Simply trying to post this video on the blog has taught me much about the challenges and limitations of technology. Here is an excerpt from the video which you can watch directly from this blog. For the full video go here.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
The Wrap Up Panel
On November 4, 2010 Atiba Ellis, Stefan Padfield and Wilson Huhn participated in a panel to discuss the Citizens United case. The panel used Skype to have the discussion happen simultaneously in both Akron and at WVU. The timing was also fortuitous: although the discussion did not focus exclusively on the most recent election cycle, the case took on added relevance in light of the elections two days before. In fact, the panel garnered news attention because of its timeliness. The downside? The technology didn't record the panel. However, given the impact that the panel had both internally and externally, Atiba thought it would be a good idea to try again - this time with a wrap up panel discussing some of the key issues and the participants' experiences with Skype. The second time, the technology worked great and we were able to record the whole discussion. So, for your viewing enjoyment ...
Follow the link here to view the file through dropbox (since its over 10 minutes neither blogger now youtube could support it.)
Follow the link here to view the file through dropbox (since its over 10 minutes neither blogger now youtube could support it.)
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Justice Stevens and the Anti-Distortion Rationale: A Teachable Moment
I recently posted what follows on our "Thoughts on Citizens United" blog. I thought it worth re-posting here because it is an example of the kinds of points I have tried to raise in order to use Citizens United as a teaching touchstone to illustrate power and politics within the corporate system and within the democratic process. Another has been the use of technology to accentuate teaching, particularly about teaching about power in the internet age, something I've discussed previously. What follows hopefully illustrates both, and may offer a conversation starter for our panel at the SALT Teaching in a Transformative Age Conference--which is coming up soon!
From: "Thoughts on Citizens United":
Rick Hasen blogged yesterday about comments made by retired Justice John Paul Stevens concerning Citizens United. Justice Stevens' comments focused on the anti-distortion rationale rejected in Citizens United. He emphasized the idea that an actor in an election debate who has more resources than the other actors will distort the ability of the voters to make their decisions. Justice Stevens made these comments on "60 Minutes" this past weekend. You can read and see the original CBS story here. His Citizens United-relevant comments I repost from Hasen's blog:
From: "Thoughts on Citizens United":
Rick Hasen blogged yesterday about comments made by retired Justice John Paul Stevens concerning Citizens United. Justice Stevens' comments focused on the anti-distortion rationale rejected in Citizens United. He emphasized the idea that an actor in an election debate who has more resources than the other actors will distort the ability of the voters to make their decisions. Justice Stevens made these comments on "60 Minutes" this past weekend. You can read and see the original CBS story here. His Citizens United-relevant comments I repost from Hasen's blog:
- SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): In Citizens United, the majority gave corporations the right to spend as much as they want on political campaigns; the majority said that limiting money in politics is the same as limiting free speech.
Where does the court make a mistake in your view?
JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, you know, which mistake do I want to emphasize?
(Justice John Paul Stevens laughing)
SCOTT PELLEY: You decide.
JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, you know, basically an election is a debate. And most debates you have rules. And I think Congress is the one that ought to make those rules. And if the debate is distorted by having one side have so much greater resources than the other that sometimes may distort the ability to decide the debate on the merits. You-- you want to be sure that-- that it's a fair fight.
Monday, November 22, 2010
The Laptop Debate ... (Part one)
According to the Washington Post, I’m about three years too late…
In a March 2010 article on banning laptops, the newspaper quoted a University Virginia professor who stated that, given the proliferation of other types of interfaces (such as web-enabled cell phones) professors are fighting a losing battle with technology.
This year was my first year banning laptops in my classroom. I had taught my business organizations class last year to a group of 75, my largest class size to date. I am a wanderer in class; instead of standing for the whole period at the front of the room, I walk around the class, trying to change my student’s focus, help them to engage. Now, while I’m not a millennial, I have had the uncommon experience of being a recent graduate of law school. I earned my LL.M. at the University of Texas in 2006, where laptops were common and wireless access prevalent. I know what happens in classrooms nowadays, in fact I participated fully – I chatted on-line (often with students sitting next to me), I surfed the internet and generally distracted myself. So, I have firsthand experience with how easy it is to get sidetracked through technology. Still, I have heard and agree with the arguments that students have been distracting themselves in class for generations and that technology is just the latest tool to facilitate.
But that’s not why I ban them.
I ban it for two reasons: one is based on a concern for my students and the other is based on a premise that I have yet to hear: the down side of instant engagement. The concern for my students came about after students complained to me that, even when they wanted to focus, it was difficult because the internet usage from other students was so prevalent that it kept the whole room preoccupied. The Washington Post article refers to it as the “cone of distraction.” But there’s an easy solution for that – all students who use laptops can sit at the back of class (although if everyone wants to use a laptop then that would thwart the solution). So, while that motivates me, the other reasons stem from something that I have not seen discussed – how the use of technology can thwart thoughtful ruminations.
Allow me to first illustrate with a hypothetical. What if you’re a student in a class, who had deep concerns over the competency of your professor: he’s a new prof who has no “track record” and you’re unsure as to whether what he’s telling you is really accurate or just a collection of platitudes. So, every time he makes a statement about black letter law you “fact check” it, Google it on your laptop to see if what he says pasts muster. Instead of listening to the lecture from a point of view of thoughtful absorption, you are spending your time trying to catch the teacher, not to educate but to condemn. Suddenly, the environment isn’t about learning it’s about condemnation. Now let me be clear – I know that there are a lot of incompetent professors out there, and many of them need to be challenged, but having this instant access to the internet can lead to a sense of false confidence (If I found it on Wikipedia it must be right and my professor must be wrong! True story, two days after I orginally this, one of my students in answering a question did exactly that: he referenced Wikipedia) that can then lead to a situation where confusion is heightened and learning is inhibited. If instead, the material were digested in class first, with questions designed to clarify, then a student might spend that time engaging in real learning.
Which leads me to ancillary point that my colleague, William Rhee, pointed out: namely that the legal system has not yet thrown aside all vestiges of the old ways. A law student needs to learn the basics of note taking and thoughtful discussion for those situations in the legal world where technology is either not accessible or not permissible. What if, you are so accustomed to relying on your computer to type questions that you are completely at a loss on how to behave during an oral argument, standing at the podium with nothing more than some paper and a pen? There will be something lost in client interactions if the only thing a client sees during a meeting is the two slits of eyes above your laptop. I have literally seen two teenagers sitting side by side on a couch not making eye contact or talking, both of them glued to their cell phones, expressionless as they were texting - each other. What does that say about our continued ability to interact with people face to face?
That for me is the real danger; it’s the dark side of what I mentioned in a previous post – using technology to get students to engage. I love technology and love how it gives people a means to access a discussion, a debate, in ways they never could before. I love that all of my seminar students and most of my business organization students have spent some time this semester blogging on issues of Citizens United and grappling with what the case means for them in different contexts. But something happened along the way to engagement: occasionally, the instant feedback of technology leads students to rush to judgment, and substitute thoughtful commentary with thoughtless reactions. It can lead to an inability to learn basic skills of communication (in much the same way that a calculator had a horrible effect on students’ arithmetic).
So, while I embrace technology as a mechanism for teaching my students, I also place limits. And so this year, I banned laptops in my class. There were grumblings at first ( I hear there always are) but the results have been worth it. It has given my students and me a time to slow down, to wrestle together with the questions they have and to think through these issues over the course of a two-hour period. And for me, that’s right on time.
In a March 2010 article on banning laptops, the newspaper quoted a University Virginia professor who stated that, given the proliferation of other types of interfaces (such as web-enabled cell phones) professors are fighting a losing battle with technology.
This year was my first year banning laptops in my classroom. I had taught my business organizations class last year to a group of 75, my largest class size to date. I am a wanderer in class; instead of standing for the whole period at the front of the room, I walk around the class, trying to change my student’s focus, help them to engage. Now, while I’m not a millennial, I have had the uncommon experience of being a recent graduate of law school. I earned my LL.M. at the University of Texas in 2006, where laptops were common and wireless access prevalent. I know what happens in classrooms nowadays, in fact I participated fully – I chatted on-line (often with students sitting next to me), I surfed the internet and generally distracted myself. So, I have firsthand experience with how easy it is to get sidetracked through technology. Still, I have heard and agree with the arguments that students have been distracting themselves in class for generations and that technology is just the latest tool to facilitate.
But that’s not why I ban them.
I ban it for two reasons: one is based on a concern for my students and the other is based on a premise that I have yet to hear: the down side of instant engagement. The concern for my students came about after students complained to me that, even when they wanted to focus, it was difficult because the internet usage from other students was so prevalent that it kept the whole room preoccupied. The Washington Post article refers to it as the “cone of distraction.” But there’s an easy solution for that – all students who use laptops can sit at the back of class (although if everyone wants to use a laptop then that would thwart the solution). So, while that motivates me, the other reasons stem from something that I have not seen discussed – how the use of technology can thwart thoughtful ruminations.
