New York State Bar Association Leads with Bar Exam Questions

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Patricia Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin*

On April 4, 2020 the New York State Bar Association once again delivered a resounding thumbs down to the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) as a measure of competency to practice law in New York.  Five years earlier, the Association’s Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar delivered a report that was overwhelmingly approved by the House expressing the sense of the profession that a move to the UBE was a bad idea. 

The NYSBA Committee on Legal Education and Admission to Bar (CLEAB), which had long studied the bar exam, hosted a session during the annual meeting on January 16, 2019 titled, “A Question of New York Law: Should It Be Taught in Law Schools and Tested on the Bar Exam?”  A preview to that discussion, “The Role of State Law in Legal Education and Attorney Licensing,” was published in the New York Law Journal the week prior.  In April 2019, the NYSBA Task Force on the Bar Exam was appointed by President Michael Miller, “to investigate and report on the experience and impact of New York’s adoption of the UBE.”  Then president-elect Hank Greenberg stated, “New York law has long been the gold standard in American jurisprudence. The bar exam should play an important role in ensuring that newly admitted lawyers appreciate the importance of New York law, and have an appropriate grounding in it.”

On March 5, 2020, following a series of statewide hearings on the bar exam, the Task Force, chaired by the Honorable Alan Scheinkman, Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department, released its report and recommendations.  The report contains an accurate and detailed description of meetings, stakeholders and the decision-making process that ultimately led the New York Court of Appeals, under the leadership of former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, to abandon the New York Bar Exam (NYBE) in favor of the UBE; and the report starkly concludes that “…since the adoption of the UBE, the fundamental purpose of the bar examination has been lost.” (emphasis added)

Accompanied by analysis of findings and explanations to support their positions, the Task Force made the following recommendations to chart a path forward for the licensing of new attorneys in New York:

  • Eliminate the New York Law Exam and replace it with a rigorous exam on New York law as a prerequisite to admission to the New York bar.
  • Conduct an independent psychometric analysis of the grading and scaling of the UBE.
  • Allow those who do not wish to practice law in New York to take only the UBE and allowing those who only wish to practice in New York to take only the Multi-State Bar Examination section of the UBE and the rigorous New York test.
  • Consider a New York law Certification program that would allow people to forego the bar exam entirely. Under this program, ABA-accredited law schools inside and outside of New York would offer courses that include New York law-based content.
  • Consider an experiential learning pilot program, which would allow second and third-year law students to spend time counseling clients, working with practicing attorneys and learning other practical skills so that a portfolio of work is created and assessed every semester.

These recommendations are welcome, especially the last two items which get to the heart of what many thoughtful national experts have maintained are the more accurate measures of competency to practice law. While under normal circumstances, degree privilege plus programs that incentivize curricular choices (in this case more New York law) and require client-focused legal skills experiences are the better measures of basic competencies, the strange confluence of the timing of this report and the COVID-19 pandemic has created a fortuitous opportunity to test some of the recommendations in the report.

The fact that this Task Force was in existence and already working on bar exam issues led NYSBA President Hank Greenberg to ask the group to separately opine on the challenges surrounding the then-scheduled July 2020 uniform bar exam in New York. Greenberg has been a staunch advocate for the soon-to-be members of our profession noting, “Graduating law school students are experiencing high levels of anxiety and distress as their lives and potential livelihoods have been significantly disrupted, and we are focused on making sure that their concerns are being heard and responded to by policymakers.”  The Task Force recommended postponing the July 2020 bar exam until early September and if the exam is still impossible at that time, then to expand practice orders to enable new graduates to begin supervised practice while waiting for a bar exam to be administered. 

While the Court of Appeals under the leadership of Chief Judge Janet DiFiore has accepted the State Bar recommendations, much more needs to be done to clarify the status of the developing procedures for licensing lawyers from the Class of 2020.  Another blog dedicated to pragmatic discourse on how to best license new lawyers who are getting ready to take their first bar exam during the COVID-19 pandemic is documenting the thoughtful and reasoned ways in which many state licensing jurisdictions are rethinking the value of the traditional bar exam limited to the unique challenges presented during the COVID crisis.  Law deans and faculty, law students and members of the profession, importantly including the leadership of the State Bar, are engaged in thoughtful dialogue on this topic with the Court of Appeals to arrive at a fair and just resolution for the Class of 2020. 

