Congratulations UNM and Editors of the proposed new Best Practices Book!

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Mary A. Lynch

This weekend, the University of New Mexico hosted a workshop BEST PRACTICES IN LEGAL EDUCATION: The Walls Are Coming Down” in which draft chapters of a new “Best Practices” book were reviewed and discussed.  The proposal to create a second book focused on best practices in legal education is the brainchild of Professor Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, ably assisted by Professors Deborah Maranville, , Carolyn Kaas and Lisa Bliss. The symposium workshop brought together law professors from throughout the country interested in how legal education and the world of law schools has changed since the publication of the 2007 book Best Practices in Legal Education. Facilitated by Professors Beryl Blaustone and Alex Scherr, the conference explored how many law professors fluidly move from former silos of clinical, legal writing, lawyering, librarian, doctrinal, theory, or skills concentrations to pioneer a new kind of curriculum, better prepare students for the profession, explore the limits and usefulness of technology, and deepen the understanding and learning of law students through self-improving assessment processes.

Fully cognizant of the pressures on legal educators, the fact that not all in legal education welcome the need to change, and the moral imperative to address the concerns of debt-ridden unemployed law students, the authors, editors, advisory board members and readers reviewed challenges, cross-cutting themes and areas of promise. They engaged in innovative thinking about how to move legal education forward for the good of the profession, society and the students who desire to be lawyers of tomorrow. The keynote speaker for the Friday night dinner and author of the first book, Professor Roy Stuckey, directed the participants’ attention to what legal education should look like in 2027. At the same time, he reminded us that those seeking to improve legal education today stand on the shoulders of folks such as the honorable Rosalie Wahl and former ABA president Bob MacCrate who paved the way for the changes we have seen in the last 40 years. He recalled their joint mission to prepare “agents for justice in our communities.”

Every law graduate needs to understand fully that civic professional role of the lawyer. And every admittee to the bar has a sworn duty to improve our system of and access to justice. Returning to those principles can help prioritize our cost-cutting and can position us to move forward in the best interests of our students, our institutions and the society our profession is pledged to serve.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, 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 | Tagged: , | Comments Off on Congratulations UNM and Editors of the proposed new Best Practices Book!

A rose by any other name: Evaluation and Assessment at Cross Purposes

Posted on October 12, 2013 by glesnerb

A barrier to developing, improving, or sharing our assessment practices is the confusion surrounding the vocabulary of assessment.  Whenever it occurs or by whatever method, assessment is simply the process of discovering what and how well students have learned and then using that information to improve. One can quickly become mired in a sea of words that feel like jargon, with assumptions that confuse and distort the real meaning of this otherwise familiar practice of all good instructors. Part of the problem is that the language is not our own and so, by its very adoption, reinforces the impression that assessment is an intrusion into our classrooms.  Because these confusions are so destructive to the ability of an institution to move forward with assessment, we must either work to make this vocabulary our own or develop a different vocabulary for the same ideas.

Even though discovering what students have learned in order to improve teaching is a natural part of a good teacher’s practice, law schools are having difficulty in knowing exactly what this talk of assessment means. Faculty frequently mistake outcomes assessment for something more complex, unusual, or even sinister. “Assessment” becomes confused with “evaluation” (as in program or teacher evaluation) or “standardized testing,” and, before long, we are thinking of K-12 school district funding decisions based a “No Child Left Behind” external control of education.

There is a fundamental difference between assessing student learning for the purposes of program or teacher evaluation and assessing student learning for the purposes of improving that learning.  If we are assessing for accountability, we collect data (e.g., pass rates) about students learning outcomes that we do not necessarily control (e.g. bar exams) so that we can report that data to external constituencies (e.g. accreditors). In contrast, if we are assessing for student learning, we observe evidence (e.g., essays, performances) of student learning outcomes that we have designed ourselves so that we can interpret and use that evidence to improve the learning of our students.  When accountability to those outside the learning process is the driving force behind assessment, the temptation may be to assess only those learning outcomes that we know students have mastered and avoid looking for places where learning could be significantly improved.  We might skew our teaching and curricula away from learning outcomes we truly care about to more closely match the learning outcomes we believe outsiders consider important.  Of course that already does happen to some degree.  The influence of ABA standards of accreditation and bar examinations on curricula is so obvious we may not even recognize the degree to which our faculty control of the program of legal education is directed by these learning outcomes and assessment methods.

