Virtual Practice/Virtual Externships: Past, Present and Future

Posted on November 20, 2020 by davidafinger

By: Dena Bauman, UC Davis; Gillian Dutton, Seattle University; Kendall Kerew, Georgia State; Chipo C. Nyambuya, Loyola Chicago; and Amy Sankaran, University of Michigan

When we proposed a concurrent session focused on remote externships in November 2019 for the March 2020 Externships 10 Conference, we expected to be exploring a novel field placement arrangement, that of students working from a different location than their supervisors, and/or remote from the physical site.  A few months later, at the very time the conference was originally scheduled, we found ourselves in a global pandemic. We were living in the environment we planned to explore.

Overnight, our “novel” work arrangement became reality. Students were working remotely from both the law school and from field placements and supervisors. We planned to “model” a Zoom supervision meeting for panel attendees. Overnight, virtually all law school faculty, law students and field supervisors were relying almost exclusively on Zoom and other video conferencing platforms for classes, work at field placements and site visits.

Survey on Working Remotely and “Best Practices” Template:

Per our November 2019 proposal, we planned to survey the externship community about their current practices and rationales regarding remote placements. We also planned to create and distribute a template to use in evaluating and making decisions about virtual externship sites and advising students. We are linking to the template.

We distributed a revised survey through the national externship list serv in September 2020 that took a “snapshot” of practices before and during COVID. It also asked externship clinicians to consider what they might do post-COVID. [1] We used the 81 responses to create a template for assessing potential virtual placements and distributed the template at our rescheduled panel on October 23, 2020 along with a brief summary of the survey.  We used these three definitions.

  1. Traditional remote placement: Student and site supervisor physically present at the site, but remote from the faculty member.
  2. Remote supervisor placement: Student physically at the site but separate from the supervisor.
  3. Virtual remote placement: Student physically separate from both the site and supervisor.

We are including several tables summarizing the primary survey findings. The complete data report is linked here.

Pre-Pandemic: Few Schools Allowed Virtual Remote Placements but Many Allowed Traditional Remote Placements

Type of Placement AllowedPercentageNumber
Virtual remote10.78%11
Traditional Remote60.78%62
Remote supervisor11.76%12
None of the above16.67%17
Reason for not permitting remote placementsPercentage of SchoolsNumber of Schools
Students would not have the same immersive experience30.59%52
Students would not get the same or complete learning opportunities36.47%45
Supervisors would not give adequate feedback17.06%29
Reasons for allowing remote placementsPercentage of schoolsNumber of Schools
Benefit part-time/evening students19.44%7
Supervisors work in a different location16.67%6
Evolution of law practice16.67%6
Student want to work in virtual environments13.89%5

During the Pandemic (as of date of survey):  No Schools are Barring Remote and/or Virtual Placements

In response to the pandemic, we asked schools whether they were permitting a traditional remote placement and/or a virtual remote placement. 80 schools, out of the 81 respondents, permit virtual remote placements. 69 schools are permitting students to work apart from the faculty but are on site with the supervisor also present.

Another question asked why they were permitting these new arrangements. The three top reasons were:

ReasonPercentage of SchoolsNumber of Schools
Externship sites are closed or ask students to work remotely45.65%63
Students asking to work remotely for caregiving or other reasons31.16%43
Law school requirements10.14%14

Law school comments included: students need to complete graduation requirements, confidence that students are getting adequate supervision and experience in a new work environment, distance and traffic, and public health and safety concerns.

Nearly ¾ of the law schools said the changes have been both beneficial and problematic. As the pandemic continues through the fall, likely into the spring, and perhaps beyond, we will continue to learn much more about those changes.

Post-Pandemic: Training will be a Priority in Permitting Virtual Placements

Schools predict that training requirements for law students and field supervisors will be an important condition for considering virtual placements after the pandemic has passed.

RequirementPercentage of SchoolsNumber of Schools
Externship program will train students in remote work 22.73%50
Sites must demonstrate training for attorneys and students12.27%27
Supervisors must agree on training from externship programs11.36%25

Faculty Anticipate a Case-by-Case Approach

Factors that schools would consider in assessing the virtual and remote placement include family, health, financial and geographical circumstances, as well as the availability of the experience.  Schools also noted that it is too early to know if and how law practice will change, but that consideration is important in preparing our students for their careers. Additionally, we also realized that we need to scrutinize and analyze this nearly overnight reliance on technology in practice. Our presentation discussed these issues, such as access to technology and roles at home.  We will discuss those issues, and how they will affect our preparation of students for their post-graduate careers, in another posting.

Summary:  We believe our survey is a good starting point for future assessments, even as the pandemic continues to upend legal education and law practice.  Our template, which was favorably received at our panel, will help externship clinicians make decisions for placements and students, gather reasonably consistent information that they can use, and share with the community to build a record of useful information. Post-pandemic, we will depend on each other to share information about what we are contemplating and are implementing regarding virtual placements.

[1] Thanks to Inga Laurent, Gonzaga University School of Law, Theodora Pina, Santa Clara University School of Law, Sue Schechter, UC Berkeley School of Law and June Tai, Iowa College of law for their review and suggestions regarding the survey instrument.