Some may think it unfortunate for the NYSBA Bar Exam Task Force to have issued its critique of the UBE at the same time that we are experiencing an unprecedented disruptor in the practice of law and in the administration of justice. However, this is precisely the time that New York can lead the country with piloting alternative ways to license lawyers with a reasoned roadmap prepared not under the pressure of the pandemic, but rather after a year-long focused study that supports the concept that there are different and equally effective, if not better, ways to assess candidate competency for admission to the bar in New York.

*Patricia Salkin is Provost of the Graduate and Professional Divisions of Touro College. She is a legal educator and a past co-chair of the NYSBA Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.     

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

New Blog on Teaching and Learning Features Contributions from Law Faculty

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Patricia Salkin

Touro College has launched a Teaching and Learning Exchange Blog that all are welcome to drop in on.  Some of the recent posts discuss topics this Best Practices blog has highlighted in the past. For example, recent postings from four law faculty include: Laura Dooley , Hypo Hell: Using Short Form Questions in Class to Engage Students with Important Texts; Jack Graves, Multiple Choice Questions as an Integral Part of an Effective Assessment Regime; Dean Harry Ballan (and Dylan Wiliam), In Defense of Multiple Choice; and Meredith Miller, Day One: You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression.  Other interesting posts from faculty across the College include: Attention, Memory, and  Learning: What Do We Know? So What?, “I’m Not an Actor?” and Curiosity Feeds the Cat. Please bookmark this blog, facilitated by Dr. Rima Aranha.

Filed under: Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »

Valuing Faculty Committee Work

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Patricia Salkin

In “Incentivizing and Assessing Committee Work Contributions, Why Now?” Professors Andi Curcio & Mary Lynch suggest that changes in legal education models necessitate re-thinking law school committee work responsibilities and rewards.  Their article  is a worthwhile read for anyone who believes the current system of committee workload allocations needs to change. Below is their abstract.

Faculty scholarly productivity reaps tangible internal and external rewards while the “reward” for excellent faculty committee work performance often is additional committee work. Some faculty members perform substantial committee work while others spend little time on institutional service, leaving them more time for scholarship. Despite equity issues, this system maintains the faculty self-governance model integral to academic freedom, and the necessary service work gets done. This article suggests that this traditional workload distribution model may be unsustainable. Innovations in legal education brought about by financial pressures, declining enrollments, and new accreditation standard requirements will result in increased committee workloads while reductions in full-time faculty at many schools leave fewer faculty members available to do that work. Those currently doing the lion’s share of the work may be unable, or unwilling, to take on more committee work. This article examines methods for avoiding an institutional governance crisis.

Grounding the discussion in social science literature, it explores ways to more fully engage all faculty members in committee work by creating accountability structures via smaller committees, peer evaluation of committee work contributions, and rewards for extraordinary service work. It posits that peer evaluations of committee work set normative standards and provide tangible evaluative tools, potentially changing cultural expectations about committee work participation. The article discusses the benefits and potential pitfalls of faculty committee work peer evaluations, provides a sample evaluation rubric, and sets forth a roadmap for implementing a committee work peer evaluation program. It also examines ways to encourage committee work stalwarts to continue their extraordinary service via a reward system. Amongst the rewards discussed is a year’s release from committee work responsibilities to allow for more time for scholarly pursuits. Throughout, the article suggests ways to engage more faculty in the work necessary to maintain thriving self-governing educational institutions in today’s changing legal environment.

Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | Comments Off on Valuing Faculty Committee Work

Touro’s Law Center’s Journal of Experiential Learning

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Patricia Salkin

The second issue of Touro Law Center’s Journal of Experiential Learning is now available online at http://www.tourolaw.edu/jel/?pageid=997.