Allow me to first illustrate with a hypothetical. What if you’re a student in a class, who had deep concerns over the competency of your professor: he’s a new prof who has no “track record” and you’re unsure as to whether what he’s telling you is really accurate or just a collection of platitudes. So, every time he makes a statement about black letter law you “fact check” it, Google it on your laptop to see if what he says pasts muster. Instead of listening to the lecture from a point of view of thoughtful absorption, you are spending your time trying to catch the teacher, not to educate but to condemn. Suddenly, the environment isn’t about learning it’s about condemnation. Now let me be clear – I know that there are a lot of incompetent professors out there, and many of them need to be challenged, but having this instant access to the internet can lead to a sense of false confidence (If I found it on Wikipedia it must be right and my professor must be wrong! True story, two days after I orginally this, one of my students in answering a question did exactly that: he referenced Wikipedia) that can then lead to a situation where confusion is heightened and learning is inhibited. If instead, the material were digested in class first, with questions designed to clarify, then a student might spend that time engaging in real learning.
Which leads me to ancillary point that my colleague, William Rhee, pointed out: namely that the legal system has not yet thrown aside all vestiges of the old ways. A law student needs to learn the basics of note taking and thoughtful discussion for those situations in the legal world where technology is either not accessible or not permissible. What if, you are so accustomed to relying on your computer to type questions that you are completely at a loss on how to behave during an oral argument, standing at the podium with nothing more than some paper and a pen? There will be something lost in client interactions if the only thing a client sees during a meeting is the two slits of eyes above your laptop. I have literally seen two teenagers sitting side by side on a couch not making eye contact or talking, both of them glued to their cell phones, expressionless as they were texting - each other. What does that say about our continued ability to interact with people face to face?
That for me is the real danger; it’s the dark side of what I mentioned in a previous post – using technology to get students to engage. I love technology and love how it gives people a means to access a discussion, a debate, in ways they never could before. I love that all of my seminar students and most of my business organization students have spent some time this semester blogging on issues of Citizens United and grappling with what the case means for them in different contexts. But something happened along the way to engagement: occasionally, the instant feedback of technology leads students to rush to judgment, and substitute thoughtful commentary with thoughtless reactions. It can lead to an inability to learn basic skills of communication (in much the same way that a calculator had a horrible effect on students’ arithmetic).
So, while I embrace technology as a mechanism for teaching my students, I also place limits. And so this year, I banned laptops in my class. There were grumblings at first ( I hear there always are) but the results have been worth it. It has given my students and me a time to slow down, to wrestle together with the questions they have and to think through these issues over the course of a two-hour period. And for me, that’s right on time.
Friday, November 12, 2010
A Teaching Experiment Part II: Adjusting to the Technology
I recently posted about my involvement in a diversity week webinar lecture at West Virginia University. Since then, I had been involved in another distance-learning program related to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that took place via videoconference; this project took a great deal of my time. (Jena Amerson blogged about the event--and its unfortunate mishap that took place--here.) Now that I have time to write after these events, I want to reflect on these two very different experiences in two separate blog posts. Today, I will reflect on the use of the distance learning technology for the diversity webinar. I will discuss the Citizens United videoconference in a later post.
First, the webinar was a great honor since it provided an open opportunity to discuss diversity in a university-wide lecture. Anyone with a suitable computer could “tune in” to the talk. A small group of university students, faculty, and staff did engage in the webinar—somewhere around 20 participants joined in the live broadcast. However, since the broadcast is saved at the WVU Extended Learning archive, it remains to be seen how many people will look at it.
Second, I want to reflect on the experience itself. One of the wonders of using the webinar technology was its ability to allow the webinar leader and the participants to conduct the seminar from virtually anywhere. All one has to possess is a laptop or computer with a camera and microphone installed—virtually any computer made in the last five years would qualify. What this meant for me was that I presented the webinar in the quiet of my office.
The challenge in this apparent convenience was that no one who participated in the webinar was present with me. The only interaction I received was from text-message like questions posed to me after I finished my discussion. This was a bit disconcerting: I sat, talking to just my computer and my camera and didn’t have any direct visual or aural replies. I felt that this required a significant adjustment to my approach to lecturing—indeed, I felt like I was literally performing for a camera and having to imagine from just the text on the screen whether my points were being received. Think of being by one’s self (no production staff, no audience, no director to cue you in) in a TV studio doing a live broadcast—an isolating experience.
This made me realize how much I depend on the in-person interactive quality of teaching in a “real life” classroom. The technology, though it allowed for anyone in cyberspace to follow my lecture, took this interactive layer away. I had to adjust on the fly to make it work (and my colleagues were helpful to me on this issue by mooting my talk for me the day before).
I think this issue of “adjusting to the technology” is one that anyone currently teaching and trying to make use of technology is going to encounter. I think the same thing I could say about using a virtual classroom can be said by anyone not used to things like PowerPoint, web sites, Wiki programs, etc. My only other observation is that devising such strategies as to particular technology and as to the process of technological change is going to matter more and more as technology in the classroom continues to evolve. It is a challenge we as teachers will continually face as our students—and the technology they bring with them—continue to evolve.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Lessons Learned ...
On Thursday November 4th Atiba Ellis organized a panel discussion with Professors Stephan Padfield and Wilson Huhn from the University of Akron. The panel was a perfect intersection of the issues that this blogs raises and the issues that I have been struggling with all semester: using new technology to incorporate case law across the curriculum. In this case, the new technology was Skype, which allowed us to engage in a two way video conferencing format: the professors at Akron could see us; hear the students questions and respond in real time. The "law" that they were discussing was the Citizens United case that (as mentioned in an earlier post) Atiba and I have been using as a means of engaging the students in issues of corporate law, constitutional law, and election law. In that way, the panel (taking place two days after the latest elections) was timely. Atiba mentioned the recent elections in his remarks and the professors at Akron elaborated and built on that in their reponses to student's questions.
The downside? The technology didn't work completely. What this blog entry was supposed to be, was a post with initial remarks from me followed by the video, so you could see for yourself how the Skype teachnology worked. Instead, because the technology didn't manage to record the event, you are left with my observations on the matter (supplemented with pictures to provide you with context).
So here are my observations:
I think that using technology in this way allowed the students to engage differently than they can with other formats. This is the digital generation, the students who grew up with mobile phones and text messaging; the ones who are accustomed to getting their questions answered instantly with a laptop and a wireless connection. Showing these students that we can engage with them using a technology they understand is invaluable in helping us to connect with them as teachers.
I've been thinking about this a lot in preparing for our upcoming presentation at the S.A.L.T. conference - using the intersection of technology and case law to connect with our students. Specifically, what is it about what we're doing (by having our students blog, have them use video, use a recent supreme Court case) that makes it different from previous methods of teaching?
Let's be honest, the idea of having one case that touches on multiple subject matters is not new - my students often tell me of finding a case that they've read in one class's casebook being used in another casebook for a different subject. That makes sense- one judge can touch on a multitude of different legal theories in a single opinion; it's only natural that different casebook authors (and law school teachers) would use a portion for their own purposes.
So what makes our experiment so different? The conclusion I've reached (which I'm still thinking through) is that it's the combination of the timeliness, the technology and the richness of the case that makes this an effective way to teach to students. Unlike cases that have already been compiled and edited for casebook purposes - Citizens United is new, the Supreme Court just decided the case this year. In addition, my students had to read it unabridged, no editing or censoring on my part. Finally, my students had to use technology (by blogging at least twice throughout the semester) to think through the issues that Citizens United raised. It was almost as if they were defining for themselves what Citizens United meant across all these different areas of the law: they were analyzing it; massaging it; trying to firgure out how it all fit together in a way that I think they could not have done without blogging. And then, to hear some of the thoughts that they had struggled with being echoed by professors and scholars ... the feedback that I've had so far has been overwhelmingly positive. As one student in business organizations class noted -it was like bringing in all these different threads together.
So, while it would have been nice to have had a video to record the moment (and the four professors have decided that we are going to have a wrap up session which we will record and post) I think the far more valuable thing that this panel (and this semester) has shown me is that, if you take the time to think about different ways you can engage your students and you supplement that with timely issues that they want to understand, the results can be astounding...