It is against this backdrop of fear that some law teachers approach the topic of outcomes assessment.  However, resisting assessment out of a concern that others will rob law faculty of their freedom means giving up one of the most powerful tools to protect that freedom. If a faculty can clearly communicate the learning goals they have for their students, and can demonstrate how their program of legal education leads to more students accomplishing those learning goals at higher levels of mastery, that proof of learning can become powerful tool for demonstrating accountability: to the students, the academy, the bar, and the public. That is not to say that assessment for accountability will not be required or should not be undertaken with seriousness of purpose and honesty in method.  Assessment for improving student learning, however, should be just as important, if not more so, so that we can be accountable to ourselves and our students.

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ABA COUNCIL CALLS FOR NOTICE AND COMMENT ON PROPOSED CHANGES TO LEGAL EDUCATION

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Mary A. Lynch

The ABA Council on Legal Education posted for Notice and Comment significant changes to the accreditation standards relating to the program of legal education, mandatory institution of an outcomes and assessment regime, and the status of and retention of faculty. Many of these proposed changes have been discussed in earlier posts in this BLOG for going on four years. I have copied here the memorandum discussing the notice and comment. WHAT SAY OUR READERS???

MEMORANDUM

TO: Interested Persons and Entities

FROM: The Hon. Solomon Oliver, Jr., Council Chairperson
Barry A. Currier, Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education

DATE: September 6, 2013

SUBJECT: Comprehensive Review of the ABA Standards for Approval of Law School Matters for Notice and Comment

At its meeting held on August 8-9, 2013, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar approved for Notice and Comment proposed revisions to Chapter 1 [General Purposes and Practices], Chapter 3 [Program of Legal Education], Chapter 4 [The Faculty], Standard 203(b) [Dean], and Standard 603(d) [Director of the Law Library] of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools.

The Standards Review Committee of the Section has been conducting a comprehensive review of the Standards. As part of that review, the Committee considered multiple drafts and received informal comments from many interested persons and entities.

The proposed revisions and accompanying explanations are attached below and published on the Section’s website:
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/notice_and_comment.html.

We solicit and encourage written comments on the proposed changes by letter or e-mail. Written comments should be submitted no later than Friday, January 31, 2014.

Hearings on these proposed changes are scheduled for October 2013 and February 2014 (details below). Both hearings will be held at the American Bar Association, 321 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60654.

October 21-22, 2013
Monday, October 21st, 1 p.m.
Tuesday, October 22nd, 9 a.m.

February 5-6, 2014
Wednesday, February 5th, 1 p.m.
Thursday, February 6th, 9 a.m.

Please address written comments on the proposal and requests to speak at the hearing to JR Clark, jr.clark@americanbar.org.

Thank you.

Barry A. Currier
Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education
Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar
American Bar Association
321 N. Clark Street, 21st Floor
Chicago, IL 60654-7958

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ABA COUNCIL CALLS FOR NOTICE AND COMMENT ON PROPOSED CHANGES TO LEGAL EDUCATION

New Blog

Posted on August 26, 2013 by ITS

Teaching & Learning in Higher Ed. (ISSN 2329-2504), a digital project that supports teachers and reformers in higher education through encouraging serious engagement with the scholarship on teaching and learning has recently announced its full launch.

You can visit at http://teachingandlearninginhighered.org/

The website features a manifesto, an infographic, a list of recommended readings and a blog.

Submissions to the blog are welcome on an ongoing basis.