This issue is devoted to incubator and residency programs and their contribution to legal education, particularly to the post-JD part of the educational continuum.  The creator of the law school incubator movement, Fred Rooney,  served as the guest editor for this edition.  Articles for the Incubator & Residency issue include:

Volume I, Number 2, Fall 2015
Table of Contents:

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Annual Leadership in Legal Education Issue of Univ. of Toledo Law Review Filled with Best Practices Nuggets

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Patricia Salkin

The new issue of the University Toledo Law Review is out, featuring its annual “virtual symposium” on legal education by law school deans. These annual issues should be read not just be deans and people who are thinking about pursuing a law school deanship, but they should be read by college and university presidents and provosts, members of law school boards of trustees and advisory boards, senior administrative staff, and most important, by law school faculty. The articles in each volume, taken together, offer terrific insights into current challenges facing legal education, interesting historical background on various aspects of legal education, and innovative ideas to shape the future of law schools and legal education. The winter 2015 volume is no exception.

While I will not address all twelve of the articles/essays in this brief review, I do want to highlight several important themes in four pieces. Beginning with the opening contribution by two-time former dean Peter C. Alexander (Indiana Tech and Southern Illinois), more than mere references to “best practices” principles abound. One of Alexander’s assertions is that law schools, in “the new normal” must do more to create “practice ready” graduates as part of the ongoing curricular reform taking place. He also suggests, “Faculty members have to design new methods of instruction and create new pathways for students to learn….Deans must make funds available for faculty members to learn how people learn and how to teach the current generation of students.” (p. 263) This is an astute observation and one not lost on many in the academy. Most of us on the law faculty did not receive any formal education or degree in pedagogy. While those who work with students from pre-K through 12th grade must be certified as teachers after formal baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate training, there are no such requirements in higher education. Few, if any, dispute that in law school the learning styles of our students has changed over time, and this challenges law faculty to more attune to the need to change our teaching methodologies.

Another piece written by Professor George Critchlow, former interim dean and former director of the clinical programs at Gonzaga University School of Law, focuses on ensuring that legal education in a broad sense is accessible to those who wish to serve the public good – including non-lawyers (a good and controversial read). In his discussion on affordability, Critchlow reviews a number of ideas that have been circulating for years including, but not limited to: law schools partnering with legal services organizations and firms (resembling aspects of the medical school model); a discretionary third year program that consists entirely of a practice-oriented experience; participation by law schools with apprenticeship programs that allow or encourage students to engage in actual work outside of the law school in addition to classes (this goes well beyond the current law school supervised externship and clinic experiences); and cost savings to clinical programs by entering into “hybrid” arrangements with community based legal service providers.

A theme in Critchlow’s article is picked up in greater detail in an article by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law dean Harold J. Krent and director of clinical legal education Gary S. Laser. Krent and Laser focus on meeting the experiential challenge through the operation of a fee-generating law clinic. By highlighting the example of the IIT Chicago-Kent model which in essence is organized as an in-house law office, the authors point out that students are exposed not just to the traditional live client experience of a clinic, but they develop an appreciation for the economics of law practice. This is important given the increasing attention that many law schools are giving to the business aspects of running law offices, whether it be through the incubator movement, the addition of courses on law office management, and the introduction of business skills to the curriculum.

The symposium ends with an essay by UC Hastings College of Law Dean Frank Wu which I highly recommend everyone read. Dean Wu offers his prescription for reforming law schools, much of which I will not address here due to space and my focus on best practice. Wu states, “A lawyer should be like a doctor. There is no medical school graduate who altogether lacks clinical experience. Every licensed physician has seen a live patient presenting actual symptoms before charging anyone for a diagnosis. Yet some law school graduates manage to do quite well by book learning alone. They need not interview, counsel, or draft, to earn honors, if their exams and seminar papers are good enough.” (p. 420) He discusses the increasing importance of the need for the academy and the profession to understand and appreciate the impact that technology is having and will have on the future of the practice of law and lawmaking. Wu addresses the ongoing and long-time debate over the profile of law professors as practitioners or intellectuals. (p. 440) In addressing the costs of change, Dean Wu asserts that the most expensive and most worthwhile change we have “recently” made in legal education is clinical legal education.