Monday, November 1, 2010
Citizens and Beyond …
The Supreme Court on September 28th granted certiorari yesterday regarding whether to expand corporate rights in other contexts. The cases, will involve the application of the state secrets doctrine and invocation of the right to privacy by a corporation (General Dynamics Corp. v. United States and The Boeing Company v. United States, Nos. 09-1298 & 09-1302). It will be interesting to watch in the coming months how the experts will analyze these cases, especially in light of the Court's recent Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
While I’m sure that I will have strong opinions on the cases as a scholar when they are decided by the Supreme Court, my primary interest in these right now is as a teacher. One of the points of this semester long project that Atiba Ellis and I have is trying to find ways to teach across the curriculum. Only the most superficial logic would deny the overlapping nature between one aspect of a curriculum and another. In fact, on the first day of my business organizations class I challenge my students to find one course that they are taking or have taken where business and business organization issues are not implicated. In the two years that I have made that challenge I have yet to be stumped to find a connection.
Last month, I co-taught a class for andre cummings entertainment law course on piercing the corporate veil. dre certainly didn't need the help – he has taught this course numerous times and has a strong business background. Still, I couldn’t argue with his logic in getting me to co-teach with him: according to dre, it’s creative and offers students a different perspective. I agree with dre. I also think it breathes life into students who, for this generation at least, seem quick to view things as monotonous and repetitive. In my own experiences teaching Legal Writing I also found this to be so – I could give my students my core tips repeatedly over the semester but, as soon as I have a guest lecturer who comes in and, in essence, repeats those same tips to them, suddenly the students get it.
So what does all this have to do with the Supreme Court’s docket? Well, in the coming weeks I will look for ways to incorporate these issues into my business organizations and corporate governance classes. My corporate governance students in particular, who are just beginning to draft their seminar papers, might find it interesting to make connections between a corporation’s 1st amendment rights (as discussed in Citizens) and a corporation’s right to privacy. In my business organizations class we recently discussed the issues of duties for members of the board of directors and the rights of shareholders to bring derivative lawsuits if they feel that the corporations are not invoking invoking their rights. The example I gave my students is a variant on an example that Mark Ramseyer gives when he teaches his students this segment: what if Iron Man, the treasurer for S.H.I.EL.D. corporation, suddenly decided that SHIELD’s iron man suits are his and his alone and steals them from the corporation. If the company refuses to sue (preferring to take matters in their own hands) then a shareholder of S.H.I.E.L.D. would have the right to bring a derivative lawsuit in the corporation’s name suing to get the Iron Man suits back. One of the things that I will ask my students is, would the principles of derivative lawsuits apply in those situations where a shareholder is seeking to invoke a corporation’s right to privacy? What are the implications when the rights that a shareholder is trying to enforce are not monetary or fiduciary but constitutional? SInce we have a guest lecturer who will be talking with my students on Thursday about the Citizens United case, this seems like an ideal setting to pose these questions.
Hopefully, getting them to think about this in one context will encourage them to think about it in other contexts. I would love to hear suggestions from other teachers out there for what they do to teach across curricula…
While I’m sure that I will have strong opinions on the cases as a scholar when they are decided by the Supreme Court, my primary interest in these right now is as a teacher. One of the points of this semester long project that Atiba Ellis and I have is trying to find ways to teach across the curriculum. Only the most superficial logic would deny the overlapping nature between one aspect of a curriculum and another. In fact, on the first day of my business organizations class I challenge my students to find one course that they are taking or have taken where business and business organization issues are not implicated. In the two years that I have made that challenge I have yet to be stumped to find a connection.
Last month, I co-taught a class for andre cummings entertainment law course on piercing the corporate veil. dre certainly didn't need the help – he has taught this course numerous times and has a strong business background. Still, I couldn’t argue with his logic in getting me to co-teach with him: according to dre, it’s creative and offers students a different perspective. I agree with dre. I also think it breathes life into students who, for this generation at least, seem quick to view things as monotonous and repetitive. In my own experiences teaching Legal Writing I also found this to be so – I could give my students my core tips repeatedly over the semester but, as soon as I have a guest lecturer who comes in and, in essence, repeats those same tips to them, suddenly the students get it.
So what does all this have to do with the Supreme Court’s docket? Well, in the coming weeks I will look for ways to incorporate these issues into my business organizations and corporate governance classes. My corporate governance students in particular, who are just beginning to draft their seminar papers, might find it interesting to make connections between a corporation’s 1st amendment rights (as discussed in Citizens) and a corporation’s right to privacy. In my business organizations class we recently discussed the issues of duties for members of the board of directors and the rights of shareholders to bring derivative lawsuits if they feel that the corporations are not invoking invoking their rights. The example I gave my students is a variant on an example that Mark Ramseyer gives when he teaches his students this segment: what if Iron Man, the treasurer for S.H.I.EL.D. corporation, suddenly decided that SHIELD’s iron man suits are his and his alone and steals them from the corporation. If the company refuses to sue (preferring to take matters in their own hands) then a shareholder of S.H.I.E.L.D. would have the right to bring a derivative lawsuit in the corporation’s name suing to get the Iron Man suits back. One of the things that I will ask my students is, would the principles of derivative lawsuits apply in those situations where a shareholder is seeking to invoke a corporation’s right to privacy? What are the implications when the rights that a shareholder is trying to enforce are not monetary or fiduciary but constitutional? SInce we have a guest lecturer who will be talking with my students on Thursday about the Citizens United case, this seems like an ideal setting to pose these questions.
Hopefully, getting them to think about this in one context will encourage them to think about it in other contexts. I would love to hear suggestions from other teachers out there for what they do to teach across curricula…
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Webinar: A Teaching Experiment Part I
I recently had the honor of giving a university lecture on diversity for West Virginia University's Diversity Week 2010. The title of my talk was "The Diversity Rationale: What it Means and Why it Matters."
Rather than the usual stand-up-in-an-auditorium-and-talk format, I presented the talk via webinar. It was sponsored by WVU Extended Learning. The link to the archived here. (Note that you have to have an updated version of Java in order to access the program.) I would appreciate your feedback on how it (the webinar) came across, its utility -- particularly from the point of view of a student who happened upon the discussion -- and how useful this approach may be for teaching purposes.
In a subsequent posting, I plan to reflect in depth on my experiences in using a webinar as a teaching and lecturing medium. Suffice it to say for now that the experience was "surreal."
ARE
Rather than the usual stand-up-in-an-auditorium-and-talk format, I presented the talk via webinar. It was sponsored by WVU Extended Learning. The link to the archived here. (Note that you have to have an updated version of Java in order to access the program.) I would appreciate your feedback on how it (the webinar) came across, its utility -- particularly from the point of view of a student who happened upon the discussion -- and how useful this approach may be for teaching purposes.
In a subsequent posting, I plan to reflect in depth on my experiences in using a webinar as a teaching and lecturing medium. Suffice it to say for now that the experience was "surreal."
ARE
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Characteristics of the Millennials – Part 2: They’re Confident & Team-Oriented
This is the second post in a series regarding the characteristics of Millennials. In part one, I discussed the first two characteristics that I have learned about this group: that they are confident and team-oriented. In this post I would like to discuss two other characteristics: that they are achievement oriented and conventional.
They’re Achievement Oriented
Quite frankly, I don’t know if law professors will see a significance difference in this characteristic than in previous generations (although, being a younger professor, I have no personal point of reference). My understanding of the typical personality type that attends law school is that they have classic Type A attributes: they are achievement oriented, always prepared, and typically used to succeeding.
Research I have seen on this supports that idea. For instance Susan Daicoff, a Professor of Law, writes extensively on the personality traits of lawyers and law students. In a 1997 article entitled “Articles Lawyer , Know Thyself : A Review of Empirical Research on Attorney Attributes Bearing on Professionalism,” she discusses the findings from studies regarding the attributes of lawyers at various stages: before they enter law school (from early childhood through college); during law school and after they graduate. In summarizing the findings regarding law students Prof. Daicoff writes “the research … suggests, although with some expected gender differences, that law students are motivated by achievement rather than altruism.” For me, the most interesting aspect of Prof. Daicoff’s piece is its publication date – 1997. That year is significant for me because it’s the year I graduated from law school. As such, it seems that this particular aspect of the law student’s personality is consistent with previous generations.
The anomaly then might be in comparing law students to non-law students. What could be happening is that, while law students’ achievement orientation is remaining constant, the achievement oriented nature of the general millennial population has risen to a comparable level.
I would love for both law and non-law faculty who have been teaching for a number of years to chime in on this. In particular, I would like to know if either group has seen a change in how ambitious these latest crops of students are compared to previous years.
They’re Conventional
My understanding from Grace is that by conventional, these groups of students are generally more conservative than previous generations. Certainly, compared to those who attended law school in the 1960s, there must be a significant difference in the political leanings and civil rights activism - I have heard of no sit-ins at law schools in the last few years.
