Flipped Learning for Legal Education

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Michele Pistone

Hi Everyone! Mary just invited me to join this blogging community. Glad to be here.

For my first post, I’d like to think about how flipped or blended learning could be used in legal education. Flipped learning blends online and in-class instruction and has been used of late in lots of educational settings, including K-12 and undergrad. I think there is a place for it in legal education too.

The way I see it, flipping the classroom can take a lot of different forms.  I envision them along a spectrum, something like this –

At one end of the spectrum, it can be used to

1. Reinforce learning after class — professors can assign online videos for students to watch after class, to help clarify and/or reinforce the doctrinal concepts that were taught in class, and help to build students’ doctrinal knowledge.

2. Lay a foundation – professors could require students to watch videos that cover basic, foundational concepts – so classtime can start further along the learning process.

3. Supplement with different perspectives — Professors may also assign online videos (prepared by other professors) to supplement their own lectures, so that their students can hear different voices or perspectives on a particular topic or to have students hear from experts on topics beyond the professor’s own field of expertise.

4. Facilitate higher level Socratic dialogue – when professors assign videos for students to watch before class, students have time to think about and reflect on the lesson before arriving in the classroom. That way the videos may reinforce the concepts in the assigned reading and when students come into class – having heard the lesson on the reading before class — they will be ready and able to engage in a higher level of Socratic dialogue and discussion of assigned hypothetical and in-class problems.

5. Integrate essential lawyering skills — when online videos are assigned as homework, as a substitute for a professor’s own lecture — class time is freed up for more active learning exercises that incorporate some essential lawyering competencies.

6. Professor as Facilitators/Guides — Some professors may decide to use videos to help integrate practical lawyering skills in doctrinal courses. Students could be required to review videos on substantive law and on practical lawyering skills out of class. Then, classtime can be devoted to simulations or role plays in which the students use the material they learned on video to engage in essential lawyering skills – such as negotiations, interviews, or oral arguments.

In this way, the professor is moving from a position at the front of the class, to a coach who works one on one with students, or with small groups of students, during assigned classtimes. And it promotes collaboration and team building among students.

This last category would be at the other end of the spectrum and allow professors to bring more training in practical lawyering skills into each course.

What do you think?  Let me know if I’m missing something.  I am speaking about how to use technology in our teaching at the AALS Clinical Conference next week.  I’d love to hear your reaction to these ideas before then.

Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: | 4 Comments »

Building on Best Practices: Call for Ideas and Authors

Posted on October 23, 2011 by dmaranville

The Clinical Legal Association, Best Practices Implementation Committee is planning a follow-up publication to Best Practices for Legal Education by Roy Stuckey and others.     The vision of the book is to build on ideas for implementing best practices, and to develop new theories and ideas on Best Practices for Legal Education.   If you would like to author a section in the book please let us know as soon as possible.   Then by December 1, 2011 send either of us a 3-5 page abstract identifying the knowledge, skills and values as well as the learning objectives and methodology of your innovative teaching idea.   The Editorial Board will meet at the AALS meeting in January to select pieces for inclusion in the book.

 

If you have any questions or thoughts about the project please feel free to contact either of us.

 

Looking forward to drawing  on the expertise of the legal academy to build on Best Practices for Legal Education!

 

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez ,Chair, Publication Committee

Deborah Maranville,  co-editor

 

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, First Year Law School Innovations, International Initiatives and Models, Teaching Methodology, Upcoming Events | 2 Comments »

Interviewing and Counseling: A Teaching Workshop

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna

From Professor Laurie Shanks, Clinical Professor of Law at Albany Law School

Albany Law School will be hosting a hands-on collaborative workshop entitled Interviewing and Counseling: A Teaching Workshop on November 11th, 2011 with an opening reception the evening of November 10th. The workshop is designed to address the significant challenges faculty face in teaching interviewing and counseling.

This event is a rare opportunity to collaborate on teaching methods specifically related to interviewing and counseling. The Workshop is designed for faculty who teach stand alone courses, clinicians who teach these skills as an integral part of preparing their students to represent clients, lawyering professors who introduce the skills to students in their first year of law school and doctrinal faculty who address these topics as part of their courses.

