Posted on June 23, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Since I shared the first couple of emails in the current debate at UNM about laptops, I asked Alfred Mathewson if I could share his response. He is working on using the lap tops as a teaching tool!
“I am probably moving in the opposite direction of most of my colleagues here and in most law schools. I am experimenting with the laptops. While I am concerned about the extent to which they may be used to distract students, I think we must conceive of laptops as something more than notepads. In many classes, notetaking is the only pedagogical use of the laptop. I have been experimenting with other uses in the classroom. If the laptops are going to be in the classroom, we should make use of them. I am currently reviewing an online interactive casebook for Civil Procedure in case I teach it again. In Contracts this fall, I plan to experiment with bringing my laptop to class rather than using the big screen for Power Point presentations. I will use a TWEN course site. They will be able to annotate the PowerPoint but they will have no need to spend course time copying the slides. They will, however, have to use the laptop to see the PowerPoint. As I see it, we must prepare students to practice in an era far more technologically advanced than the one in which we were educated.”
Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Technology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: laptops in the classroom | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 22, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
My colleague Rob Schwartz is addressing the laptop issue in New Mexico this summer while teaching in the Pre Law Summer Program for Indian Students (PLSI) run by the Indian Law Center. Here is his response to Sergio Pareja’s email (described in my last post). Continue reading →
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Posted on June 20, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
One of my colleagues from the University of New Mexico, Sergio Pareja is here in Guanajuato teaching International Business Transactions. He wrote the following email to our faculty about laptop use in the classroom. I thought it would be of interest to other classroom teachers, so I asked him if I could share it with this blog. He agreed. Continue reading →
Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Technology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: laptops in classroom | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 17, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
One of the great things about teaching in the Guanajuato Summer Law Institute is the opportunity to meet professors from our partner law schools. At our mid-day comida today, Professor Jorge Ramirez from Texas Tech talked about his approach to providing interim feedback in his International Business and International Law courses. During the semester he gives the students problems that he asks them to work on in groups of two or three. The problems are designed to cover the material fairly comprehensively. Each of the groups is assigned a different problem and they are required to provide a written analysis of the problem to Professor Ramirez. Then, he reviews the students’ written responses to the problems and then MEETS with each small group to give them feedback on their first draft. They are asked to take his feedback and rewrite the answer to the problem. Professor Ramirez then shares the re-writes with the whole class. Professor Ramirez thus provides formative feedback that the students take very seriously since they know that their work will be shared with their colleagues. He has the opportunity to assess the students learning and make adjustments during the semester to ensure that the students grasp the material and can discuss and analyze the problems effectively. What a neat idea!
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Comments Off on Formative Feedback Idea from Texas Tech Prof
Posted on June 17, 2008 by dmaranville
I mentioned in my post on Curriculum Reform: Best Processes? that one of our curriculum committee “accomplishments” this year was initiating conversations.
For one of our conversations, we invited Jan Carline, Ph.D. of the University of Washington Medical School’s Department of Medical Education to talk to the committee about what they do at medical schools. Not a new topic for this blog — use the blog’s search function for “medical school” and you’ll find 6 posts by Antoinette.
The conversation was fascinating. The medical school is so much ahead of us on multiple dimensions. Three that stuck out for me were: Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 17, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
The ABA holds an associate deans conference every other year. In the past, as associate dean for clinical affairs, I looked at it, and thought it was not as relevant to my work as the clinical director’s conferences put on by the AALS. So, I had never attended the conference. However, I must say that this conference was marvelous. And, many of the sessions were really applicable to the big picture of running a law school and many issues in which clinical teachers are interested. Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: associate deans | Comments Off on 2008 ABA Associate Dean’s Conference: Changing Role of the Associate Dean
Posted on June 12, 2008 by dmaranville
In reviewing proposals submitted for the University of Washington’s conference Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Implementation Conference to be held in Seattle on Sept. 5-7, one theme that has surfaced is “process”: Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | 3 Comments »
Posted on June 5, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Over the last 18 years I have come to the beautiful, Spanish colonial town of Guanajuato, Mexico to teach in the Guanajuato Summer Law Institute fairly regularly. For the last three years, I have directed the program. Each time I come, I make more Mexican friends and I learn more about the Mexican culture (both in the anthropological sense and in the “difference” sense). Many people assume because I am a Latina and speak Spanish that I am familiar with the culture and can communicate effectively. While I agree that is it a tremendous advantage to speak Spanish, it is certainly not all you need to be effective in communicating and understanding Mexican people in their cultural context. And, as a Latina raised in the United States whose family roots go back to the Tome Spanish land grant in New Mexico, I certainly have had a great deal to learn about Mexican people and their culture! In my last post on this issue, I talked about using insights from best practices to develop teaching objectives in cultural knowledge, self awareness and intercultural communication. Today, my post will focus on cultural knowledge and self awareness using insights from living in Mexico. Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: intercultural communication | Comments Off on More on Cultural Knowledge, Self-awareness and Intercultural Communication
Posted on June 4, 2008 by Darlene
At the conclusion of our second year of using “clickers” (the CPS system from eInstruction) in several classes at Albany Law School, I asked students in the Criminal Law class what they thought… Continue reading →
Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Technology | Comments Off on Using Clickers in the Criminal Law classroom
Posted on June 4, 2008 by dmaranville
I agreed to join the Best Practices Blog author list at the AALS clinical conference in Tucson , but of course it took me awhile to figure out how to actually do it. Anyway, I’m delighted to be joining this exciting effort.