Every year I find fascinating the articles and essays published by the Toledo Law Review in their special “deans” issue. I am surprised that many people do not know that this annual symposium exists. It is a good read that should not be missed.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices and Clinics, Teaching Methodology | 2 Comments »

Bibliography on Education Reform

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Patricia Salkin

Fall is here and in addition to the start of the academic semester, the NYSBA Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar is in high gear.  So much has been written about changes in legal education in a short period of time, it can be difficult to keep track of the books, articles, columns, posts, etc. Thanks to Touro Law librarian Laura Ross, a working bibliography on legal education reform has now been posted to SSRN for all to access. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2500987 This is an ongoing work-in-progress, and Laura welcomes emails with suggestions for additions to the list.  Entries in the bibliography provide great starting points for discussion among faculty and law school constituents about the present but more important, the future, for individual law schools.  We hope you will use this to inform your teaching, scholarship and service to the school and community moving forward.  Those of us fortunate to be a part of the Academy have a wonderful opportunity at this moment in time to respond to a rapidly changing legal profession by making deliberate and informed reforms in the way we educate the next generation of lawyers.

Filed under: Best Practices, Catalysts For Change | 2 Comments »

Practically Grounded Conference

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Patricia Salkin

In its late February article, entitled “As They Ponder Reforms, Law Deans Find Schools Remarkably Resistant to Change,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that law faculty use the “lecture-based model because it is cost-effective and convenient,” quoting Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of University of California’s Irvine School of Law. In the same article, Dean Richard Matasar of New York Law School bluntly states, “[w]e’re all old dogs trying to learn some new tricks, and all of us old dogs have got tenure and we’re not going any place.”

John Nolon of Pace Law School and I conducted a teaching survey in the land use law area and found remarkable evidence showing change in teaching skills in recent years.  We suggest that the practical, emotionally-charged, interdisciplinary, and grounded nature of land use, as well as environmental and sustainable development law, make courses on these subjects ideal both for teaching skills and values and for integrating podium and clinical methods of instruction. (See Practically Grounded: Convergence of Land Use Pedagogy and Best Practices, Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 60, Number 3, February, 2011, at p. 519.)  Our survey shows that the trend toward teaching practice skills in traditional doctrinal courses is underway, at least in the land use classroom.

Deans and professors are focused on this issue in part because the American Bar Association is planning to add “student learning outcomes” to the process of accrediting law schools.  Drafting new rules for schools to follow has been delegated to the ABA’s Student Learning Outcomes Subcommittee.  This six-member group is charged with the controversial task of determining the rules that schools must follow to determine and measure the skills that law students should have upon graduation. For further information on these accreditation issues see The National Law Journal of Feb 22, 2011.

Albany and Pace Law Schools are sponsoring a conference on this topic. On May 5th, nearly a dozen land use and environmental law professors from law schools across the country will present their skills and values teaching models. Additionally, our resident experts will facilitate extensive discussions regarding best practices for teaching practice skills to students in upper division courses.  High on the list of discussion topics are the time practice teaching takes, class size issues, and the concern over lost doctrinal coverage.  Please click here for conference information if you are interested in attending.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Practically Grounded Conference

Integrating Internet-Based and Teleconferencing Resources into On-Line Teaching

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Patricia Salkin

Note: This is a continuing weblog describing my experiences teaching an on-line course in government ethics.

The on-line government ethics course this semester has already benefitted from a number of internet-based resources as well as teleconferencing.  With one of my early organizing goals to keep the “virtual class” as interactive as possible through the use of discussion boards and wikis available on TWEN, I also looked to see what other resources might be available on the Internet. To my surprise, there were a number of opportunities to integrate interactive ethics training into the course. 