A unique feature of the event is the “swap meet” of written problems, syllabi, checklists, and teaching ideas, contributed by participants, that will be available to attendees. Additionally, there will be speakers addressing some of the most challenging aspects of teaching these skills, including how to create realistic simulations and proper assessment techniques.

For a more individualized experience, small groups will be organized to allow participants ample time to select from among various topics. These may include further discussion of large session topics as well as basics of course structure and content; choice of texts; and or other topics chosen by participants.

For more information, see the conference site: www.albanylaw.edu/clientteachingwksp

or email one of the Workshop organizers, Laurie Shanks lshan@albanylaw.edu, Harriet Katz, hnkatz@camden.rutgers.edu, or John Craft, jcraft@faulkner.edu.

Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology, Upcoming Events | 2 Comments »

New Article: An Inconvenient Truth: The Need to Educate Emotionally Competent Lawyers

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna

Professor Robin Wellford Slocum from Chapman University School of Law posted an article on SSRN entitled An Inconvenient Truth: The Need to Educate Emotionally Competent Lawyers. The article is a very interesting read on the importance of teaching emotional competence as opposed to teaching emotional detachment. Particularly, the paper addresses the four “domains” of emotional competency (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management) and how teaching students to develop each domain through skills training will create better prepared attorneys:

[W]e cannot expect our students to fully grasp the “bigger picture” or to appreciate the practical significance of their legal strategies if they share their future clients’ limited understanding of human behavior and their narrow worldviews. Absent some understanding of the complex nature of human behavior and how the emotional brain drives decision-making, students cannot fully appreciate how their clients, judges, juries or opposing counsel are likely to respond to their legal arguments or strategies.

Interestingly, the paper is not only about addressing the emotional needs of clients, but legal strategy and preparation for communication with the opposition as well. We do not realize in real time that our thought process is corrupted by emotions, but the article suggests that corruption awareness is trainable by pointing out “red-flags”. Such training would be useful, for example, in an exchange with opposing counsel where anger can cause the brain to activate pre-programmed responses rather than allowing for a rational argument on a point. Emotional competence seeks to prevent anger responses and promote rationality.

Read the article and tell us what you think!

Filed under: Teaching Methodology | 4 Comments »

Another Conference on Experiential Learning in a Specialty Area: International Law Clinics, Externships, Internships, and Advanced Research — Pace Law School, May 6

Posted on April 26, 2011 by vmerton

The day after the May 5 “Practically Grounded” conference, a joint project of Pace and Albany Law Schools to be held at Pace Law School in White Plains, half an hour north of New York City (see entry below), Pace Law will host another experiential learning-oriented conference, this time on behalf of the Teaching International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law and the American Branch of the International Law Association.  “Teaching International Law Beyond the Classroom: Engaging Students in Experiential Learning, in Web 2.0, and in Historical and Empirical Research”  will take place on Friday, May 6, 2011, from 8:45 am to 7:00 pm.

Noteworthy is the fact that at both Teaching Conferences, all participants will be offered a free copy of Best Practices for Legal Education: A Vision and A Road Map and the book will be referenced and used throughout by conference speakers and moderators.

The focus of this conference is getting both students and faculty involved in empirical research, historical research, Web 2.0, and experiential learning.  Beth Simmons of Harvard, one of the country’s leading empiricists in the field of international law, will be speaking along with Jordan Paust, Houston; Sital Kalantry, Cornell; Julian Ku, Hofstra; Peggy McGuiness, St. John’s; and Tom Lee, Fordham.  Anthony VanDuzer, of the Ottawa University Faculty of Law, will describe his NAFTA course, co-taught with a U.S. law professor and a Mexican law professor, using Skype to bring professors and students from the three countries together simultaneously.  Robert Van Lierop, former UN ambassador currently with the UN in Darfur, will discuss the externship program he supervises, in which Pace law students assist island countries with environmental issues at the United Nations.

A full schedule and additional information can be found here.