Personally, hearing that this generation is conservative sheds some light on the type of class that I teach and the resistance that I have encountered in my two years of teaching this course. As I mentioned in a previous post, the classes that I teach are mainly business courses: business organizations; securities regulation; international business transactions and a corporate governance seminar. Although I had anticipated that many of my students would have a business focus and thus, could be characterized as more conventional (as compared to, say students enrolled in a human rights class), I had thought that the specter of the bar examination would draw in otherwise left-leaning students who needed a crash course on these issues before taking the exam.
For me, there is no contradiction between having a strong business foundation and a more progressive, civil rights based mindset. However, I was surprised to discover that most of my students (even the ones with no interest in business) were by far more conventional. The most obvious example of this was when I showed my students the movie The Corporation. The movie is a documentary with a clear bias – its basic premise is that many of the characteristics of the modern publicly traded corporation are similar to those of a psychopath. It is based on a book by Joel Bakan that seems thoroughly researched but is no less provocative.
I present the movie in my class, not because I agree whole-heartedly with everything the movie says (I don’t), but because I believe that it’s a good way to stimulate paideia – getting students to question the idea of what a corporation is for. For instance, is a corporation simply there to generate earnings for its shareholders (as we learn in the black letter law)? Or are there other stakeholders that we should consider? Why or why not?
I imagined that this movie would engender a lively debate among my students. Instead, my students have, by and large, reacted very negatively to the ideas contained in the movie. Instead of a lively debate, I am often met with disdain for the idea that a corporation should be anything but a profit making machine. I wonder if I have presented this movie a decade ago whether it would garner the same response.
Of course, any attempt to extricate general attributes from such a large and diverse population is always fraught with peril; the idea of distilling the essence of a generation seems to me an enormous empirical challenge. Nonetheless, the findings are significant. Being able to understand the type of students that I am teaching, even at a superficial level, can help me (I hope) to be a better teacher, one who can understand her audience and tailor her teaching methods accordingly. Many good teachers do no less now when they tailor their teaching style to the various ways that people learn. Doing so on a generational level would allow for additional means of reaching them.
They’re Achievement Oriented
Quite frankly, I don’t know if law professors will see a significance difference in this characteristic than in previous generations (although, being a younger professor, I have no personal point of reference). My understanding of the typical personality type that attends law school is that they have classic Type A attributes: they are achievement oriented, always prepared, and typically used to succeeding.
Research I have seen on this supports that idea. For instance Susan Daicoff, a Professor of Law, writes extensively on the personality traits of lawyers and law students. In a 1997 article entitled “Articles Lawyer , Know Thyself : A Review of Empirical Research on Attorney Attributes Bearing on Professionalism,” she discusses the findings from studies regarding the attributes of lawyers at various stages: before they enter law school (from early childhood through college); during law school and after they graduate. In summarizing the findings regarding law students Prof. Daicoff writes “the research … suggests, although with some expected gender differences, that law students are motivated by achievement rather than altruism.” For me, the most interesting aspect of Prof. Daicoff’s piece is its publication date – 1997. That year is significant for me because it’s the year I graduated from law school. As such, it seems that this particular aspect of the law student’s personality is consistent with previous generations.
The anomaly then might be in comparing law students to non-law students. What could be happening is that, while law students’ achievement orientation is remaining constant, the achievement oriented nature of the general millennial population has risen to a comparable level.
I would love for both law and non-law faculty who have been teaching for a number of years to chime in on this. In particular, I would like to know if either group has seen a change in how ambitious these latest crops of students are compared to previous years.
They’re Conventional
My understanding from Grace is that by conventional, these groups of students are generally more conservative than previous generations. Certainly, compared to those who attended law school in the 1960s, there must be a significant difference in the political leanings and civil rights activism - I have heard of no sit-ins at law schools in the last few years.
Personally, hearing that this generation is conservative sheds some light on the type of class that I teach and the resistance that I have encountered in my two years of teaching this course. As I mentioned in a previous post, the classes that I teach are mainly business courses: business organizations; securities regulation; international business transactions and a corporate governance seminar. Although I had anticipated that many of my students would have a business focus and thus, could be characterized as more conventional (as compared to, say students enrolled in a human rights class), I had thought that the specter of the bar examination would draw in otherwise left-leaning students who needed a crash course on these issues before taking the exam.
For me, there is no contradiction between having a strong business foundation and a more progressive, civil rights based mindset. However, I was surprised to discover that most of my students (even the ones with no interest in business) were by far more conventional. The most obvious example of this was when I showed my students the movie The Corporation. The movie is a documentary with a clear bias – its basic premise is that many of the characteristics of the modern publicly traded corporation are similar to those of a psychopath. It is based on a book by Joel Bakan that seems thoroughly researched but is no less provocative.
I present the movie in my class, not because I agree whole-heartedly with everything the movie says (I don’t), but because I believe that it’s a good way to stimulate paideia – getting students to question the idea of what a corporation is for. For instance, is a corporation simply there to generate earnings for its shareholders (as we learn in the black letter law)? Or are there other stakeholders that we should consider? Why or why not?
I imagined that this movie would engender a lively debate among my students. Instead, my students have, by and large, reacted very negatively to the ideas contained in the movie. Instead of a lively debate, I am often met with disdain for the idea that a corporation should be anything but a profit making machine. I wonder if I have presented this movie a decade ago whether it would garner the same response.
Of course, any attempt to extricate general attributes from such a large and diverse population is always fraught with peril; the idea of distilling the essence of a generation seems to me an enormous empirical challenge. Nonetheless, the findings are significant. Being able to understand the type of students that I am teaching, even at a superficial level, can help me (I hope) to be a better teacher, one who can understand her audience and tailor her teaching methods accordingly. Many good teachers do no less now when they tailor their teaching style to the various ways that people learn. Doing so on a generational level would allow for additional means of reaching them.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Example of Teaching to Millenials
Prof. Charles Calleros, of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, has provided us with this excellent example (given by his son Alex) of using technology to teach to generation millenials. The video shows how animation can covert what would otherwise be an ordinary lecture into a fun, entertaining and memorable event.
This particular example has Prof. Phillip Zimbardo lecturing on the different perspectives of time ...
This particular example has Prof. Phillip Zimbardo lecturing on the different perspectives of time ...
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Characteristics of the Millennials – Part 1: They’re Confident & Team-Oriented
In a previous post I discussed the research that WVU Law’s Director of Academic Excellence, Grace Wigal had presented regarding Millennials. It was a fascinating presentation to listen to because it shed light, from a generational perspective, on some of the tools that I has used in teaching this group and how they were received. In this post I will explore two of the characteristics that Grace discussed: their confidence and team oriented nature. In the next post, I will discuss two others: They’re goal oriented and conventional (conservative) nature.
They’re Confident:
The courses that I teach at the College of Law are part of the law school’s business curriculum. In the fall, I teach Business Organizations and a Corporate Governance Seminar. In the Spring, I teach Securities Regulation and International Business Transactions. My Business Organizations course (which many students treat as a required course since it is tested on most bar exams) is by far the largest class I teach in the year. Last year, I had approximately 75 students. This year I have close to that number: approximately 70. What has surprised me more is the sheer confidence that students have when presenting a case or questioning a legal issue. There are always a core group of students who speak up in class and present their ideas. What impresses me about them is that, even if they are on the completely wrong track, or give the wrong answer to a question – they are undeterred; they simply pick themselves up and do it again.
Contrast this with an experience a classmate of mine had when he was in law school (approximately fifteen years ago). He remembers vividly being called on in 1st year contracts to present a case and, being devastated when the teacher dismissed his analysis. Here’s the thing – my friend traces that one single event to his poor performance in law school. That one experience destroyed his confidence and he feels he never recovered. In fact, I remember the day it happened and indeed, my friend truly never was the same after that.
Now does my friend’s experience exemplify our generation’s lack of relative confidence? Perhaps not, but I was a fairly outspoken person in law school and I can still remember being terrified at the thought of being unprepared, particularly in a class the size of mine. Certainly, if I had been summarily dismissed by a professor I would not have immediately jumped back on the horse and volunteered again in the same class period. So, this does seem to be a change and, welcome at that – makes me think that these group of students will be more likely than a generation ago to separate their failings in class from their value as a law student.