If I had any doubts that legal education is at a crossroads, those doubts wouldn’t have survived reviewing proposals submitted for the University of Washington Law School’s upcoming conference on Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Implementation to be held in Seattle on Sept 5-7.
We received over 80 responses to our request for proposals, probably double the number we’ll be able to accept. Topics ranged from already implemented major curriculum reforms to novel individual classroom ideas. They encompassed both Showcase station proposals to show-off existing efforts that might be replicated at other schools (I refer to these as “poster sessions on steroids”) and Workshop proposals for discussing not-yet implemented-ideas.
Because there’s been so much interest in this conference, we’ve decided to open it up to folks who aren’t presenting. So much for our vision of a small intimate conference of 40-60! Stay tuned. We hope to have details available by the middle of June. But you can mark your calendars now for spectacular Seattle in September!
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Upcoming Events | Comments Off on Legal Education at the Crossroads
Posted on June 3, 2008 by andicurcio
I teach the second half of a year-long first-year civil procedure class. We spend the semester reading and interpreting the Fed. R. of Civ. P. Throughout the semester, I give the students hypothetical questions that require them to read and interpret the applicable Federal Rules. This semester, I wanted to see if I could assess how well students learned how to read and interpet statutes. The assessment was motivated, in part, by my desire to assess a broader range of skills than are normally covered in essay exams.
As a small part of a 72-hour take-home exam, I gave students two short answer questions that required them to read Fed. R. of Civ. P that we had not covered in class and to answer two straightforward questions. Using the fact pattern that served as the basis for the essay question, I asked students: #1: Who must be served with this Answer?; #2: On what date must you file and serve your Answer?
Much to my dismay, Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | 3 Comments »
Posted on June 2, 2008 by glesnerb
The ABA Center for Professional Responsibility held the 34th Annual Conference on Professional Responsibility this past week in Boston Massachusetts. The program included a presentation entitled “Teaching Ethics and Professional Development: Legal Education at a Crossroads.” Professors Judith Wegner, Peter Joy, and I (Barbara Glesner Fines) presented the program which focused on legal education’s role in developing law students’ sense of professional identity and purpose. Professor Wegner summarized the Carnegie Report as it speaks to this issue and Professor Joy gave an overview of the Best Practices project’s discussion. Most of the session was devoted to learning from the approximately 150 judges, attorneys and law professors in attendance. The question “What is professional identity?” Continue reading →
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Posted on May 30, 2008 by Steven Friedland
The Center for Engaged Learning in the Law (CELL) of Elon Law School plans to publish a short book on law teaching and learning this fall with the Carolina Academic Press. The goal of the book is to provide a handy and concise reference guide from the perspectives of practitioners, students and teachers. Consequently, the book will feature this triumvirate of perspectives with comments and thoughts from all three groups. the rationale for combining perspectives is that for a teacher, it is relatively easy to hear what other teachers are saying, but not what students are saying, save for the end of the semester evaluations (which, by their nature, often offer only a small slice of the available feedback) — and certainly not what practitioners might be opining after they leave the academic campus. Comments on the following topics are especially desired: Continue reading →
Filed under: Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on Want to Contribute to a Book on Law Teaching and Learning?
Posted on May 30, 2008 by ssparrow
On May 16, the day before they crossed the podium in cap and gown, 13 law students were sworn in as members of the New Hampshire Bar. None of them had taken the traditional bar exam. All of them had participated in an intensive two-year bar preparation course as part of their enrollment in the Daniel Webster Scholar program. In the NH Supreme Court’s special session that day, Justice Linda Dalianis, the leader in creating the program, celebrated this first class’s fulfillment of her vision: making better lawyers. Continue reading →
Filed under: Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Comments Off on Creating a Cohort
Posted on May 29, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
More synchronicity in the slow but steady march to transform legal education. This email floated across the family law list serve. This is an exciting project!
Dear Colleagues:
We are pleased to announce a new initiative to help us address the integration of family law and family practice in the classroom. In this email, we describe our goals for the project and solicit your input and advice. Continue reading →
Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Technology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: Family Law Education Reform Project | Comments Off on Family Law Education Reform Project
Best Practices for Legal Education 