Since its soft launch in March, visitors have viewed the site more than 4500 times. Some of the most viewed posts to date (with links shortened through goo.gl) include:

Those interested can sign up on the site to receive updates of new posts by email or follow the blog through:

Please consider visiting, reading, following, commenting, sharing, and/or submitting posts to the blog.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »

OBAMA COMMENT ON 2 YEARS OF LAW SCHOOL

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Mary A. Lynch

It is not surprising that President Obama wants to decrease the cost of higher education and make it more affordable for the average American family. Nor is it surprising that he floated the idea of decreasing cost by decreasing the number of years a law student has to PAY for school as reported by the New York Times here.    Without a full understanding of all the issues, that often appears to be a sensible idea.  What is surprising is that the President confuses unpaid interning with a “clinical experience.” As we know from the medical and other professional settings, clinical experience is NOT the same as allowing   barely trained law students to “HAVE AT IT” in a practice setting. Nor is every environment appropriate for clinical training and supervision. The whole point of “clinical education” is supervision, feedback, mentoring, and learning to learn from observation, experience and mistakes.

Another problem with the President’s “shoot from the hip” comment, is that the very reason that new law students can’t find jobs is the same reason today’s law firms are NOT appropriate for the kind of mentoring which was done in days of yore. As a member of the New York State Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession and a chair of the Education and Training Subcommittee, I learned from legal employers and their clients that the market-driven, competitive nature of private industry today has created a situation in which clients no longer want to pay for the on-the-job training of new attorneys. More senior attorneys are so tightly time-managed relative to billable hours that they have significantly less hours and energy to mentor, supervise and help form new attorneys. That’s where law schools have added value for graduates and provided the support and individual attention that tomorrow’s lawyers need through clinical programs (both in-house and in the field). If the President wants to add his significant heft to this debate, he should do so in a more nuanced and effective manner than making an off the cuff comment.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | 10 Comments »

The Language of Experiential Learning

Posted on August 16, 2013 by dmaranville

Here’s the note on terminology promised in Monday’s post.

For CLEA’s in-progress Building on Best Practices:  The Walls Are Coming Down book project my co-editor Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Iare considering whether to include a section on terminology.   At least one effort to provide some consistency in usage is currently percolating, initiated by the Alliance for Experiential Education coordinated by Northeastern Law School.  An Alliance committee led by Elon’s Cindy Adcock is discussing initial draft recommendations on terminology in the hope of encouraging consistent usage.  Convincing schools to adopt any such recommendations could, of course, be a monumental task.  If accomplished, however, it would go a long way towards helping prospective students compare curricular opportunities.  And it could help prospective employers evaluate law graduates’ legal education.

My thoughts on what’s behind these initiatives and on the terminology conundrum:

The current downturn in law school enrollments, still bleak job prospects and changes in the structure of the legal profession has been accompanied by an explosion of interest in experiential learning, as law schools respond to the call to graduate practice ready professionals and seek to justify the three-year law school.  Law schools are experimenting with a wide range of experiential learning structures both for offerings involving real lawyering  — shameless self promotion moment: see my co-authored article Re-vision Quest:  A Law School Guide  to Designing Experiential Courses Involving Real Lawyering — and simulation based efforts.   Labels used for such efforts have proliferated and consistency of usage seems nowhere to be found.

Among the labels:

Clinic:  Perhaps the term with the longest pedigree and most consistency, but no shortage of unresolved issues,

  • Must a clinic involve an individual client?
  • If an effort focuses on tasks like lobbying or community education  that don’t require a J.D. and bar admission, should it qualify as a clinic?

For instance, should Street Law,  a community education effort, qualify as a clinic?  Schools that say “yes” include my own University of Washington, Georgetown,  where Street Law originated, UCLA and many others.   But Street Law is also offered as a  for-credit course not qualifying as a clinic, a part of a pro bono requirement, or a volunteer student activity.

My own program defines clinic expansively, in an effort to counterbalance the traditional litigation focus of law school, especially the first year.   Our clinic offerings include  mediation, legislation, public policy, community education, plus several that  include multi-forum advocacy.  But other leading educators have argues passionately for a narrower, more client focused definition.

