

As is reflected in numerous articles, conversations and email discussions, getting feedback on your teaching by looking at course evaluations provides limited information. There is no time for elaboration or follow-up. This year, in part because I was using a completely new teaching strategy, Team Based Learning, and wanted to know more about students’ experience with it, I accepted a colleague’s offer of spending half an hour with students to learn about their perceptions of the teaching strategy in greater depth.

Similar to the Student Group Instructional Diagnoses Gerry Hess referred to in his earlier blog, I prepared three questions for my colleague. What aspects of Team Based Learning had worked well over the semester? What could be improved? What suggestions did students have for adapting the Team Based Learning strategy to other courses? I introduced my colleague to my Remedies students at the beginning of the last class of the semester, and told them that she would collect their feedback anonymously. I left the room; she exited 30 minutes later with pages of notes.

When we talked about her findings the next day, it was fascinating to hear about students’ perceptions. A skilled interviewer, my colleague was able to listen to what was said as well as what was unsaid. She also asked a number of follow-up questions to clarify her understanding of students’ comments. Several of the findings were particularly surprising. For example, many of the students really liked the Team Based Learning model, as it reduced stress, greatly eliminated the sense of working in isolation, allowed them to learn more by hearing the classmates’ perspectives and reading their classmates’ analyses of problems, and made the time go faster because they were more engaged. But many of these students commented that this approach worked only because this was a small elective course and because most of them already knew each other. It would not work in a large required course, such as Torts, which is exactly where I am considering trying this strategy next fall.

Not only was the material from my colleague’s class interview fascinating, but it also provided helpful information that I hadn’t received from a variety of minute papers and course questionnaires I used during the semester. For example, by the end of the semester, students had heard from a guest speaker, had practiced making trial-level arguments about the validity of different kinds of remedies and how to measure them, completed a team assessment project and written a number of different documents. At the end of the course, they came up with a number of creative ideas for how we could have applied a number of different problems and different projects to the Team Based Learning.

It’s great to have this kind of in-depth feedback during and at the end of the course. I’ll take what my colleague learned and compare it to the student course evaluations. And even though they suggested otherwise, I am planning to use a Team Based Learning approach to teaching Torts and Legal Writing next year. I’m hopeful that I can persuade my colleague to again come to class and learn about how it worked the second time around.

In designing a classroom environment, the book, “How People Learn: Bridging Researech and Practice” (National Academy Press 2007), argues that “attention must be given to what is taught (information, subject matter), why it is taught (understanding), and what competence or mastery looks like.” Id. at 21. I am intrigued by this assertion, especially as it relates to mastery. While I think I know mastery when I see it - on exams, in classes, and in a courtroom — I generally do not articulate what mastery is for students or spend time explicitly modeling what it looks like, other than having students write in class and then reviewing it. In thinking about mastery for law students, I think at least three things are useful for cognitive advancement: (1) a knowledge of “big picture” frameworks or maps of a subject area; (2) a deep understanding of rules (i.e., what they mean, not just what they say); and (3) application of the rules and principles to different fact settings (a transfer of knowledge).

The question still remains for me as to what competency looks like in different subjects like Torts and Criminal Law (and whether there are substantive components required for competency) and more generally what mastery looks like in the classroom, in preparation for classes or even on exams. In response to these ruminations, I have started inserting “metacognitive moments” in classes, where I try to explicitly describe what I am trying to achieve and what success looks like. Whether these “moments” are helpful (or just senior moments) remain to be seen.

Should final exams be worth as much as 75% of a course grade? Perhaps not if we are trying to conduct humane authentic assessment. A recent higher education listserv contained postings about how to weight a final exam, including comments that weighting a final exam as much as 65% was a bit steep. Other contributors, all teachers committed to student-centered teaching and learning, suggested that around 33% was about right. One even noted that in law the only determinative was “Just the final exam. Talk about stress!” In practice it’s more valuable to stay on top of assignments rather than cram before a deadline. But don’t we - and the bar exam - teach and reinforce students cramming at the end? This semester I let my upper-level students work out how much the final would count - their choice: 20%. It means more assignments and assessments but they practice more often and, I hope, learn more.

This week, I will have two postings on teaching-related projects I hope you blog readers will find interesting. Later this week, I will announce a very interesting research project I am starting this month—for which I need your help.

Today, however, I will focus on a new series of law school casebooks to be published by Carolina Academic Press. The casebooks are being designed to implement the contextual and effective learning emphases of CLEA’s BEST PRACTICES IN LEGAL EDUCATION (2007) and of the Carnegie Foundation’s EDUCATING LAWYERS (2007). For example, BEST PRACTICES recommends that law professors set high expectations, “engage the students in active learning,” “give regular and prompt feedback,” “help students improve their self-directed learning skills,” “choose teaching methods that most effectively and efficiently achieve desired outcomes,” “employ multiple methods of instruction,” and, in particular, “use context-based instruction.”