They’re Team-Oriented:
Based on what Grace has said in her research, these groups of students are team-oriented: they have taken to heart George Bush’s mantra – no child should be left behind. By inference, group activities would seem to go over better with this group of students than with others. I have seen that borne out in my own experiences with my Business Organizations class. One of the components of my class is that in addition to the doctrinal issues, I have my students complete various drafting exercises based on what we learn, so that they have a practical application for some of the doctrinal issues that we cover. The students draft partnership agreements, bylaws, shareholder proposals etc… Last year, I had my students complete each of these assignments individually. This year, on the advice of one of my students, I turned these into group assignments. So far, they have only completed one, but the feedback that I received from the class was exceedingly positive (in contrast to the feedback I received last year which was lukewarm at best). Now maybe it’s just that they could divide the work between many people this year – but I truly don’t think that’s it. Rather, it seems like focusing on this assignment in groups allowed them to delve more deeply into the issues implicated by the drafting exercise and really think about the implications for what a partnership agreement would look like. Going over what they handed in was one of the best classes I had this semester.
So what have your experiences been? If you’re a student, do you agree with team-oriented exercises? If you’re a professor, do you think that this approach works? I would be particularly interested in hearing from business school professors, who have long employed group methods along with case-studies in their classroom.
They’re Confident:
The courses that I teach at the College of Law are part of the law school’s business curriculum. In the fall, I teach Business Organizations and a Corporate Governance Seminar. In the Spring, I teach Securities Regulation and International Business Transactions. My Business Organizations course (which many students treat as a required course since it is tested on most bar exams) is by far the largest class I teach in the year. Last year, I had approximately 75 students. This year I have close to that number: approximately 70. What has surprised me more is the sheer confidence that students have when presenting a case or questioning a legal issue. There are always a core group of students who speak up in class and present their ideas. What impresses me about them is that, even if they are on the completely wrong track, or give the wrong answer to a question – they are undeterred; they simply pick themselves up and do it again.
Contrast this with an experience a classmate of mine had when he was in law school (approximately fifteen years ago). He remembers vividly being called on in 1st year contracts to present a case and, being devastated when the teacher dismissed his analysis. Here’s the thing – my friend traces that one single event to his poor performance in law school. That one experience destroyed his confidence and he feels he never recovered. In fact, I remember the day it happened and indeed, my friend truly never was the same after that.
Now does my friend’s experience exemplify our generation’s lack of relative confidence? Perhaps not, but I was a fairly outspoken person in law school and I can still remember being terrified at the thought of being unprepared, particularly in a class the size of mine. Certainly, if I had been summarily dismissed by a professor I would not have immediately jumped back on the horse and volunteered again in the same class period. So, this does seem to be a change and, welcome at that – makes me think that these group of students will be more likely than a generation ago to separate their failings in class from their value as a law student.
They’re Team-Oriented:
Based on what Grace has said in her research, these groups of students are team-oriented: they have taken to heart George Bush’s mantra – no child should be left behind. By inference, group activities would seem to go over better with this group of students than with others. I have seen that borne out in my own experiences with my Business Organizations class. One of the components of my class is that in addition to the doctrinal issues, I have my students complete various drafting exercises based on what we learn, so that they have a practical application for some of the doctrinal issues that we cover. The students draft partnership agreements, bylaws, shareholder proposals etc… Last year, I had my students complete each of these assignments individually. This year, on the advice of one of my students, I turned these into group assignments. So far, they have only completed one, but the feedback that I received from the class was exceedingly positive (in contrast to the feedback I received last year which was lukewarm at best). Now maybe it’s just that they could divide the work between many people this year – but I truly don’t think that’s it. Rather, it seems like focusing on this assignment in groups allowed them to delve more deeply into the issues implicated by the drafting exercise and really think about the implications for what a partnership agreement would look like. Going over what they handed in was one of the best classes I had this semester.
So what have your experiences been? If you’re a student, do you agree with team-oriented exercises? If you’re a professor, do you think that this approach works? I would be particularly interested in hearing from business school professors, who have long employed group methods along with case-studies in their classroom.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Are Tenure Standards the Problem with Teaching?
This post is being submitted by one of my colleagues at WVU College of Law, Will Rhee. He read an earlier post and wanted to comment.
Enjoy
JMA
______________
This post is in response to Jena’s excellent earlier “In search of the Millenials” post. Instead of discussing the Millenials, however, I would like to examine Jena’s remark at the end of her post about the apparent “zero-sum game” between time spent teaching and time spent on scholarship.
Like Jena, I too am a pre-tenured law professor who would like to be both a good teacher and a good scholar. Numerous tenured law professors around the country have counseled me that as a pre-tenured professor I want to get a “B+” in teaching but not higher than that because a higher “grade” on teaching pre-tenure means I’ve “wasted” time on teaching that could have been dedicated to scholarly production. Moreover, I’ve heard the hackneyed phrase “legal scholarship is the coin of the realm” bandied around so many times during my relatively short time in the academy. While many pages have been written decrying the apparent conflict between these differentiated roles of law teacher and law professor, I believe that there are plenty of law professors like Jena and me who want to excel at both. As gatekeepers of the legal profession, I do think we have a sacred duty to train and prepare our students—the overwhelming number of whom will become practicing attorneys—for the legal profession. At the same time, I relish the variety and diversity of contemporary legal scholarship. I believe that law professors have a valid role to play as the connectors and bricoleurs of the academy. I love thinking and writing about law writ large—both practically and theoretically—and want to make a genuine scholarly contribution to the study of law.
An article authored by Brent Newton, an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown and Deputy Staff Director of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, entitled “Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy” (also forthcoming in the South Carolina Law Review), argues that the legal academy’s obsession with so-called impractical scholarship is the primary obstacle to curricular reform. Newton writes, “[I]t will not be possible to implement such proposed curricular and pedagogical reforms if law schools continue their trend of primarily hiring and promoting tenure-track faculty members whose primary mission is to produce theoretical, increasingly interdisciplinary scholarship for law reviews rather than prepare students to practice law.” (p. 4).
My initial response to Newton’s provocative article is that while I applaud his candor and agree that the legal academy needs to have this conversation openly and transparently, I disagree with his conclusion as overly simplistic and caricatured. Just as many of our law students “train for the test,” I do think law professors—particularly pre-tenured ones—do allocate their time based upon the express or perceived norms of the legal academy. Instead of thinking that tenure standards are the problem, I believe that the lack of clarity over those norms is the problem. The accompanying problem, however, with this lack of clarity is the reality that opinions can, will, and should differ.
For example, there currently is an uproar over the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Outcome Measure’s Committee recommendation that the ABA “re-examine the current ABA Accreditation Standards and reframe them, as needed, to reduce their reliance on input measures and instead adopt a greater and more overt reliance on outcome measures.” (p.1) Whereas “outcome measures” are “accreditation criteria that concentrate on whether the law school has fulfilled its goals of imparting certain types of knowledge and enabling students to attain certain types of capacities, as well as achieving whatever other specific mission(s) the law school has adopted,” “input measures” are “accreditation criteria that concentrate on whether law schools are investing the right types and amounts of resources (such as physical plant, number of faculty, and budget) to achieve the goals identified in the accreditation standards and the school’s missions.” (p.3) As someone who dabbled with educational policy as a legal practitioner and, more importantly, who is married to an awesome high school teacher, I can attest that outcome measures are considered state-of-the-art in educational pedagogy. As the old adage goes, people only do well what the boss checks. Upon hearing of this current debate, my wife was mystified that the legal academy was even having this debate because K-12 teachers concluded decades ago that output measures is the way to go. In fact, the accountability component of the infamous No Child Left Behind law is premised upon outcome measures.
In my opinion, the challenge with outcome measures is not agreeing that they are a good idea in the abstract (they are) but rather getting agreement on them among independently-minded faculty and, even broader, among a very fractured legal profession. Pedagogically, it makes sense to say that we as teachers should clearly articulate what we expect our students to be able to know or do before we assess them on whether they actually know it or can do it. Likewise, we then can be held accountable through somewhat objective means to see if we actually successfully taught our students to know or do what we said we wanted them to know or do.
But what should our students know or be able to do? Good luck trying to get agreement on that essential question. Should we agree with the Carnegie Report (William Sullivan et al., Educating Lawyers: Preparation For The Practice of Law (2007)) that we need to cultivate all three “apprenticeships”—cognitive, expert practice, and ethical-social? Law school is short and the only time students can really learn doctrine and “how to think like a lawyer,” why not let students focus on that and leave becoming expert practitioners to the rest of their legal career? Given the financial crisis and the resulting fundamental—perhaps permanent—change to the nature of the practice of law and what clients are willing to pay, do law schools have an obligation to the practicing bar to produce graduates who are ready to hit the ground running and contribute substantively and financially to actual legal representation? Could law schools try to bridge the perceived gap between the JD and legal practice through more post-graduate work, LLMs, more rigorous CLEs, or even the MacCrate Report’s American Institute on the Practice of Law (The Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession, ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, Report of The Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap: An Educational Continuum (1992))?