Externship/Internship: These seeming  twins cause much confusion among the uninitiated.  The primary distinction follows from current ABA accreditation rules for externships, i.e for-credit, not-for-pay placements with a range of legal employers and opportunities for reflection through a classroom component or otherwise; internship is typically used for otherwise similar experiences that do not satisfy ABA requirements.

Practicum:  The new kid on the block in law, but familiar in social work and other programs for experiences analogous to law school externships. May be used as synonym for externship or  to denote an externship-like offering that doesn’t satisfy ABA requirements (my school uses it for LLM. “externships”).  Increasingly popular to describe externship-like “in the field” experiential opportunities  integrated with a seminar classroom course. In the last several year, for instance,  Georgetown, has developed a structured program of such courses in order to provide experiential education for a higher % of the student body in one of the larger law schools in the country.

Service learning:  A term widely used in undergraduate and K-12 contexts.  Often adopted by individual teachers eager to heighten their students’ understanding of current issues though exposure to how they play out in context.  May look very similar to some versions of a “practicum”.

Lab course:  A term initially coined at Seattle U. to describe small credit  simulation based courses to accompany doctrinal courses and provide an opportunity to apply the doctrine in a lawyering context and still often used that way, in for instance, Gonzaga’s first year required Skills Labs.   Other schools appear to use the term Lab for a specialty program designed to provide practical exposure to an area of law,, often including opportunities that would be considered a “clinic” under a broad definition of that term, e.g.  Chicago’s Corporate Lab, Vanderbilt’s International Law Practice Lab .

is it a ‘pipe dream” to think we can, or should, rationalize our use of these terms?  Your perspectives welcome.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices and Clinics, Uncategorized | Comments Off on The Language of Experiential Learning

ABA COUNCIL ELIMINATES ANY MEANINGFUL SECURITY OF POSITION FOR FACULTY AND TURNS ITS BACK ON EXPERIENTIAL FACULTY

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Mary A. Lynch

As reported last week here, the ABA Council on Legal Education met in San Francisco to review proposed revisions to law school accreditation standards.  The ABA reviewed four proposals sent to them by the Standards Review Committee (which I described in an earlier post here) and which were intended to address  faculty competence, academic freedom and governance rights.   The Council sent out for notice and comment two of the four proposals. Some commentators have suggested that one of the adopted proposals includes some security of position and the other does not. However, a closer look suggests that neither proposal affords any meaningful security of position.  see National Law Journal  

The alternative that mentions security of position states that:

“(d) A law school shall afford all full-time faculty members a form of security of position sufficient to ensure academic freedom and attraction and retention of a competent full-time faculty (emphasis added).”

At first glance, I optimistically thought “Maybe ensuring a competent full-time faculty would require something beyond at-will employment?” However,  I was reminded by a professional colleague that this proposal is identical to the current provision for legal writing professors, which has been interpreted to permit at-will contracts as long as the teachers are “competent,”  Undeterred in my optimism, I thought “Well ensuring academic freedom certainly needs to ensure some job security especially for folks like clinicians who have been attacked repeatedly for representing the powerless against the moneyed members of our society, right?”  However,  the ABA interprets that same language  in the clinical context to permit one-year renewable contracts,  as long as the institution has a “policy” on academic freedom,

As Amy Poehler would say “Really!1?!  Really!?!”    Is that really the kind of job security that will fill you with confidence in advocating  on behalf of seemingly powerless clinic clients or articulating unpopular but important legal positions?   And what about all this talk from the ABA and the profession about how students need to be better prepared for practice and the profession.   “Really!1?!  Really!?!”  How is that going to happen when you de-value those in the academy who teach through supervised practice ?   CLEA President Kate Kruse got it spot on when she wrote on the clinic listserv,

“Because tenure is now and is likely to remain the norm only for doctrine professors, both of these provisions protect current faculty power relationships and threaten the presence in legal education of teachers specializing in experiential education.’