Accordingly, books in this series will:

•    Emphasize active learning;
•    Make it easier for professors to create multiple opportunities for practice and feedback;
•    Use multiple methods of instruction;
•    Focus on the application of concepts in simulated law practice contexts with a particular emphasis on problem-solving;
•    Guide students’ development of self-directed learning strategies; and
•    Be explicit about the structure of the body of law, the text and public policy.

More concretely, here are some common features of the books:

Problem-Solving Focus : Each subject area will be introduced with a practical, law practice problem (presented as a memo from a partner, an e-mail query from a client, an excerpted transcript of a deposition or trial, a complaint that needs to be answered, etc.). The research shows that, when students read cases with such problems in mind, they are more likely to engage with the materials; they read the cases looking to learn things they feel they need to know. This approach is consistent with constructivist learning theory and research, which argues that students learn better in more authentic settings. It also provides context, which all students need so they understand why the things they are learning are valuable to learn.

In addition, at least one chapter in the books will be a “problem-solving” chapter that will focus on helping students weave together what they have learned to analyze more complicated problems a lawyer in each field might encounter.

Summary of Area of Law and Connections to Students’ Prior Knowledge : To provide the background knowledge the research shows expert legal readers need to develop before they read cases and because practicing lawyers develop background knowledge before delving into cases, the texts will provide an overview of the doctrinal area reflected in the cases before presenting the cases.

Inclusion of Learning Objectives and Lesson Overviews and Guidance as to the Big Picture of the Body of Law the Students are Learning : To empower students to control and evaluate their learning, the texts will provide students with learning objectives and overviews of how students will be learning form the text. Studies show that students learn better when they are told what they need to know and be able to do, how what they are learning fits in with what they already have learned, and how they will go about learning the new material.

Emphasis on Active Learning : The texts will engage the students in actively interacting with and thinking about what they are reading. Readers will be prompted to write, question, reflect, and analyze as they read their assignments.

Emphasis on Developing Students’ Self-Regulated Learning Skills : Studies of learning across all educational disciplines strongly suggest that students are more likely to move towards expertise when their instruction facilitates their application of cognitive strategies to learning their course material. The texts will include exercises that ask students to create their own graphic organizers, classroom note-taking guides, self-generated problems, visual concept metaphors, problem-solving methodologies, checklists, etc. First-year texts will provide greater scaffolding for students’ use of these strategies, and upper-division texts, while continuing to emphasize the need for such activities, will place greater responsibility for them on the students.

Use of Multiple Instructional Strategies : The texts and teachers’ manuals will make it easy for users to adopt multiple instructional strategies, including small group work, think-pair-share, free writing, Socratic questioning and discovery sequence instruction.

Careful Sequencing of Cases and Materials to Help Students Build Towards Mastery : The texts will be carefully sequenced with a focus on building students’ skills.

Integrated Opportunities for Practice and Feedback : Practice and feedback are crucial prerequisites to mastery; the texts will provide multiple opportunities for practice and feedback with respect to the core skills on which students will be tested—spotting issues, applying the rules, applying and distinguishing cases and analyzing with policy. Many such problems will be included in the texts and teacher’s manuals. By providing such questions and answers as a resource to professors and students, these texts will encourage professors to integrate such questions on their course webpages and classroom PowerPoint presentations.

You should not be surprised to learn that all of the law professor bloggers for this blog are authoring casebooks for this series: Steve Friedland will be writing a criminal law text; Barbara Glesner-Fines will be writing a professional responsibility text; Gerry Hess will be writing a civil procedure text; Sophie Sparrow and I will be writing a remedies text, and I will be writing a contracts text. I expect the Contracts text will be finished by November 2008.

After discussing the value of outlines with several people recently and reading the student comments about them on this blog, a thought occurred to me — would it be useful to have interactive on-line outlining? Interactive outlining means that students could post outlines they were composing for a class on a Web platform (such as Blackboard) and the teacher of that class and other students could provide comments on the outline posts. This type of mutual access might allow information to flow in different directions — to the student who posted, to the prof, and to other students who read the posts. This helps visual students, gives profs an understanding of what is being communicated and allows for mid-course corrections and fill-ins.

Along similar lines, is there any downside to an on-line outline bank for any and all course outlines, provided there is a disclaimer about the accuracy of their content? Outlines could be supplied by both teachers and students, and anyone reading the outlines could “review” and rate them, just like on Amazon, Netflix and Ebay. The bank could be accessed by students as a learning supplement and by faculty as a tool to see how students are organizing their courses.