More broadly, what is the purpose of a law school? Should we have different kinds of law schools or should all law schools seek to do the same basic things? What outcomes do we want to generate institutionally? Do we want to be the connectors and bricoleurs of the academy and generate cutting-edge original ideas unencumbered by the bonds of peer review? Do we want to create scholarship that the practicing bar actually reads and uses? Are we concerned with being labeled a trade school or are we a bona fide member of the academy? Do we really believe that every student can be a lawyer? Do we have a responsibility to weed out students who would be terrible lawyers? Do we really care about teaching or is our role really to sort our students in a pseudo-objective way for their potential employers? Are we just money-makers for the University or simply responding to a market demand by providing an overly litigious American society with the lawyers they want? Do we want to improve legal doctrine to further justice—whatever that means? Do we want to differentiate institutionally—forming a mini-university within each law school—where faculty individually can choose to specialize in teaching or scholarship but with the net collective effect of allowing the law school to excel in all areas?
To be fair, the lack of clarity over the purpose of a law school is a problem that I’ve observed in every institution. Good transparent guidance was extremely hard to find in legal practice. Very rarely was I ever told explicitly the outcomes expected from me before I started a job. Even when I received excellent performance evaluations, I often felt like they were random (and I suspect that some of our law students—despite our sincere best efforts—might feel the same way).
What is clear to me is that fortunately or unfortunately the measuring stick in the legal academy is the infamous U.S. News & World Report rankings. While we all vilify them, unfortunately we see law school deans’ careers often rise and fall with them. Not surprisingly, scholarly output appears to impact the prestige factor of these rankings. Like many of our students, we too as law professors and law schools appear to “train to the test.”
What do I think would result from a candid conversation over the purpose of a law school? I think there would be less essentialized, unhelpful discussion over the perceived norms of the entire legal academy (I myself chuckle at how many times I hear tenured faculty and even deans tell me that while some norm is not true for their own particular law school it is true for the rest of the academy) and more specific discussion over what kind of law school do we as the faculty, students, and alumni of that particular law school want. While we have begun to see some intentional differentiation among different law schools (notable examples include the University of the District of Columbia and Northeastern’s emphasis on public interest law, Charlotte School of Law’s focus on creating practice-ready lawyers, and George Mason’s dedication to Law and Economics), I still think the conversation needs to shift more from aggregate abstractions to specific approaches at particular schools. Individual law schools should be able to experiment boldly and thereby provide the legal academy and legal profession with different concrete examples of different approaches. We should collect objective data on the outcomes of those different experiments and allow our generalized conversation to take on some helpful particulars. Perhaps such transparency and honesty is too much to ask, but I do believe that until individual law schools can publicly agree upon what outcomes they’re trying to accomplish and transparently tie their norms and evaluation to such agreement, we’ll never be able to address the problem of improving teaching or any other perceived challenge in legal education.
Will Rhee
Associate Professor of Law, West Virginia University College of Law
Enjoy
JMA
______________
This post is in response to Jena’s excellent earlier “In search of the Millenials” post. Instead of discussing the Millenials, however, I would like to examine Jena’s remark at the end of her post about the apparent “zero-sum game” between time spent teaching and time spent on scholarship.
Like Jena, I too am a pre-tenured law professor who would like to be both a good teacher and a good scholar. Numerous tenured law professors around the country have counseled me that as a pre-tenured professor I want to get a “B+” in teaching but not higher than that because a higher “grade” on teaching pre-tenure means I’ve “wasted” time on teaching that could have been dedicated to scholarly production. Moreover, I’ve heard the hackneyed phrase “legal scholarship is the coin of the realm” bandied around so many times during my relatively short time in the academy. While many pages have been written decrying the apparent conflict between these differentiated roles of law teacher and law professor, I believe that there are plenty of law professors like Jena and me who want to excel at both. As gatekeepers of the legal profession, I do think we have a sacred duty to train and prepare our students—the overwhelming number of whom will become practicing attorneys—for the legal profession. At the same time, I relish the variety and diversity of contemporary legal scholarship. I believe that law professors have a valid role to play as the connectors and bricoleurs of the academy. I love thinking and writing about law writ large—both practically and theoretically—and want to make a genuine scholarly contribution to the study of law.
An article authored by Brent Newton, an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown and Deputy Staff Director of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, entitled “Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy” (also forthcoming in the South Carolina Law Review), argues that the legal academy’s obsession with so-called impractical scholarship is the primary obstacle to curricular reform. Newton writes, “[I]t will not be possible to implement such proposed curricular and pedagogical reforms if law schools continue their trend of primarily hiring and promoting tenure-track faculty members whose primary mission is to produce theoretical, increasingly interdisciplinary scholarship for law reviews rather than prepare students to practice law.” (p. 4).
My initial response to Newton’s provocative article is that while I applaud his candor and agree that the legal academy needs to have this conversation openly and transparently, I disagree with his conclusion as overly simplistic and caricatured. Just as many of our law students “train for the test,” I do think law professors—particularly pre-tenured ones—do allocate their time based upon the express or perceived norms of the legal academy. Instead of thinking that tenure standards are the problem, I believe that the lack of clarity over those norms is the problem. The accompanying problem, however, with this lack of clarity is the reality that opinions can, will, and should differ.
For example, there currently is an uproar over the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Outcome Measure’s Committee recommendation that the ABA “re-examine the current ABA Accreditation Standards and reframe them, as needed, to reduce their reliance on input measures and instead adopt a greater and more overt reliance on outcome measures.” (p.1) Whereas “outcome measures” are “accreditation criteria that concentrate on whether the law school has fulfilled its goals of imparting certain types of knowledge and enabling students to attain certain types of capacities, as well as achieving whatever other specific mission(s) the law school has adopted,” “input measures” are “accreditation criteria that concentrate on whether law schools are investing the right types and amounts of resources (such as physical plant, number of faculty, and budget) to achieve the goals identified in the accreditation standards and the school’s missions.” (p.3) As someone who dabbled with educational policy as a legal practitioner and, more importantly, who is married to an awesome high school teacher, I can attest that outcome measures are considered state-of-the-art in educational pedagogy. As the old adage goes, people only do well what the boss checks. Upon hearing of this current debate, my wife was mystified that the legal academy was even having this debate because K-12 teachers concluded decades ago that output measures is the way to go. In fact, the accountability component of the infamous No Child Left Behind law is premised upon outcome measures.
In my opinion, the challenge with outcome measures is not agreeing that they are a good idea in the abstract (they are) but rather getting agreement on them among independently-minded faculty and, even broader, among a very fractured legal profession. Pedagogically, it makes sense to say that we as teachers should clearly articulate what we expect our students to be able to know or do before we assess them on whether they actually know it or can do it. Likewise, we then can be held accountable through somewhat objective means to see if we actually successfully taught our students to know or do what we said we wanted them to know or do.
But what should our students know or be able to do? Good luck trying to get agreement on that essential question. Should we agree with the Carnegie Report (William Sullivan et al., Educating Lawyers: Preparation For The Practice of Law (2007)) that we need to cultivate all three “apprenticeships”—cognitive, expert practice, and ethical-social? Law school is short and the only time students can really learn doctrine and “how to think like a lawyer,” why not let students focus on that and leave becoming expert practitioners to the rest of their legal career? Given the financial crisis and the resulting fundamental—perhaps permanent—change to the nature of the practice of law and what clients are willing to pay, do law schools have an obligation to the practicing bar to produce graduates who are ready to hit the ground running and contribute substantively and financially to actual legal representation? Could law schools try to bridge the perceived gap between the JD and legal practice through more post-graduate work, LLMs, more rigorous CLEs, or even the MacCrate Report’s American Institute on the Practice of Law (The Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession, ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, Report of The Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap: An Educational Continuum (1992))?
More broadly, what is the purpose of a law school? Should we have different kinds of law schools or should all law schools seek to do the same basic things? What outcomes do we want to generate institutionally? Do we want to be the connectors and bricoleurs of the academy and generate cutting-edge original ideas unencumbered by the bonds of peer review? Do we want to create scholarship that the practicing bar actually reads and uses? Are we concerned with being labeled a trade school or are we a bona fide member of the academy? Do we really believe that every student can be a lawyer? Do we have a responsibility to weed out students who would be terrible lawyers? Do we really care about teaching or is our role really to sort our students in a pseudo-objective way for their potential employers? Are we just money-makers for the University or simply responding to a market demand by providing an overly litigious American society with the lawyers they want? Do we want to improve legal doctrine to further justice—whatever that means? Do we want to differentiate institutionally—forming a mini-university within each law school—where faculty individually can choose to specialize in teaching or scholarship but with the net collective effect of allowing the law school to excel in all areas?