That is not good news for legal education, law students or future clients.  REALLY.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ABA COUNCIL ELIMINATES ANY MEANINGFUL SECURITY OF POSITION FOR FACULTY AND TURNS ITS BACK ON EXPERIENTIAL FACULTY

Are The Walls Coming Down?

Posted on August 12, 2013 by dmaranville

Happened upon Eugene Volockh’s blog post on peer feedback today, though he didn’t use that term.  Struck me as  great example both of the way “the walls are coming down”  in legal education and of the distance we have to go.  Volokh,a high profile libertarian 1st Amendment Scholar, is launching a  First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic this fall.

Two possible cracks in the walls suggested by the post, and their limitations, and a crack that wasn’t one:

1. Classroom v. clinic:   Since he began teaching in 1994 at UCLA at the ripe age of 26,  Volokh has taught. courses such as Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Torts.  This appears to be his first foray into clinical teaching.  Not surprisingly, given that he went into law school teaching directly from appellate clerkships, his clinic is focused on a narrow skill long addressed in legal education– appellate brief writing.  And his clinic will operate in a context — amicus briefs — that does not require traditional client contact.  Nonetheless, it’s an example of what I hope is a growing trend, not limited to appellate clinics.  (My hope is fed in part by the example of my colleague Anita Ramasastry. In winter 14 she will co-teach an exciting new international human rights clinic focused on preventing, or remedying, human rights violations by businesses.)

2. . Intellectual v. Interpersonal Skills: Teamwork skills, such as the “ability to cooperate productively,” are a classic example of the interpersonal skills that are too often denigrated as “soft” and therefore neglected in legal education.  Perhaps  significant that Volokh, an intellectual prodigy — B.S. at age 15, former techie — recognizes the value of these skills, though not clear from the post he is aware of work done on teaching teamwork by people like Barbara Glesner Fines and Sophie Sparow..  

Prof. Volokh informs me that the the point below was based on incorrect information — apparently the UCLA and Southwestern efforts developed independently.

3.  Elite v. non-elite law schools: Volokh doesn’t mention it, but the offering will apparently be a collaborative effort involving both Southwestern Law School, though Southwestern refers to it as a practicum,* and UCLA.  That a sturdy wall remains between elite and non-elite schools is, no doubt, evidenced by the the fact that  neither school’s clinic website trumpets the collaboration.

*Terminology — a subject for another day.

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How Much Experiential Legal Education is Enough?

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

I remember when I first started teaching, many schools had limits on how many law school credits students could earn through clinics, externships and simulation courses.  I am not sure exactly why.  I think the idea was that these courses were “soft” and did not require the intellectual rigor that classroom courses required.   There might have been a concern about grading in those courses as well.  It was thought that the grading might be inflated since they were usually not subject to the imposition of a grading curve.

My, how times have changed.

Now that employers want students who are prepared for the practice and students want education that prepares them for the practice, the question is now, how much experiential education is enough to prepare them?  Karen Tokarz, Peggy Maisel and Bob Siebel and I recently completed an article suggesting that  about one third of the curriculum would be ideal.  We suggest the courses should be spread throughout the three years (we include legal research and writing as a “skills” course.)  We believe that this amount would capitalize on the legal knowledge and analytical skills they develop in the  traditional  law school classroom and would help students better understand the values and develop the skills they need to become successful lawyers.   Simulation courses  such as trial practice, moot courts, negotiation and counseling, alternative dispute resolution, etc would help students develop and perfect the technical skills and well designed hybrid courses, externships and clinics would help students integrate the skills, knowledge and values that will enable them to develop as competent and ethical lawyers.   This would remedy the fact that students are often bored by the third year of law school and it would focus law school education on helping students prepare themselves to do pursue the careers they seek.  We suggest that law schools should develop learning objectives for their programs and work on assessing the effectiveness of the overall program, including classroom, simulation courses and hybrid, clinics and externships.

In the article we point to  schools that have been moving in that direction.  We highlight the seventeen (17) law schools that require clinical course work and we also describe the growing movement of schools that guarantee a clinical course for every student who desires one.   Now, we need to engage one of the most important principles of Best Practices for Legal Education, we need to assess the effectiveness of our programs.  That will tell us how much experiential education we need.