–Steve Friedland

The course was 10 days long. On day one, 20-page packets – each page single-sided – were distributed to 107 students. On day two, 90-page spiral notebooks were distributed to the same 107 students. On day three, another 20-page, single-sided packet is distributed, along with a one-page schedule and a one-page description of group work. Additional distributions included 40-page packets (give or take 10 pages but also single-sided); one-page group exercise instructions; multi-page group exercise instructions; and, of course, a mountain of case law for the final paper, which, not surprisingly, was printed single-sided.

That tallies to approximately 19,000 sheets of paper used by a single law school in one 10-day course. That’s 1,900 sheets per day just for that class.
The point? Law school uses (and some might argue wastes) a LOT of paper, which, in turn, uses a lot of trees and a lot of money.

But it doesn’t have to… We live in a digital age where nearly anything that can be done on paper can also be done on computer, meaning there are fewer and fewer legitimate reasons to continue using paper in the current manner and at the current rates. Of course, the familiarity of having the document in front of us makes a total switch to computerized formats a bit jarring; however, this is the modern trend, and it is also the trend lightest on the budget and easiest on the planet. Therefore, implementing and encouraging widespread compliance with these policies benefits everyone in the end. The sooner we start, the better off everyone will be.

Realizing the following suggestions will be more or less relevant depending on the given school, here are a few simple ways to reduce the amount of paper (and money) consumed by law schools:

- Avoid printing altogether, opting for posting/emailing online whenever possible;
- Consider online submissions of information, or CD-ROM submissions of papers, etc…
- When online submissions are used, leave them online (i.e. don’t print them);
- Print double-sided;
- Implement one-page, comprehensive attendance sheets;
- Have groups share printed information rather than each member having his/her own;
- Assign cases on Westlaw/Lexis rather than in books or via printing where possible;
- Encourage students to download cases to Word, highlighting and note-taking on-screen rather than printing;
- Avoid duplicating online materials in the form of hand-outs

Those institutions feeling a bit more ambitious could release the inventory/budgetary information regarding paper usage and begin a school-wide movement to reduce those numbers. In other words, make a competition out of the practice of fiscal and environmental responsibility.
Nothing about this speaks to the more traditional aspects of leadership and legal education. However, if law school seeks to create more than just lawyers – if it seeks to create leaders, as mine does – and if fiscal and environmental responsibility are considered part of such leadership, then it is incumbent upon those law schools to implement policies aimed at reducing the footprint they leave on the budget and on the planet.

Having just read Gerry Hess’ “Collaborative Course Design: Not My Course, Not Their Course, But Our Course” __ Washburn L.J. __ (forthcoming Spring 2008), an article I wholeheartedly recommend, I decided to try the idea in my Contracts II and Remedies classes. The basic idea is to engage students in deciding: their expectations of each other, their expectations of the professor, the teaching methods to be used in the class, the sub-topics to be covered (i.e., if you cannot cover all of remedies law, which topics are most important to the students), and the method(s) by which students will be assessed. This approach demonstrates respect for law students’ status as adults and provides “autonomy support,” which helps limit the law student distress Larry Krieger’s research suggests is so prevalent among law students.

I must admit some trepidation on each day. What if they said they wanted their grades to rest on a series of coin flips? What if their only expectations of each other were to stay awake?
Fortunately, for the most part, things went well. First, as I have noticed whenever I have worked with focus groups of students at the various law schools with which I have consulted on teaching, students want feedback and multiple assessments. My Contracts II students chose to have two graded mid-semester assignments in addition to their final exam. Around half also wanted to be graded on their presentations of doctrine (at the beginning of each class session in Contracts I and II, I have two students come to the front of the room and review and summarize the knowledge and skills we addressed in the previous class session—students use review hypos, PowerPoint slides, graphic organizers, etc. to make their points). My remedies students, those supposedly jaded folks only interested in getting out of law school, chose six short assignments in addition to the final; the first three will be only for practice and feedback, and the last three will each be for a grade. Second, the students in both classes wanted one opportunity to engage in an activity a practitioner in the field would do. My Contracts II students will be writing a client letter explaining the implications and problems in a proposed contract; my remedies students will be creating a remedies-focused discovery plan.

But it wasn’t all good. All my Contracts II students and most of my remedies students had me for a prior class so their only teaching methods request was to say—“do what you did in our other class.” The students’ only expectation for each other was a vague “be prepared for class.” Both groups completely deferred to me about coverage—“you decide, Professor Schwartz.” I guess, however, I am happy with the coverage choices I made . . .

The most interesting reaction to the whole process came from two remedies students who have done well in law school but had never had me for a class; both felt they wanted all my methods to be exactly the same as those they previously had experienced in law school. They vehemently opposed anything different and wanted to finish our discussion of class policies as quickly as possible. I suspect they felt that, having done well under the old system, a wide variety of teaching methods and multiple assessments would be of no benefit to them.

I think I will do it again, although I know I will again be nervous.