Comments on: Course Design – Technology Meets Substance in On-Line Curriculum Development

By: David Thomson

David Thomson — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:15:55 +0000

I found myself very interested to read this discussion about legal online pedagogy. Patty is clearly doing some very good thinking (and work) in her course redesign as she transitioned it to an online environment. I think she will find that the mixed media approach she is taking can be very effective (Voice-over PowerPoints, discussion boards, etc.) If there is anything I have learned about this, it is to try to pick the technology that best fits the goal for each “class” (or module) in the course. I am so glad that my book (Law School 2.0) was found to be helpful by Patty.

Thanks to Mary for the heads up about this discussion – in the busyness of the new semester, I might have missed it. Good luck to both of you, and please post with more reflections as you have them (and are able). I will be very interested to follow your thoughts and experiences in teaching this way.

By: Patty Salkin

Patty Salkin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:07:45 +0000

I did read David’s book in the fall before getting started. It was very insightful and helpful. I highly recommend it for everyone, whether or not on-line teaching is on the horizon for individual courses.

By: Mary Lynch

Mary Lynch — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:16:50 +0000

Part of your approach here sounds similar to that of David Thomson, author of Lawyering 2.0. I heard David give a wonderful presentation at the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning conference last June in Spokane on how he used wiki in an administrative law class taught on campus to foster group assignments. He was startled by the production of the best learning results he had seen in awhile. I’m going to see if David – who also hosted the stimulating Crossraods Conference this past September in Denver wants to add his two cents here!

By: Patty Salkin

Patty Salkin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:54:24 +0000

Thanks Margaret. I believe I have invested considerably more time in the transition of the course from in-person to on-line than I would have normally done in simply “tweaking” and updating a course from the year before. Although I have taught government ethics in the past, I had been away from the subject matter in terms of instruction for more than 6 years, so I need to separate the effort required to update and revise from where I was, before adding in time for the on-line component..

Fortunately, there have been few technology glitches, but I believe it is due to TWEN and faculty/student familiarity at this point with the product. What has been timely in terms of technology has been other things like learning how to do the audio for powerpoint slides, making a judgment on just how many slides to use for an on-line course (I’ve cut back, not added), and trying to “guesstimate” how to replicate three hours of in-person class time with an equal amount of on-line teaching/learning (striving of course, for not too much and not too little).

I will reserve comment for a later posting on the substitution of electronic discussion boards for in-class discussion since we just started. I’d like to read through more than a half dozen of these before reaching an initial reaction (should be next week). This will be on the short list to blog about.

Regarding the instructional technologist, Darlene is not assigned to this course anywhere near full-time. I think it has been helpful that she has been absolutely responsive to me and to the students in the class when issues arise (all of which have been minor). In figuring out ways to manage inquiries, she set up a discussion board just on technology questions/issues. This way, if more than one student has the same question, they may find an answer quickly without having to seek out Darlene. Also, working together in advance of classes starting, Darlene helped me to think through the organization of the TWEN site to make sure we use it in the most user-friendly manner, and she developed and posted the technology-related requirements students would need (e.g., which version of Adobe Acrobat did they need, etc.) and she put together and posted on the home page a memo with Tech Support information for course participants. As the days go by, I am hoping her time on this course is reduced. Check her blog (linked on this site) as she has been discussing the technology issues from her perspective with this course. In short, is it a benefit to the course that her position at Albany Law School is full-time – absolutely. The position enables not just this course, but lots of other innovations in legal education.

By: Margaret Moore Jackson

Margaret Moore Jackson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:39:08 +0000

Much of this plan for structuring and incorporating assessment into an online course is also potentially applicable to traditional in-person coursework. I have experimented with TWEN, but may try again with the new wiki capability. Thanks for posting, Patty.

One question raised for me is the degree to which teaching time is substantially increased when transitioning to an online course, either due to 1) technology set-up, 2) technology glitches, and/or 3) the substitution of electronic discussion boards for in-class discussion. Also, how necessary is a fulltime instructional technologist?

Margaret Moore Jackson, University of North Dakota School of Law