Teknoids - legal education

A Call to Create the AALS Section on Educational and Instructional Technology

Wed, 7 Feb 2007 13:47:28 -0600

Having recently returned from my seventh consecutive AALS Annual Meeting it seems to me that now would be a good time to create an AALS section that focuses on educational and instructional technology. Over the past years I've noticed a couple of trends at the annual meeting. First, anything that touches on technology in relation to education and scholarship draws big crowds. Second, the number of associate/assistant deans and directors representing administrative functions of the law schools attending AALS has increased but this doesn't seem to include IT deans and directors. So, you have a situation where several thousand law school faculty are eagerly consuming any tech nuggets they find but without the voices of the IT folks who can provide the best guidance. Of course, this is something we can change.

While a number of AALS Sections include some sort of technology bent in their annual programs, there is not a section that is focused on bringing faculty the latest information about educational and instructional technology on a regular basis. This is the role I see for this section. The idea is to have a Section that does an annual program that provides the AALS Annual Meeting attendees with information about, and demonstrations of, the latest in educational and instructional technologies. The Section would provide a forum for interested faculty to interact with IT professionals in a situation that outside of the normal structures of the IT/faculty relationship.

Draft Bylaws Proposed AALS Section on Educational and Instructional Technology

Wed, 7 Feb 2007 09:35:40 -0600

Association of American Law Schools

Bylaws of the Section on Educational and Instructional Technology

Article I. Name and Purpose

Section 1. Name. This section shall be known as the Section on Educational and Instructional Technology.

Section 2. Purpose. The purpose of this section is to promote the communication of ideas, interests, and activities among members and to make recommendations to the Association on matters concerning educational and instructional technology in legal education and scholarship.

Article II. Membership

Section 1. Membership.

CALI Tools For Law Faculty in 15 Minutes from AALS 2009

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:32:17 -0600

Here is the link to a screencast of my presentation at AALS on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 in San Diego. I was participating in the "Redesigning Legal Education" session. I had 15 minutes to cover a lot of ground, so I apologize for my fast-talking.

Here is the Powerpoint file... 2009AALSClassroomTechnology.ppt

Blogging Hiatus Ends

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:43:11 -0600

I am back to blogging. I had to take some time off to recover from quintuple bypass surgery. Let this be a reminder to get your cholesterol checked - mine was over 330 last April - now it's around 150 thankyouverymuch.

I've been back to work for quite some time now (since May), but I had fallen so far behind that I just didn't know where to pick up the blog. Well, it's a new year and I know what my first blog post of 2009 must be...See the next post.

"Casual Day" in a Nigerian Law School Course

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 04:48:24 -0600

The picture above was taken during my visit of the Enugu campus of the Nigerian Law School this just past Friday. This was my second stop of four. I am visiting all four campuses of the Nigerian Law School - Lagos, Enugu, Abuja and Kano.

While touring the Enugu campus, we dropped in on a Property class in progress and I was asked to say a few words on the spot.

I looked out over the 1000+ students (which is how they each law in Nigeria) and was dazzled by the colorful clothing. Many students were wearing traditional outfits and so I complimented them on the brightness of their clothing and urged them to mirror that brightness in their studies of law.

Legal Education in Nigeria

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:07:21 -0600

I am off to the airport in a few short hours to travel to Lagos, Nigeria for nine days visiting the four campuses that make up the Nigerian Law School. All lawyers who hope to practice in Nigeria must complete a year or more of study at one of the campuses of the Nigerian Law School.

I have been asked to visit the facilities and provide some advice on ICT-related matters. I have never been to Africa and although I won't have much time for looking around, I am thrilled by this opportunity to expand my horizons.

I hope to blog some of my experiences as well as some of my thinking. It's a tall order to be asked to consult on an entire country's legal education system in any capacity and I feel the weight of that responsibility.

In early discussions with my hosts, I find that they have the same questions and concerns that I have heard over and over from U.S. law schools and law faculty. One of their biggest concerns is how to "interest faculty in technology who are not interested in using technology" ... a very familiar concern to me. This concern about motivating faculty was very comforting to me. I was concerned that I would be going into a situation with no common ground and instead find that the issues may be quite similar to the ones I address every day with CALI.

CORRECTION - CALI currently has 208 U.S. Law School Members

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 22:22:59 -0600

CALI's Director of Membership, LaVonne Molde has pointed out that in my talk at AALS and in my slides, I list CALI as having only 206 U.S. law school members when that number should actually be 208!

Click here for the complete list and if you are a student or faculty at a law school that is NOT a member ... please tell me why not.

2008 Annual CALI Members Meeting - Screencast Version

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 13:36:56 -0600

Here is the link to the screencast version of my talk at the 2008 Annual CALI Members Meeting held on Friday, January 5, 2008 in New York during AALS.