Filed under: International Initiatives and Models, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized, Upcoming Events | 3 Comments »

Course (Re)Design Conference

Posted on February 1, 2011 by michaelhunterschwartz

The research on change in higher education suggests that, in some settings, change only becomes likely when a significant minority of the faculty already has begun implementing change.  A two-day, forthcoming conference, co-sponsored by the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning and Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, will allow faculty interested in change to make changes to their courses right now.  The conference is entitled “Course (Re)Design” and will be held March 18-19, 2011, at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law in Highland Heights, Kentucky. 

The conference will be of greatest benefit to professors confronted with teaching a new course and those who would like to reinvigorate their approach to a course they have previously taught. 

 By the end of the conference, participants will have engaged in

  1. setting course goals and learning objectives,
  2. designing formative and summative assessments,
  3. choosing teaching and learning methods, and
  4. selecting and creating teaching materials. 

For more information, please follow this link: http://lawteaching.org/conferences/2011courseredesign/.

Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Upcoming Events | Leave a Comment »

On-Line Discussion Boards Create a New Arena for Engaged Learning Environments

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Patricia Salkin

What’s better than the Socratic Method to engage all students in a course?  On-line discussion boards.

One of the challenges in creating the virtual classroom is to strive for students to substitute time that would have been spent sitting in a seat in an actual classroom for time spent engaged in the discussion on-line.  In addition to viewing short slide presentations with audio, and participating in occasional other on-line instruction (for example, this week the students were registered for and participated in a 45 minute on-line ethics training program developed by the NYS Commission on Public Integrity; and they were registered for a one hour ALI-ABA teleconference on the attorney-client privilege), the remainder of our instruction hours for the week are spent on the discussion boards.

So far I have opted to post three questions per week, and I have required the students to respond to at least two of the three questions, and then post replies to at two postings made by their colleagues (requiring 4 postings in total).  With 22 students enrolled in the course, it would be near impossible in a seminar of this size to actively engage every student in every class hour.  With the on-line discussion board, however, each and every student is an engaged learner who must participate in the class discussion.  In other words, no one gets a “bye” for the weekly class reading, and everyone must learn to be reflective, analytical and articulate in the written postings they make to the discussion boards.  Not only do I read the postings, but every class member reads the postings as well.  By week two, I realized the power of the discussion boards.

The two discussions I opened were:

1)    Based on Chapter 2, it is fair to conclude that defining exactly “who” is the client of the government lawyer is a difficult and challenging task, yet one that it is extremely important (at least in terms of confidentiality of communications which we will discuss in another posting).  Please respond for making a case that one of the following should be appropriately viewed as the client of the General Counsel to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and explain why: 1) The Governor; 2) The Commissioner of DEC; 3) The Counsel to the Governor; 4) A high ranking official within the agency other than the Commissioner; 5) Anyone in the Agency who sits down for a conversation with the Agency Counsel; 6) The public; or 7) Other (be specific). Is your answer the same if the attorney is not the DEC General Counsel, but rather an Assistant Counsel who reports to a deputy counsel who reports to the general counsel?  What if you work in the attorney general’s office and your job, according to the New York Executive Law, is to represent the State?

2)    From reading both Chapter 12 and the article in the folder for week 2, it is apparent that the federal courts are in conflict as to whether a government attorney-client privilege exists. This is an issue that will likely get before the U.S. Supreme Court some day. Please explain why you believe there should or should not be an attorney-client privilege. Your answer may consider the following: Does it matter whether the underlying conversations and litigation involve civil or criminal matters? If a privilege exists, does it belong to the government official or some other office/agency in government? What type of legal and regulatory arguments can you make to support your policy position?

These questions were directed, yet open ended enough to allow students to craft carefully thought-out responses and to challenge and engage students with differing perspectives and interpretations.  In the classroom, students may have responded with short answers in a sentence or two and full explanations may have had to be painstakingly extracted. Using the on-line forum, however, I received outstanding responses that demonstrated students did the reading, applied the applicable laws and policies, and considered the legal and policy challenges in reaching conclusions.  Their responses ranged from one full paragraph to four or five paragraphs.

In short, the discussion boards are proving to be an excellent teaching tool.  