To be fair, the lack of clarity over the purpose of a law school is a problem that I’ve observed in every institution. Good transparent guidance was extremely hard to find in legal practice. Very rarely was I ever told explicitly the outcomes expected from me before I started a job. Even when I received excellent performance evaluations, I often felt like they were random (and I suspect that some of our law students—despite our sincere best efforts—might feel the same way).
What is clear to me is that fortunately or unfortunately the measuring stick in the legal academy is the infamous U.S. News & World Report rankings. While we all vilify them, unfortunately we see law school deans’ careers often rise and fall with them. Not surprisingly, scholarly output appears to impact the prestige factor of these rankings. Like many of our students, we too as law professors and law schools appear to “train to the test.”
What do I think would result from a candid conversation over the purpose of a law school? I think there would be less essentialized, unhelpful discussion over the perceived norms of the entire legal academy (I myself chuckle at how many times I hear tenured faculty and even deans tell me that while some norm is not true for their own particular law school it is true for the rest of the academy) and more specific discussion over what kind of law school do we as the faculty, students, and alumni of that particular law school want. While we have begun to see some intentional differentiation among different law schools (notable examples include the University of the District of Columbia and Northeastern’s emphasis on public interest law, Charlotte School of Law’s focus on creating practice-ready lawyers, and George Mason’s dedication to Law and Economics), I still think the conversation needs to shift more from aggregate abstractions to specific approaches at particular schools. Individual law schools should be able to experiment boldly and thereby provide the legal academy and legal profession with different concrete examples of different approaches. We should collect objective data on the outcomes of those different experiments and allow our generalized conversation to take on some helpful particulars. Perhaps such transparency and honesty is too much to ask, but I do believe that until individual law schools can publicly agree upon what outcomes they’re trying to accomplish and transparently tie their norms and evaluation to such agreement, we’ll never be able to address the problem of improving teaching or any other perceived challenge in legal education.
Will Rhee
Associate Professor of Law, West Virginia University College of Law
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Breaking Assumptions
In my previous post, I discussed how part of the concern we seek to address in this blog relates to how to get students to think critically about the law they learn. From my point of view, teaching to any generation is difficult because the students walk in with assumptions, especially assumptions about power relationships and the nature of society, rooted in their heads. In other words, I have taught many students who assume that because the system does not affect them, nothing is wrong. In other words, it is difficult to deconstruct the relationships of privilege when one benefits from either that privilege or some other privilege that masks the issue. This affects the NetGeners in particular given their tendency to be dependent on technology for information without necessarily inquiring critically about the information they receive.
That is very ephemeral; let me use an example to explain. In teaching first-year Property last year, I found it very difficult to elucidate the subprime mortgage crisis and its attendant class-related concerns. The concern is a straightforward one—because of the economic collapse, housing ownership is now more difficult than ever to obtain. The reasons include the difficulty of accessing credit due to financial institutions being reticent, the lack of creditworthiness among those who have suffered directly because of the crisis, the heightened complexity of even participating in the house-purchasing process, and other factors. This has had enormous local and national impact. A number of the root causes of this stem from the fact that financial speculation lead to ever-increasing patterns or reckless behavior by those who managed the system for their own gain. These arguments have been well-rehearsed.
In lecturing about this, the reactions ranged from from “Huh?!?!” to “That doesn’t really make sense,” to, “Come on, professor; it was their [the poor’s] fault for taking on mortgages that they couldn’t afford.” Admittedly, those who didn’t understand because of the complexity of the situation needed some medium to assist them on their way; similarly, those who don’t intuitively see the dots connecting need a more direct articulating of the situation. Those who merely shift blame seemed to hear a different version of the thesis I articulated above—but in asking further, it became clear they had only heard one side of the debate.
What disturbed me more was that these rejections represented a lack of critical inquiry. What occurred to me was that over 90% of them rented their houses rather than owned them, so it made it difficult to relate to a mortgage crisis. (Notably, the approximate median age of my Property class was somewhere around 25 years old.) The subprime mortgage crisis was a foreign thing to many of them, and they were insulated from it because they lived lives supported by law school loans and they likely saw themselves as immune to the effects (even though the contrary is more likely true).
This left two quite large tasks for me as professor: (1) explaining the subprime mortgage crisis in a way that made sense to those that didn’t get it and (2) encouraging critical facility among my students about what they had heard. I realized that merely lecturing—the form of learning and teaching that worked best for me—would not, by itself, work for the majority of my students. That forced me to the Internet and to my expert colleagues to find a multi-media approach to discussing the issue. Fortunately, I found a short, plain video that explained the crisis straightforwardly. I also asked a friend experienced in dealing with mortgages to explain the process from a practical point of view. These approaches helped foster understanding and relate what they had learned concerning the black-letter law of mortgages to the complexity of the crisis.
Second, it took conversation and effort after the video to force my students to recognize that the video, though produced by a news media outlet, had a point of view. This point was the more difficult one to engage in with my students. The video itself was accepted by some as being correct and some students did not feel the need for further inquiry. And I was anxious to move on to more interesting topics like future interests. And in all honesty, I did not make the most of the discussion that I could have. On reflection, six months later, I am left pondering how to better teach this—or any kind of controversial material that has to do about elucidating power relationships.
My first thought is that attention in our classes has to be given to the idea that there is no such thing as a neutral point of view. Every legal decision and every argument serves some sort of purpose—and having conversations about what those purposes are and who they benefit is an important part of the analysis.
Second, and even more challenging, is the problem of finding ways to encourage students to exercise moral imagination so that they can see the issue from the point of view of those who benefit—or those who suffer—from the particular decision. This seems to be the more difficult hurdle to jump over. It was easy to use illustration to convey the facts, but harder (and some might argue, “inappropriate”) to get students to try to see from the perspective of life experience that they simply have not had. Yet, to “get” power relationship, one must “get” both the motivations for the actions the effects of the actions of the powerful against the powerless. Finally, both the motivations and the moral imagination have to be used to interpret what cases and statutes have to say.
Yet, as I write this, I feel I’m left with more questions than answers. What I’d like to learn is how do you deal with these issues? Or is it even appropriate to raise these issues at all in the law classroom of the twenty-first century? I am open to discussion and suggestions.
Monday, September 27, 2010
In Search of Generation Millenial
Part of learning to teach in the 21st Century is learning as much as you can about your primary audience. It is clear that not only have the cultural references of each generation changed but so have the fundamental characteristics of the people we are trying to reach. So who are these folks? As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is easy to hide behind labels that have been tossed around. It is much more difficult to try and parse out the specifics of the generation and come up with action plans to try and help them learn in a way that best suits their needs.
Luckily, Grace Wigal, director of the College of Law’s Academic Excellence Program, has done just that. Last week, she presented to our faculty a talk designed to help us be more effective guides for generation millennial. During her talk, Grace discussed research regarding what defining characteristics this generation, on the whole, shares. Here is what she discovered.
Generation millenials - growing up with a heavy dose of Nickelodeon and targeted consumerism (like Baby Gap and Sports Illustrated for Kids) - have heard over and over again that they are special. No surprise then that they actually believe it.
• They are confident;
• They are team-oriented;
• They are achievement-goal oriented ;
• They are conventional/conservative;
• They are service-oriented.
Over the next few posts, I want to explore some of the implications for each of these characteristics and discuss the impact that they can have on a professor’s teaching style. I will also share my experiences with teaching this group of kids and how I have seen those characteristics reflected in my own teaching. For me, hearing Grace’s presentation regarding these characteristics, shed light on why my students respond a certain way to different tactics I employ. It’s not surprising: with the average age of WVU law students being 26 years old, we are right in the middle of teaching this generation.
In addition to the internal characteristics of this generation, there also certain external factors that will influence how we teach them. For instance, according to Grace:
• Young adults (18 - 34) have declined from being those most likely to read literature to those least likely;
• Fewer than 40% of high school seniors are spending at least six hours per week on homework;
• Only a quarter of entering college students are reading ready;
• In fact, many college students will not have been required to write a seven-page paper over the entire course of their four year degree.
This can cause huge adjustments for first year law students who are suddenly required to read over a hundred pages of dense law materials in a week while simultaneously writing an 8-10 page paper that analyzes a specific area of the law in rigorous detail their first semester. Never mind the fact that most law schools have a seminar paper requirement to graduate, in which students will have to right an analytically critical paper of publishable quality, usually between 25 – 30 pages long.
Given the huge gap between their level of preparedness and what we expect of them, what is the appropriate institutional response? Is it to simplify (some would say “dumb down”) our curriculum to have our teaching needs meet college students where they are? One of the concerns voiced during the colloquy is that doing this will have long term effects on soon-to-be practicing attorneys who (many feel) will be ill-equipped to perform the complex analysis that clients need.