For example, most state ethics agencies now offer on-line training for covered employees.  I contacted the NYS Commission on Public Integrity and they were agreeable to providing each of the students in the course with a user ID and password to enable students to take the Commission’s on-line training based on the ethics laws in New York.  This training was a wonderful introduction for the students to the types of issues typically covered in an ethics regulatory regime.  Another aspect of this on-line training was that at the end of each topical interval there was a quiz for participants to complete.  The entire training could take anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours to complete, depending upon whether users go straight through the course, or take the opportunity to click on links to actual statutes, regulations and opinions that go into further detail on the particular subject matter being discussed.  I asked the students to evaluate this training experience when they concluded the program. Their reactions were interesting.  Almost everyone commented that the training was beneficial and a good introduction for government employees about the law.  Many students commented that they thought this on-line training was too basic, yet, a number of these students also admitted that they were surprised to have gotten a lot of the quiz questions wrong.  From this, several students observed how nuanced government ethics laws really are, and that the appropriate course of action when it comes to ethics is not always so obvious. This was an excellent teaching opportunity to point out how even people who are “trained” in the law can make mistakes, how individuals may not fully understand the application of the law to their actions, and why it is important to carefully read the statutes and regulations and to critically analyze the facts and the law. 

Early in the semester we studied the difficulties surrounding the question of attorney-client privilege in the government context.  As luck would have it, ALI-ABA was promoting a one-hour practitioner-oriented teleconference on the attorney-client privilege.  Although this was not focused exclusively on government law practice, I thought it would be a good opportunity for the students to get a fuller understanding of the practical issues involved in application of the privilege.  Perhaps because I frequently volunteer to teach ALI-ABA courses, I asked and was given permission for my students to participate in the course at no charge.  ALI-ABA sent each student a password to access the lunch-time program.  While many students commented that they wished the program had focused on the privilege in the government context, a lot of students wrote in their program evaluation to me that the course was interesting and they reflected on how it related to both what we studied in government ethics and what they discussed in their professional responsibility and evidence classes.  This proved to be another good experience and opportunity to weave together ethics and professionalism and evidence along the continuum of the overall law school educational experience. It was practice oriented and it also covered doctrinal subject matter tested on the bar exam.

Lastly, for fun, the federal Office of Government Ethics (OGE) offers interactive games to reinforce serious ethics subject matter.  I provided students a link in the weekly course materials folders to two of OGE’s interactive crossword puzzles where users can test their knowledge of federal ethics laws. While I didn’t specifically require the students to complete the crossword puzzles, I used it as an optional and alternative on-line teaching tool.

The above are just some of the examples of the various tools available to supplement a virtual classroom learning experience.  Although I have not used them yet, there are government ethics training videos available on You-Tube and other web-based sources, and a number of states post on-line the oral arguments before their high court, providing yet another great resource for many different subject areas.

Patty Salkin, Albany Law School

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Technology | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

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: , | 7 Comments »

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 »

Setting Goals and Evaluation for an On-Line Course

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Patricia Salkin

With the recent focus on outcomes for learning, I decided to provide students taking the first on-line course at Albany Law School with written goals for the semester.  The following was posted for the students:

COURSE GOALS:

By the end of the course, students who participate fully should be able to:

1)    APPLY acquired knowledge of government ethics laws in general, and regulations that apply specifically to government lawyers, statewide and nationally to challenges facing individuals who work in the public sector at any level of government in any state;

2)    RECOGNIZE & EVALUATE differing perspectives surrounding the public policy goals and dynamics of regulating the conduct of public officials and employees, and the roles of the various oversight agencies involved in the education, enforcement and prosecution of public actors for alleged civil and/or criminal wrongdoing;

3)    EXAMINE CRITICALLY  laws (existing and proposed), policies, systems and structures which govern  those who work in the public sector as well as those in the private sector who interact with government employees to identify applicable laws, loopholes and opportunities; and

4)    DEMONSTRATE COLLABORATION/COLLEAGIALITY AND PROFESSIONALISM through participation in the active on-line and team learning aspects of the course which will be essential to effective client counseling and representation and/or negotiation in the development of ethics laws and regulations.