Patty Salkin, Albany Law School

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , | 9 Comments »

“I’d like to thank the Academy…”: Using Movies in the Law School Classroom

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Justin Myers

The conversation that follows reminds me that when we, those supportive of the Best Practice model, use words like “innovation” and “engagement,” what we really mean is effective innovation and efficient engagement. When venturing away from the traditional delivery methods in the name of engagement and innovation, the most effective and efficient delivery methods must be accompanied by clearly articulated educational goals.

On a Tuesday afternoon, early in the new semester, Professor Hillary Farber posted a short and direct question to the Law Clinic Listserv. She asked, “Does anyone have any good discussion questions for this film [12 Angry Men] you would be willing to share?

 These are the responses that were shared:
(please feel free to add your own comments) (more…)

Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Technology | 1 Comment »

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

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Patricia Salkin

After setting course learning outcomes for the on-line government ethics course, I had to revise my syllabus to better match my goals and desired outcomes mindful of the on-line format, and I had to develop creative strategies for creating a vibrant virtual discussion that would satisfactorily create a functional equivalent of an in-person classroom discussion.

To be honest, this was easier than I thought it would be using the functionality of TWEN.  I selected one soft cover book as the course text, and have supplemented that with readings mostly available on-line or in the public domain that are posted to the course site in weekly course resource folders.

I typically require students to complete assignments in my courses, and I wanted to find a way that these tasks could add to the vibrancy of the course by being shared with all  participants rather than being e-mailed only to me using the TWEN assignment drop-box. At the end of December, TWEN added a Wiki function to the site, and this was the perfect opportunity.  Each student was asked to sign-up for one state that they will follow through the semester.  I set up a series of Wikis where students will be posting short narratives and links to statutes, regulations and opinions from their state about subject matters we will be studying that particular week.  All of the states the students selected appear on the Wiki page for a given week, and each student accesses the Wiki and inputs the information for their state. So, for example, in week two, students have to merely find and post the on-line links to their state ethics commission, ethics laws and lobbying laws.  In week three, students will have to actually critically read and start to parse aspects of the state statutes in order to answer a series of questions about their state ethics commission.  The assignment reads as follows:

Using the state laws from the state you have selected for the semester (note: the following 10 states do NOT have ethics commissions – Arizona, Idaho, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming), please find the applicable provisions dealing with the composition of the state ethics commission. Under your state listing in this wiki, please answer the questions below:

1. How many people are on the commission (board)?
2. Who appoints the members of the commission (board)?
3. What is the term of office for members?
4. Are there criteria/qualifications/disqualifications for members?
5. Are there provisions for removal of members? How is the chair of the commission (board) selected?
7. Who appoints the executive director of the commission (board)?
8. Is the executive director appointed for a term?
9. Does the law provide for removal of the executive director?
10. Does the commission (board) have subpoena power?
11. Does the commission have jurisdiction over both executive and legislative branch officers and employees; municipal employees; lobbyists?

Provide the on-line link to the applicable provisions of state law that support your summary.

When completed, the class will have a 23-state comparative overview of the differences and similarities of state statutes on this topic which will be the basis of a question on our Discussion Board (I’ll write more about the Discussion Boards in a future posting).

For those interested, my colleague Darlene Cardillo, our Instructional Technologist at Albany Law School has posted a summary of week one of the course from a technology perspective on her blog here. The results of our pre-course student survey about their familiarity with on-line learning and with TWEN can be viewed here, you can read about the only in-person class, a one hour orientation here,.

Patty Salkin, Albany Law School

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

Who are the “Best Law Teachers”?

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Justin Myers

In 2008, Michael Hunter Schwartz, of Washburn Law School, began soliciting nominations for a study of the Best Law Teachers in this country based on Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Teachers Do (2004).  Professor Schwartz has recently enlisted Best Practices Blog contributors Sophie Sparrow of Franklin Pierce and Gerry Hess of Gonzaga as co-authors and investigators.

While more than 250 nominations have been collected thus far, there is only a short time left to nominate others at “Best Law Teachers.”  Deadline for nominations is April 1, 2010 (no joke).  Professor Schwartz and company have already begun studying several of the Best Law Teachers and expect to continue their examinations this spring. 