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Fairly Evaluating the Investment of a Law School Degree

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Mary A. Lynch

Consumer analysis is one important lens through which to consider legal education reform. Thoughtful consumer analysis generally asks two foundational questions:  1) “What is the value to your professional and personal life of a law school degree?” and 2) Do you have meaningful and accurate information upon which to make that judgment?” Just this week, law professor, Michael Simkovic, and labor economist, Frank McIntyre, together released a draft of their study which estimates the “mean pre-tax lifetime value of a law degree as approximately $1,000,000.” See Economic Value of a Law Degree Study (thank you to Albany Law Professors Christian Sundquist and Donna Young for alerting me to this study).

The study has already generated a number of positive responses in the news http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-value-does-a-law-degree-have-2013-7 (“STUDY: A Law Degree is Actually an Amazingly Good Investment”); http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/whats_the_value_of_a_law_degree_1m_in_a_lifetime_report_says/ (“What’s the Value of a Law Degree?  $1 Million”); http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/17/report-shows-law-school-still-good-investment; (“The Upside of Law School”)

Professor Steven M.  Davidoff’s review in the NYT notes that some of those who have most repeatedly attacked law schools were angered by the study:

Averages, though, are only part of the story, as they can be biased upward by a small number of high earners while many others make nothing. Mr. Mystal’s (of Above the Law) critique strongly focused on this point.

But the authors also found that median additional lifetime earnings for those with a law degree were $610,000. That means half of law school graduates made more and half less than this amount over their lifetime. So even at the 25th percentile, lifetime additional earnings were $350,000.

Thus, the earnings for 75 percent of law school graduates easily exceeded the amount of tuition paid, even with tuition at about $50,000 a year. The authors also found that the median law degree holder earned 60 percent more than the median college graduate.

I think this scholarly analysis certainly provides better context for  evaluating  the financial value of law school and am  grateful to for this important contribution to the discourse.   It does not answer – nor does it pretend or aspire to do so – questions about what Tomorrow’s lawyers will need to be equipped for Tomorrow’s jobs.   That issue remains ripe for analysis on the pages of this BLOG.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Legal Texts that Incorporate Practical Problem-Solving and Professional Skills Development

Posted on June 24, 2013 by M. Aaron Bates

Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Deborah T. Eisenberg has been compiling a list of resources for teaching practical legal skills.

“The ABA Dispute Resolution Section sponsors a website that includes resources for teaching practical problem-solving and professional skills: http://leaps.uoregon.edu/. We are developing a list of textbooks that incorporate practical problem-solving and professional skills into the teaching of subject areas that have traditionally been taught in a lecture-based, case analysis format. Feel free to take a look at this list, and circulate to your colleagues, as you select coursebooks for next year.

In addition, if you know of books that should be added to the list, please let me know. I know many of you teach across the curriculum. I’ll post this to the LEAPS website in about two weeks to allow time to incorporate your suggestions (finding these books is more difficult than it should be!). Note that books focused on ADR, clinical education, and legal writing are not included because nearly all of those books incorporate practical problem-solving and skills. We’re trying to be a resource for professors who would like to move away from lecture-based formats in teaching “doctrinal” courses.”

You can view the list under the cut. Continue reading →

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | 1 Comment »

Maximizing Active Learning

Posted on June 20, 2013 by M. Aaron Bates

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning has some fascinating ideas about getting students invested in the materials they are learning. Most recently, Sophie M. Sparrow at the University of New Hampshire School of Law wrote:

“Engaging students in active learning has long been one of my main teaching practices. As many of us know, educational experts have found that students learn more when they are actively engaged, such as by speaking, writing, or discussing, rather than listening to a lecture or discussion. Having just completed a three-day workshop with educational expert L. Dee Fink on course design, however, I learned that I should redesign my approach if I want maximize what students learn from their active learning assignments. This month’s idea is about how to improve active learning exercises.”