I had previously posted the podcast/audio recording and Powerpoint slides.

Podcast of AALS Session: Rethinking Legal Education For The 21st Century

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 18:19:53 -0600

Here ...

AALS2008Carnegie.mp3

... is the recording of the AALS Session: Rethinking Legal Education For The 21st Century. The speakers included...

Moderator: Edward L. Rubin, Vanderbilt University Law School
Speakers: Vicki C. Jackson, Georgetown University Law Center
Robert Mac Crate, Esq., Senior Counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell, New York, New York
Martha L. Minow, Harvard Law School
Suellyn Scarnecchia, University of New Mexico School of Law
William M. Sullivan, Senior Scholar The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Palo Alto, California

CALI 2008 Annual Members Meeting - CALI and Carnegie

Sat, 5 Jan 2008 23:09:50 -0600

Here is the recording of my talk at the 2008 Annual Membership Meeting for CALI during AALS in New York, NY on January 5, 2008 ... AALS2008CALIBreakfast.mp3

Here are the slides ... 2008AALSBreakfast_final.ppt

I will be posting a screencast version soon and posting more information about ELangdell into the future.

Laptop Requirements in Law Schools 11/2007

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 06:54:37 -0600

My law school requires incoming students have a laptop computer.

29% (27 votes)

My law school strongly recommends incoming students have a laptop computer.

34% (31 votes)

My law school suggests that incoming students own a personal computer of some sort.

15% (14 votes)

My law school has no policy regarding student computer ownership.

21% (19 votes)

Other (please describe in comments)

1% (1 vote)

Total votes: 92

Advice to (soon-to-be) Dean Chemerinsky of UC-Irvine

Tue, 2 Oct 2007 15:40:44 -0500

Paul Caron, blog-emperor and CALI Board Member asked me to contribute to the fascinating thread about "Advice to Erwin Chemerinsky".

The biggest constraint was the 250 word limit.... here's my advice...

As the Executive Director of CALI, I read a lot of feedback from students that pertains to their perceptions of legal education. The single biggest thing that students crave is more feedback. Imagine if you took a job where you were paid at the end of 15 weeks based on your performance -better performance= more pay, but you weren’t told how well you were doing until the end of the 15 weeks. That’s law school. Students are studying hard, but they aren’t sure that they know what they know until the results of the final exam are in.

I would advise Dean Chemerinsky to mandate that all classes provide some form of personal feedback to all students. This doesn’t have to be graded, but it should be substantive. This could be in the form of midterm exams, quizzes or even students evaluating each other’s mini-essays or shared collections of multiple choice questions. The technology tools exist so that this isn’t an undue burden on the instructor or require the hiring of teaching assistants for every class.

It is worth noting that feedback can be bi-directional. The aggregate results of weekly quizzes can tell the instructor where she has lost the students and should provide some additional instruction. If instructors want to read really excellent final exams, then you have to make sure that students are on track throughout the semester. The surprises you get reading the finals are no less disconcerting than the surprises that the students get when you grade it.

Announcing Elangdell: Berkman Center, CALI Announce New Partnership to Create A Legal Education Commons

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:35:41 -0500

I am so excited to make this post.

Here's the press release.

Cambridge, MA – Today at the 17th annual CALI Conference on Law School Computing, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the non-profit Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) proudly announced a new partnership to stimulate innovation in American law schools through a new educational resource sharing platform. This work will be perpetuated by the establishment of the CALI-Berkman Research Fellowship.

“We are looking forward to renewing a fruitful relationship with Harvard Law School through the Legal Education Commons project, which will provide innovative tools and access to open-licensed course materials to our more than 200 member law schools” said CALI Executive Director John Mayer.

What if Law Schools Bid For Law Students?

Wed, 6 Jun 2007 07:43:35 -0500

Techcrunch mentions a new service called Usphere where undergrads can pay $65 to apply to 33 unnamed colleges. The colleges then send acceptances letters (or not) with the costs of tuition that the student would pay.

LSAC (Law School Admissions Council and purveyors of the LSAT) has had a service for a long time where law students can fill out a single application and have it transmitted to many (most?) law schools that participate in the program. It's a single-sign-on idea applied to law school applications which are pretty similar from school to school.

Rankings for the Rest - Measuring Teaching Impact

Mon, 4 Jun 2007 20:27:32 -0500

Professor Leiter is conducting a study of law faculty scholarly productivity (methodology here). The goal (or one goal) is...

"...what is the most effective and efficient way to measure the scholarly impact of a law faculty..."

What if you replace the word "scholarly" with "teaching"?

If you have seen this video...

...then you can imagine how hard it is to measure teaching impact in the same way as Professor Leiter is measuring scholarly impact but perhaps there are some objective numbers that can be discovered and measured.