For general information about the study, a list of nominees, and a link to the nomination form, please go to http://washburnlaw.edu/bestlawteachers/.

Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Leave a Comment »

Wegner’s Thoughts on Legal Education Reform: Legal Education’s Wicked Problems

Posted on January 9, 2010 by jwegner

At long last, I’ve completed (and Rutgers Law Review as published) an expanded essay on my own thoughts regarding the Carnegie Foundation’s study of legal education.  The essay is entitled ”Reframing Legal Education’s Wicked Problems” and is available at SSRN (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1533778) and on the Rutgers Law Review website (http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~review/vol61n4.php).  I’ve tried to facilitate further discussion of several facets of the Carnegie study work (particularly by incorporating more excerpts of interviews with faculty and students about what is meant by “thinking like a lawyer” and how the related skills are taught).  I’m also happy to be able to contribute at some length to thinking about why upper division curriculum reform is so difficult, why it is so needed, and how it might be approached, particularly by taking into account issues relating to personal and professional identity that face students of this generation.   An abstract follows. –Judith Wegner (judith_wegner@unc.edu)

Abstract:

The essay, by one of the authors of Educating Lawyers (the “Carnegie Report”) offers fresh insights as to why legal education reform is so difficult, drawing upon the theory of “wicked problems” increasingly used in public policy, engineering and a variety of other fields. It demonstrates the application of that theory with reference to the oft-told tale of Rumpelstiltskin, and draws from that tale key lessons that can be used by those seeking to create a new prospectus for legal education in coming years. It then illuminates four “wicked problems: that have plagued legal education for years: how responsibility should be allocated for lawyer preparation; why change in content alone does not result in enduring improvements in legal education; whether “thinking like a lawyer” has a continuing place in legal education; and how the upper division can be fruitfully improved. In illuminating these problems, it also offers suggestions for how they might be approached and resolved.

After providing background on the characteristics of “wicked problems” and how they can best be approached, the essay focuses on “commonplaces” that underlie professional work and accordingly should drive professional education (including legal education), thereby providing a fresh framework for actionable steps to improve legal education and the practice of law.It next S discusses the need to attend both to visible and invisible dimensions of problems in order to shape meaningful solutions and explains the importance of often unrecognized dynamics of learning and teaching as major forces that play crucial roles in legal education and curriculum reform.

The essay then discusses the power of naming, offering an in-depth look at the nuances of “thinking like a lawyer” as understood by students and faculty members interviewed at sixteen diverse law schools in connection with the site visits that informed the Carnegie Report. It stresses the specific ways that first year case-dialogue instruction forces students to deal with uncertainty, one of the critical dimensions of professional practice, and unpacks the notion of “thinking like a lawyer” in ways that should prove illuminating for students and helpful for faculty members who seek to help students understand the resulting changes in epistemology that are so central to the first year of law school. It also considers the nature of the “case-dialogue method” and explains the ways in which that classic teaching technique plays a critical role in building students‘ abilities to think analytically.

Finally, the essay considers one of legal education‘s most intransigent “wicked problems”: the upper division curriculum. Using insights from the theory of “wicked problems,”The essay endeavors to explain why upper division curriculum reform is so difficult. It then offers four strategies for “renegotiating” existing assumptions and practices in order to improve the upper division curriculum. These strategies (including purposeful redesign on the large scale, rethinking content, rethinking pedagogy, and re-balancing teaching and learning responsibilities) each of which are very likely need to be used in concert in order for meaningful improvements to occur. In particular, this portion of the essay incorporates insights from educational psychology and work on professional identity development in graduate students to stress the ways in which effective advanced curricular innovations should attend to the challenges faced by the current generation of students who, much more than those in past decades, face challenges in navigating changes in personal identity at the same time they confront the need to develop a sense of professional identity before leaving law school.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, First Year Law School Innovations, Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »

Incorporating Clinical Experiences in Classes

Posted on September 8, 2009 by ischarf

I’ve been thinking about ways of incorporating clinical experiences in doctrinal classes. The importance of this practice has not only been demonstrated by our Best Practices authors and the Carnegie Foundation, but especially by our own observations of our students as they enter clinical courses. To my mind it’s now obvious that students sitting in doctrinal classrooms for 1-2 years before getting involved in a clinical setting is not just unproductive, but counter-productive to their learning how to “be” lawyers. The way it is now, those who do enroll in clinics have little context for clients’ real legal problems, scant sense of what it means to gather the facts, and little notion as to how those facts fit with in the relevant law. Given this, I’ve recently suggested/mentioned to faculty at my school that they consider working on a “real” case in their doctrinal classes.  The response was underwhelming. There was concern about additional work.