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Top 5 Tips for Teaching Law Online

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Michele Pistone

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed legal education.  As law professors, we find ourselves in a new era of online teaching that is fraught with uncertainties and new challenges.  We face the task of redesigning our courses while continuing to teach effectively and struggle to figure out how to design an online law course that is both effective and engaging.

As a longtime proponent of online educational programs,  I surveyed the legal academic community to identify the five most common “pain points” experienced over the last several months.  The data informed a webinar I conducted last month for the AALS Section on Technology, Law and Legal Education (click here to watch it), which I recently developed into a 3-day Bootcamp on Designing Your Online Law Course.  In this post, I address each pain point in turn, with the aim to provide strategies and highlight some advantages of online education.

Making the Experience Like a Classroom

Colleagues ask how they can replicate the traditional classroom experience.  They want to maintain lively class discussions on Zoom, but find it difficult to engage students and encourage participation.  Many struggle with multitasking between controlling the class narrative, presenting their slides, and monitoring the chat function.  So, the first pain point is how to I replicate the classroom experience using online modalities?

The answer is simple: you can’t.  Online learning is different than traditional classroom teaching.  When teaching online, we need to adopt a new mindset.  In my view, the first step in adopting a new mindset is to appreciate that “teaching” and “learning” are two different verbs performed by two distinct groups of actors.  For years, I assumed that if I taught a topic, my students learned it.  Not, I realize the mistake in that way of thinking and have started to think about teaching and learning from my students’ perspectives.  By unbundling the teaching and learning processes, we can be more deliberate about how students learn best.  I think that is the first step in building an effective online course.

 Engaging Students

Being cognizant of the learning side of the process will also guide us in engaging students.  The second “pain point” articulated has to do with student engagement; “how to I engage my students online?” The solution is to shift to a student-centered design approach.  Student-centered design is a concept I borrowed from user-centered design, a design-thinking approach that has been successfully employed by start-ups and other new ventures.

User-centered design, or design thinking, teaches us to start by gaining a deep understanding and empathizing with our end users—in this case, our students.  What do we know about our students?  We know that they are learning at home; at home they likely face many distractions, have a shorter attention span, and might be dealing with familial obligations.  If we acknowledge these realities as we develop our syllabus and engage in course design, we know that we will want to chunk up the learning into smaller pieces to keep students engaged.

Student-centered design will also guide our course design by getting us to clearly articulate the learning goals for our courses and for each unit (class, week, section).  The guiding questions here are: what do we want our students to know, be able to do, and value when they finish the course/unit?

Next, plan the assignments and readings your students can complete on their own time (cases, statutes, regulations, articles, treatises), as well as the active learning activities (chunked videos, narrated slides, podcasts, exercises, role plays, discussion boards, reflections, breakout rooms, Socratic dialogue, etc).  Lastly, give students formative assessments such as quizzes, and provide ample feedback on discussion boards and written drafts/exercises.  This may entail more planning, grading, and monitoring than in-person classes.

Assessing Learning and Providing Feedback

The third “pain point” centers around gauging student learning.  For that, online education offers a lot of options to gather feedback about and assess student learning.   You can use online tools to assess if students are moving toward the learning goals.  Indeed, online learning makes it easy to insert periodic formative assessments—either graded or ungraded – throughout the course.  In law school we are used to summative assessments.  Summative assessments, while the cornerstone of gauging law school performance, do not give students feedback as they are in the process of learning.  Learning theory tells us that students learn best when they get immediate feedback.  It also keeps them engaged in the learning process.  Moreover, the results will show you how effective your own course is—allowing for better course design, iteration and corrections, as needed.  Formative assessments come in many forms, from multiple choice quizzes to demonstrate basic remembering and understanding, to problems that ask students to apply facts to the law or analyze case holdings.  When inserted into your learning management system, you can also provide an answer key and pre-written explanations, so that the students get feedback close in time to taking the assessment.

Maximizing Your Impact

Another question that I am asked a lot by law professors relates to using our time most efficiently.  Online education certainly requires a more steady upfront investment of time.  I think that to maximize our impact as professors, we should think about how to use space and time differently.  By that I mean, we should consider what aspects of our syllabi need to be done in person, and what parts can be performed by students on their own time or in small groups.  I think that as you start to consider this question and become more comfortable with the affordances made possible through online technologies, you will find that there are lots of asynchronous ways to engage students in learning.  For example, rather than leading an entire several-hour class online, consider asking students to work independently or in small groups on problems or projects and then reconvene and debrief.  On Zoom, you can drop in intermittently into break out rooms to check on student progress.  Rather than devoting the entire class period to lecturing, consider adding active learning exercises such as working through problems, role plays, or simply answering their questions.

Working with Technology

Finally, the pain points of many professors center around using new technologies.  That is totally understandable.  Utilizing current technology can be overwhelming, especially for supporting active learning in a completely synchronous context.  The key is to start slowly by learning a few tools at a time.  Try not to overwhelm yourself or your students with lots of new technologies at once.  Use existing resources from your campus, or collaborate with colleagues to share the burden by sharing resources or using existing resources, such as those found on LegalED, Quimbee, BarBri, and CALI.  As you shift your mindset to online learning, remember that it is okay to make mistakes.  Students appreciate that you are learning as you go—just like them.

I really enjoy teaching online and hope you will, too.  If you are experiencing pain points that I missed here, please share them in the comments below.  As always, I’d love your feedback.

 

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