Continue reading here.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »

The Future of Legal Education: Ted Talks, Kahn Academy and LegalED Web

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Mary A. Lynch

http://albanylawtech.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/live-blogging-from-the-celt-workshop/

Live Blogging from the CELT Workshop

pistone

On April 17, 2013, Michelle Pistone, Professor of Law and Director, Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES) at Villanova University School of Law, spoke to the Albany Law School faculty on the topic of “How Emerging Innovations Will Disrupt Legal Education:

Her engaging presentation began with a clip from 1994 of Bryant Gumble and Katie Couric from the Today Show debating the pronunciation of a mysterious keyboard symbol, the”@” symbol. From there and Bob Dylan (“The Times They Are A Changin”), she reminisced about buying books and records at neighborhood stores, seeing movies in the theaters, and when TV shows only played once a week, and if you missed them, you had to hope they’d be rerun during the summer.

Yes, this has all changed. Books and newspapers are now digital. TV shows and movies can be watched at anytime and on computers and phones. These changes are result of innovations which have created a new world.

However, this is the only world that our students know!! They were born digital.

As a result, our students are visual, connected, relate to one another through technology, have an abundance of information that is available at any time from any place. They are used to convenience, speed, multi-tasking, immediate feedback and working together on projects, collaborating, sharing, and creating.

So the important question that Prof. Pistone raised was: In light of these changes, have law schools changed enough?

And her answer was: “Law schools have not changed much in the last 100 years.”

K-16 education has been changing. We have the addition of MOOCS (massive open online courses); Khan Academy which offers videos and quizzes that can being used alone or to flip the classroom. TED ED which makes videos for use in high school – students watch videos online for homework and then can come into class ready to do active problem based learning (thus “flipping the classroom”).

Prof. Pistone recommended reading the book Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clay Christensen. In it, he introduces the key concepts of sustaining technologies (those that improve the performance of established products) and disruptive technologies. Although “disruptive technologies” result in worse product performance in the short term, they are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use (Skype being an example.) So we need to adapt to them.

A study conducted by the Department of Education found that blended learning (a combination of online and face-to-face instruction) obtained better results for students and than either face-to-face or completely online learning. This is something to keep in mind.

So what is next for law schools?

Prof. Pistone recommends focusing on:

  • What we teach – in light of our changing, globalizing, interdisciplinary world
  • How we teach — to cover a wide range of competencies and reach different learning styles
  • How we assess what students are learning – supplementing the final summative exam with formative assessment
  • How we signal to others a student’s competencies

legaled

Lastly, Prof. Pistone introduced her new project called LegalED. LegalED is a web-based platform that will host teaching materials for legal education. The materials will include:

  • short videos made for internet viewing
  • problems and exercises
  • assessment tools

This online platform of teaching materials (esp. the short videos) can be used to supplement law school and to “flip” the classroom.

legaled1

Prof. Pistone’s presentation concluded with a lively discussion by faculty on law school competencies that cannot be taught online (such as empathy), mapping competencies to the teaching process, mastery/adaptive learning, bar exam…

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology, Technology | 5 Comments »

Law Schools, Placement, Ethics

Posted on December 2, 2012 by dmaranville

Wednesday’s editorial by Case Western Dean Lawrence Mitchell in the New York Times has generated heated negative commentary.  TaxProf Blog collects much of it here  Boyd Law School Interim Dean Nancy Rappaport’s response here was one of the milder and more thoughtful.

Less noticed was the Ethicist’s answer to a law student’s question in Friday’s edition of the Times:

The law student asked whether schools that charge high tuition, but place less than half of their recent graduates in long-term, full-time, legal positions act immorally.

The Ethicist’s answer was “it’s not unethical — just fiscally unfortunate” on the ground that the school’s “principal ethical responsibility is to educate law students to the best of that institution’s ability, which isn’t inherently tied to how easily those graduates become gainfully employed. That responsibility is mostly yours.”