Has anyone out there been successful in encouraging non-clinical faculty to work with a group of students on direct case representation?  If so, can you offer some suggestions as to how it might be made to work, especially how it might be accepted as a productive and enjoyable way to teach?
formative assessment.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Teaching Methodology | 4 Comments »

TERMINOLOGY AND MEANING: Experiential & Learning & Context-based & Lawyering Role & Structured Supervsion &…..

Posted on August 22, 2009 by Mary Lynch

I think we are at a point in the legal education reform movement, where terminology to identify the  complementary but distinguishable kinds of “Experiences” and kinds of “Learning” seems important.(Deborah Maranville, Russell Engler, Sue Kay and I are working on a piece which analyzes some of this….)

For purposes of the lists some of us are in the process of creating to identify schools which are mandating experiential learning, I think it would be helpful to discuss our terminology.   In my mind, I divide or group the categories by four (4)  factors (with sub-factors within): (more…)

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 6 Comments »

Collaboration Experiment: Letting the Students Teach

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Deborah Kearns

In response to several inquiries of Albany Law School’s Family Violence Litigation Clinic students concerning tax issues related to separation and divorce, we decided to engage in an experiment that turned out to be a huge success.   The Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (“LITC”) and Family Violence Litigation Clinic (“FVLC”) students were asked to prepare and present an interactive class to share the knowledge that they had gained throughout the semester in a manner targeted to the unique issues faced by each Clinic. We followed a Best Practices approach of integrating substantive doctrine, skills, theory and social science all in one class and the feedback from the students was very positive. (more…)

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »

Play, Creativity, Improvisation

Posted on April 10, 2009 by dmaranville

Why are  play, improvisation, and creativity showing up in so many different conferences and publications these days?  And what do they have to do with best practices in legal education?

The 2008 AALS Conference in New York included an Open Source presentation on play, and a Clinical Section presentation on improvisation.  The 2008 Clinical Conference in Tucson also included a session on improvisation (I organized that one and can vouch that we sent in our proposal before  learning that the same topic would be addressed in New York).

Master teacher Gerry Hess wrote about asking his students do  creative representations of the conceptual framework for personal jurisdiction years ago  (I stole his idea for a “class participation” option and built on it twice.  By also asking them to integrate the pieces of civil procedure into a creative  “big picture” project.  And by giving an in class group work assignment to draw the “stream of commerce.”)

And,  of course, interest in storytelling is high (perhaps a follow-up to the focus on narrative in the late 80′s and 90′s, including the LawStories series, and the Conferences on Storytelling.

I pondered the “why now” and “best practices?” questions when I saw the Journal of Legal Education scholarly article follow-up to the Open Source play presentation.  http://kotplow.typepad.com/clinicians_with_not_enoug/2009/03/ssrn-.html.

Is the why just aging law professors?   Always-were- creative types who now feel the confidence to be a little more “out there”?   Others starting to develop that side of their brains late in life?   Or another result of the tightening market for Ph.D’s and K-12 teachers in the 70′s that brought people into law who otherwise might have landed elsewhere?

As to “best practices” — presumably active learning necessarily means engaging both hemispheres of the brain.  If we want to “Teach the Whole Class” (to crib the title of an excellent Institute for Law Teaching video), surely we need to teach to learning styles that include the kinesthetic  — maybe manipulating play doh, as one of my married-with-children law students did for her personal jurisdiction conceptual framework?  And good legal work and good teaching require some ability to improvise in response to new situations.

I’m curious how many other such efforts around play and improvisation I’ve missed.  Am I right that these issues are “in the air”?

Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 2 Comments »

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