This semester I will be teaching the first all on-line course at Albany Law School. The topic is government ethics. The desire to experiment with the course format and new technology is due in part to the fact that each spring semester we send students to Washington, DC for a semester in government program (in addition to placing students in New York’s capital city) and all students in the full time semester in government experience are required, among other things, to take the government ethics course. In the past we have been fortunate to have been able to use distance learning facilities at George Washington University School of Law to have our students participate in the class using the cameras in their classroom and the distance learning facilities at Albany Law School. With the advances in technology, and my experiences teaching on-line professional development courses for lawyers and planners through Rutger’s, the time seemed right to experiment with the government ethics course for our JD students. Over the course of the next several weeks I will post entries to explain how the course has been designed, the different ways in which technology has been incorporated into the curriculum, some of the lessons learned in terms of design and technology, and I will report “real time” on both teacher and student reactions to various apsects of the course. Your comments and suggestions about improvements to the course design/approach are welcome as adjustments can be made along the way.
Patty Salkin, Albany Law School
Filed under: Technology | Tagged: distance learning, government ethics, on-line teaching |
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