What about the process of raising students up to the level of academic rigor that we as a law school feel is necessary? The most universal standard for doing that would be by grading students harshly – in essence dis-incentivizing what we feel is sub-standard performance. But then, how does that affect students who have to compete in the job market with other law schools who, many feel employ grade inflation?
This can prove to be a daunting dilemma for professors who want to encourage students to work at an exemplary level yet who don’t want to handicap students by using tougher criteria than at other schools. I have no easy answers.
My own rag-tag method can properly be seen as a paternalistic one. For instance, in my corporate governance seminar, I will have seen versions of my students’ work at least three times before they submit their final draft. That way, I can impart my ideas and standards to them throughout the semester through individual counseling, instead of taking the chance that they will perform to the level I require on their own. However, this method comes at great cost – there is a significant amount of work involved in this one-on-one mentoring and, as a pre-tenured professor, several colleagues have pointed out that it is a cost that will take its toll on my scholarly production (still seen by many as the ultimate yardstick for winning tenure).
So, short of changing the standards of tenure review for professors, doing this work comes with the knowledge that the time I spend with my students will probably not be reflected in my tenure file in a few years time. Still, that is the choice that I have made. Maybe, when it comes closer to tenure I will make a different choice, but for me right now, seeing my students finally perform at the level that will make them exemplary is worth it. However, I’m curious as to choices that other have made. Please feel free to share your thought, comments and suggestions on how to teach excellence to students and what sacrifices will come as a result.
Luckily, Grace Wigal, director of the College of Law’s Academic Excellence Program, has done just that. Last week, she presented to our faculty a talk designed to help us be more effective guides for generation millennial. During her talk, Grace discussed research regarding what defining characteristics this generation, on the whole, shares. Here is what she discovered.
Generation millenials - growing up with a heavy dose of Nickelodeon and targeted consumerism (like Baby Gap and Sports Illustrated for Kids) - have heard over and over again that they are special. No surprise then that they actually believe it.
• They are confident;
• They are team-oriented;
• They are achievement-goal oriented ;
• They are conventional/conservative;
• They are service-oriented.
Over the next few posts, I want to explore some of the implications for each of these characteristics and discuss the impact that they can have on a professor’s teaching style. I will also share my experiences with teaching this group of kids and how I have seen those characteristics reflected in my own teaching. For me, hearing Grace’s presentation regarding these characteristics, shed light on why my students respond a certain way to different tactics I employ. It’s not surprising: with the average age of WVU law students being 26 years old, we are right in the middle of teaching this generation.
In addition to the internal characteristics of this generation, there also certain external factors that will influence how we teach them. For instance, according to Grace:
• Young adults (18 - 34) have declined from being those most likely to read literature to those least likely;
• Fewer than 40% of high school seniors are spending at least six hours per week on homework;
• Only a quarter of entering college students are reading ready;
• In fact, many college students will not have been required to write a seven-page paper over the entire course of their four year degree.
This can cause huge adjustments for first year law students who are suddenly required to read over a hundred pages of dense law materials in a week while simultaneously writing an 8-10 page paper that analyzes a specific area of the law in rigorous detail their first semester. Never mind the fact that most law schools have a seminar paper requirement to graduate, in which students will have to right an analytically critical paper of publishable quality, usually between 25 – 30 pages long.
Given the huge gap between their level of preparedness and what we expect of them, what is the appropriate institutional response? Is it to simplify (some would say “dumb down”) our curriculum to have our teaching needs meet college students where they are? One of the concerns voiced during the colloquy is that doing this will have long term effects on soon-to-be practicing attorneys who (many feel) will be ill-equipped to perform the complex analysis that clients need.
What about the process of raising students up to the level of academic rigor that we as a law school feel is necessary? The most universal standard for doing that would be by grading students harshly – in essence dis-incentivizing what we feel is sub-standard performance. But then, how does that affect students who have to compete in the job market with other law schools who, many feel employ grade inflation?
This can prove to be a daunting dilemma for professors who want to encourage students to work at an exemplary level yet who don’t want to handicap students by using tougher criteria than at other schools. I have no easy answers.
My own rag-tag method can properly be seen as a paternalistic one. For instance, in my corporate governance seminar, I will have seen versions of my students’ work at least three times before they submit their final draft. That way, I can impart my ideas and standards to them throughout the semester through individual counseling, instead of taking the chance that they will perform to the level I require on their own. However, this method comes at great cost – there is a significant amount of work involved in this one-on-one mentoring and, as a pre-tenured professor, several colleagues have pointed out that it is a cost that will take its toll on my scholarly production (still seen by many as the ultimate yardstick for winning tenure).
So, short of changing the standards of tenure review for professors, doing this work comes with the knowledge that the time I spend with my students will probably not be reflected in my tenure file in a few years time. Still, that is the choice that I have made. Maybe, when it comes closer to tenure I will make a different choice, but for me right now, seeing my students finally perform at the level that will make them exemplary is worth it. However, I’m curious as to choices that other have made. Please feel free to share your thought, comments and suggestions on how to teach excellence to students and what sacrifices will come as a result.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Teaching About the Relationship Between Law and Power in the Internet Age
One of the challenges that we want to take on head-on in this blog is the problem of conversing with students (and with each other as law professors for that matter) about the law as a tool of and manifestation of power. What is it that we’re really after when we want to teach about the authority of law and how it mediates power relationships? How can we best convey the terms of such issues? Or, is this a worthwhile inquiry at all? I think that this issue lies at the heart of this blog project.
As you’ve read from Professor Jena Amerson’s post last week about Teaching at the Speed of Light, our concern revolves around the problem of teaching to Millennials. As she put it, our issues and questions revolve around the problem of “how best to get their attention” in light of their living almost their entire lives in the Internet age.
Yet, there’s a content component to this issue too. There is a lot to be said about communicating content in a way that teaches how to think critically about the nature of the world and the nature of legal relationships. This awareness ideally makes a student conscious of the problems of using legal power and how that power can be usurped and transformed. In a perfect world, law schools would enable a student while learning the law to gain this critical facility. Thus, such students would be conscious of questions like “to whose advantage a particular judicial ruling works?” and “to what ends does a particular opinion or legal principle serve?” and would be able to articulate a view about the nature of the rules she studies.
To me, the question is how do we teach our students about the politics of law (without, of course, making the course about some form of critical theory itself). This, of course, is a question that professors have struggled with during each generation of American legal education. This struggle often reflects the ideology of the professor, the ideological splits present in the Supreme Court and the lower courts at any given moment, and the politics within a given educational institution. To this enduring debate, I am suggesting that there may be a new layer of questions related to how we discuss the politics of law with the Internet generation.
I hope your answers to this question fill this blog. As a first pass answer, let me suggest that the radical democratization of media that the Internet age represents provides us with a new teaching opportunity. One of the defining characteristics of this period is that anyone with a computer and a webcam can contribute to any debate they wish. YouTube and the blogosphere allow anyone with the capability to be an opinion maker. Indeed, Wikipedia, has allowed “the masses” to help with the production of knowledge. This is the world from which our students come; this is the challenge that we face as teachers.
One recent example of this phenomenon can be found concerning the so-called Ground Zero Mosque Controversy. I recently blogged in another forum about the interesting battle of YouTube videos going on between the Ground Zero Mosque Rap!!! and the country video, We’ve Got to Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero. Here, we have two different takes on this controversy. One represents the moneyed propaganda of special interests. The other video represents an apparently grassroots effort. The two attempt to persuade and motivate their audiences to at least think a particular way about their positions. I raise this not to take a position on the controversy, but to draw an analogy: that technology allows a path for anyone, including students to take a stand about current issues and to exercise their critical facilities. Indeed, it may be an apt approach to encouraging their critical and analytical skills at the graduate level..
Our project with this blog is, in part, to comment on our experiment concerning whether the collaborative and democratic construction of knowledge through blogging and social media can effectively function as a teaching tool. The learning forum for our students to this end is a blog we created for our students called Thoughts on Citizens United. In that space, our students, along with others who will contribute, are taking on substantive question of how to construct an understanding of this landmark case. There, we have asked students to contribute thoughtful blog posts regarding Citizens United to build their knowledge about it and how it relates to issues of corporate governance, election law, constitutional law, legal theory, and other legal topics.
Our premise is that by encouraging students to utilize their own agency and creativity in reading and commenting on the world they see, and thereby taking informed public positions (in a way similar to that I saw in the YouTube videos) they can, for themselves, create the knowledge that they seek. We invite you to observe, participate, and comment on this experiment.
(An afterword: related to the issue of democratic access via the Internet is the challenge faced by those people who, due to poverty, do not have basic access to the Internet? Note that these people may largely be people of color. How should we consider their rights to participate in the radical democracy of the 21st century? How are their legal relationships affected by the fact that they are “off the grid.”)
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