Naturally, students want to know how they will be evaluated.  This required a lot of consideration for an on-line class.  When I previously taught the course I told the students I expected that they follow the Law School’s published attendance policy, and that class participation and completion of assignments would count towards their grade.  Since the course was taught seminar style, in lieu of an exam, students were required to submit a 20-25 page research paper at the end of the semester. The paper was weighted significantly in calculating grades. 

After reflecting on the goals to make sure that the students were being evaluated appropriately based on the desired outcomes, I developed the following grading rubric:

Assessment/Grading:  Your performance will be assessed throughout the semester as you participate in on-line discussions, and complete wikis and other assignments.  The amount of time you spend on-line in the course site and its various component assignments, combined with the quality of your postings which should reflect the knowledge and skills you acquire as the semester goes on, will be incorporated the feedback you receive during the semester as well as in your final grade.

Effort reflected by time on line                                                                  25%

Completion of all assignments and discussions                                  25%

(quality demonstrating reading and reflection of materials and other student comments)

Accurate and comprehensive completion of                                         25%   

Wiki assignments

Accurate and comprehensive completion of group                              25%

project

In future postings I will describe the discussion boards, the use of wikis and the group project.  To determine time on line, which is the closest I could come to an attendance policy for an on-line course, I told students I would view the “activity” reports provided by TWEN.  I cautioned students that I would be able to tell who simply logged on to the TWEN site and then left for a couple of hours with the browser open to make it appear as though they were actively engaged in reviewing information on the site.

Patty Salkin, Albany Law School

Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Technology | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Organizing Technology to Teach On-Line

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Patricia Salkin

There are many technical issues to explore when setting up an on-line course.  The most important resource with respect to all aspects of technical course design was our superstar instructional technologist at Albany Law School, Darlene Cardillo (here is a link to her technology blog:   http://albanylawtech.wordpress.com). What follows are some of the important issues explored and lessons learned:

1 – What platform was available to “host” the course?  I had used Blackboard in the past, but Albany Law School did not have access to this.  In the end, TWEN was selected after Darlene’s recommendation.  I had some comfort with TWEN, having used some of its functionality last semester, but I definitely needed a tutorial on the possibilities it had for an on-line course. My next posting will provide details on how I am using the TWEN tools to deliver the course.

2 – What other software and hardware did I need? After deciding that I would not be having students log-in for live video chats (this eliminated the need for a webcam/camera in my computer and the need to download software (such as Skype), I did decide to try using slide presentations with my voice over to convey certain information for some weeks. To accomplish this, Darlene set me up with Adobe Presenter and a microphone.  I also got a small recorder that saves recordings as mp3 files for easy uploading to the course site.  This will allow me to post “podcasts” of interviews I might conduct during the semester.

3 – Practice.  I like the Adobe Presenter software since it allows me to record audio one slide at a time and save it.  I didn’t count on the amount of time it would take me to record the audio.  For week one I had 17 slides.  I figured it would take me 25-30 minutes to record the audio.  Wrong.  It took me 90 minutes.  I realized that when I went to record a “lasting memorial” of my words, I sought greater perfection than the more informal patterns of speech in front of the classroom.  I re-recorded individual slides more times that I care to relate.  I resisted though the temptation to “script” the slides.  I thought it would take too much time and my presentations/discussions in class are not “scripted” as such.  I wanted to words and speech patterns to seem real, yet polished.  The ninety minute investment was worth it – except, I did not save the presentation correctly, lost it, and had to start over again.  Hard lesson in what not to do!

4- Size of the files for posting.  Generally I have not had problems opening pdf files I have placed in the weekly resource files.  However, some difficulty was experienced opening the pdf of the slide presentation made with Adobe Presenter.  I may not have compressed the file when I saved it.  It was also advised that Adobe 9 was required to open the document. Aaron Cabbage at Westlaw who works on TWEN design/development has also recommended saving the slides in the future through Slide Share (http://www.slideshare.net ) and then posting a link from the TWEN site.  I may try that next.

Patty Salkin, Albany Law School

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Getting Ready for On-Line Teaching

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Patricia Salkin

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: , , | Comments Off on Getting Ready for On-Line Teaching