His answer raises at least three important issues:

1. The Caveat.   The Ethicist assumed that institutions do not “know their graduates will be uncompetitive but pretend otherwise to coerce new students into overpayment.”    To say he avoided the “sixty-four thousand dollar question” isn’t quite accurate.* But to the extent law schools fudge, hide, or downplay their true employment numbers for graduates — and each of these has been done by some schools — his conclusion does not hold.  More broadly,   faculty have an obligation to educate themselves about the job market and changes in the structure of the legal profession and be willing to think about implications for their institutions.

2. Educate Law Students to the Best of the Institution’s Ability.  For readers of this blog, this issue is core.  How many US law schools can honestly claim that they are educating  law students to the best of their ability?  As individuals, many law teachers care about teaching and work hard at it. Few institutions have done the hard work of institutional transformation.  We cannot answer that question “yes” unless we are willing to:  Work as members of a team, not merely as individuals.  Focus on the curriculum as a whole and how it can best serve our students, not merely on what we’ve always done, or what interests us personally.

To serve our students we must think in broad terms about what the Carnegie report dubbed the Apprenticeship of Identity and Purpose and give our students the experiences that will help them identify their gifts and the ways to use them that will feed their souls.  We must also acknowledge that our job is to develop skills.  We necessarily impart information, and should do that effectively.  But for most students that information is only important if they can use it to engage in ethical problem solving.  Knowing how to regurgitate information on an exam is not enough.

3. The Student’s Responsibility.  Students need to recognize — and individual faculty and institutions must help them do so — that law schools cannot hand them jobs on the proverbial silver platter.  Guidance we can provide. But it’s the student’s job hunt, interview, and, ultimately, life.

* In present day dollars three years of law school tuition typically exceeds $64,000.  On the other hand the quiz show of that name ran from 1955-1958 and the on-line inflation calculator tells me $64,000 in 1955 is worth $552,398.81.  Earlier this year Forbes claimed that the total cost of law school, including opportunity costs, is typically about $285,000, or, for those with high debt, just over $300,000, and judged it still a good investment.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on Law Schools, Placement, Ethics

Revived CELT Website: Welcome to the Future!

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Stephanie Giancristofaro

Esteemed Bloggers and Blog Post Readers,

Albany Law School has redesigned the Center for Excellence in Law Teaching ( CELT) Website just in time to present you with videotaped presentations and materials from CELT’s Inaugural conference held last March 30, 2012  . If you are unfamiliar with the CELT website , I would like to introduce you to this clearinghouse of materials on teaching, , curriculum, and proposed revised  BA accreditation standards. If you  already are familiar with the website, I invite you to take some time to  re-acquaint yourself with the new organization and the wealth of information that is available for your perusal. (CELT)

Through this site, I hope you will be able to find learning resources, assessment materials and rubrics , syllabi from lawyering classes, PowerPoint presentations about different teaching techniques and links to other sources and resources.   In addition, you can access materials and presentations from the  CELT  March 2012 Conference, where innovative  thinkers attended and discussed current and proposed models for student-centered reform of legal education. (CELT CONFERENCE) This was in response to the changes students face in the profession and the new economy.  As a third year law student, I found this conference not only enlightening but reassuring. The materials that were provided to the attendees laid out ideas and suggestions to improve student  learning  and encouraged professors to take a more active role in design of the classroom experience and sequencing of the law school curriculum. .

As Special Assistant to CELT, I have attempted to organize materials on this website to make it simpler and more convenient for users to navigate.   I truly welcome your feedback. If there is something that you are looking for and cannot find, I ask that you let me know  and would be happy to direct you to the correct location of the information or figure out if there is additional material to be added to the cite.  In addition, if you have any questions about accessing the conference videotapes or materials, just send me an e-mail.

Finally, if you are interested in becoming a BLOG author or contributing a blog post to the Best Practices blog (which is housed within CELT), please let Professor Mary Lynch or myself know and we would be happy to assist!

Thank you for your readership and your loyalty!

-Stephanie Giancristofaro-Partyka

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Revived CELT Website: Welcome to the Future!

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