Online Teaching & Blogging

TWEN Course Site

Best Practices Blog

In addition to teaching Albany Law School’s first online course, Patty Salkin will be blogging about her experience.

lst Post: Getting Ready for On-Line Teaching

2nd Post: Organizing Technology to Teach On-Line

3rd Post:  Setting Goals and Evaluation for an On-Line Course

4th Post:   Course Design – Technology Meets Substance in On-Line Curriculum Development

5th Post:  On-Line Discussion Boards Create a New Arena for Engaged Learning Environments

6th Post:  Integrating Internet-Based and Teleconferencing Resources into On-Line Teaching

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Click HERE to read an article by Prof. Salkin about this course from the Spring 2010 Professional Responsibility Newsletter.

Collaborative Teaching At A Distance

This past semester, one of Albany Law School‘s professors,  Keith Hirokawa, taught a class on Sustainability & the Law via webstream for Professor Jonathon Rosenbloom at Drake Law School.

In his post on the Environmental Law Prof blog, Keith notes:

I found the technology surprisingly effective…  Students are, or need to be, comfortable with today’s communication technologies and the accompanying opportunities, and we should be willing to bring technology into the classroom. 

Ultimately, the distance separating me from the Drake students may have fostered more engaging and open dialogue on the issues presented because of the newness (and uncertain boundaries) of the relationship…

This was a great experience for me, and I learned a great deal about remote guest speakers, teaching in general, and my own scholarship…

You can read the complete post here.

Technology has enabled students in law school classes  to learn from experts and in this case,  nothing more than a computer, a webcam and an Internet connection was needed.

Collaboration

Last Friday, I attended the CELT conference hosted by Albany Law School.  The focus of the conference was ”emerging models for curricular and structural reform.”

David Thomson, the author of  Law School 2.0, was the keynote speaker Thursday evening.  His presentation is posted here.

 I was hoping to hear about innovative uses of technology in the classroom and also witness the use of technology by the presenters and I did see the following:

• One presenter Skyped in because she was unable to attend in person
• Most presenters used PowerPoint slideshows.
• Video clips examples were shown.
• U Pittsburgh prof uses Classroom Salons, a free social media tool developed by Carnegie Mellon U in his courses - very cool
• Clio, free client management software is used by one law school
• Diffusion – free web-based simulation game was used in the closing session activity

But what impressed me most was the opportunities for collaboration among professors from different law schools during most of the sessions:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This type of activity put the professor in the role of learner and also modeled of what they can do in the law school classroom with their students.

Quick & Easy Narrated PowerPoint Presentations

In the past, I have recommended using Adobe Presenter (now part of Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended) to add narations to PowerPoint slide shows. Many of our professors have used this tool in order to post PDFs of their narrated presentations for students to access on TWEN.

Now I discovered something even easier:

You just save your presentation as a PDF, upload it to HelloSlide and type the speech for each slide, instead of recording it. HelloSlide automatically generates the audio (in a British man’s voice).  You can edit it as many times as you need and you can even translate it into another language.

It is FREE for up to 50  presentations.  Each presentation must be under 100 MB.

Here’s one that I did in a few minutes introducing our school’s new portal -

Yes, you can only use the British man’s voice and he is very monotone and speaks too fast.  But it is quick and easy.

Another way to narrate your powerpoint is Present.me, a web tool that allows you to add a video narration to your PowerPoints.  Your slides and narration appear side by side and are easy to sync. The recordings on the FREE version are limited to 15 minutes in length, 50mb in size and 10 uploaded per month.

Lastly, there is MyBrainShark, a website that allows you to add your voice, background music, even survey questions to your documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos and photos. With MyBrainShark, you can create and record an unlimited number pf presentations.

Gov’t Ethics Online – Year Three

As in the previous years, we required the students to complete a pre-course survey.  9 out of 12 completed it. Here are the results:

A larger percentage of students than in past years have taken an online course before.

Also a larger percentage of students are quite familiar with TWEN.  Therefore, technology-wise, this course has started without a hitch (except for the usual copying & pasting without removing formatting issues).

So changes to the course do not involve technology.

Last year’s post course surveys alerted the professor about the following concerns:

• t times many of the students were reiterating the same points and weren’t able to take discussion beyond those points contained in the readings.”
• “Some students in the course felt they needed to pontificate and write a treatise each week with regards to the readings, when in reality students were trying to have a conversation.”
• “There were 17 parallel discussions going on, with each one being totally separate from the others. Because students had to follow the scoring rubric in order to score points, you had the statements being repeated again and again with very few truly original ideas being put forward. “
• There was also a request for the professor to play a more active role in the discussion forums such as, guiding the conversation, explaining things  that students might have missed, etc.
• More feedback was asked for also so that students know whether ”their discussion posts were on-point or not.”

As a result, this semester, the professor has been participating in the discussion forums by commenting on students’ postings.  She has also been emailing the class summary comments on students’ postings each week. She has been posting a comment in the TWEN gradebook to give guidance to students who lost more than 1 point in a discussion posting.

Changes are coming…

According to this article Apple, Publishers, Open-Source Dictate Law School Textbook Evolution, “electronic tablets will make paper books in law schools obsolete within a decade.”

On Jan. 19, 2012, Apple announced its iBook Author application for publishers, plus the iTunes U bookshelf application for students.

The next day, Thomson Reuters disclosed its intention to sell its law school publishing division. 

Last fall, CALI launched FREE law school e-textbooks called eLangdell.  CALI has nine titles already available and expects another half-dozen this year.

According to CALI’s director, John Mayer, “Our premise is that if it’s educational, you’ve got to give people the freedom to repurpose the material for educational goals… “The casebook is dead. “

So when will all law school textbooks go digital???

image from http://lawebooks.info/

What’s New (from CALI)?

Because of technological, economic, and market pressures, the way we practice law is rapidly evolving. Are students prepared? Are faculty interested in new avenues to cover in their courses to help prepare them?

CALI is offering a nine-week, online course on Topics in Digital Law Practice.

This course is designed to provide an overview of the changes that are occurring in the practice of law today, especially with respect to technology. It will introduce law students for real-world situations that they will encounter in the job market and point law professors to new avenues to cover in their courses.

The course will run for one hour a week for nine weeks and will feature a different guest speaker each week. Each class will be delivered via webcast and will have a 30 minute lecture presentation followed by a question & answer period and an online, interactive homework assignment for all course students to complete. There will be no formal assessment like midterms or a final exam.

The audience for this seminar is primarily law students and law faculty who will be given priority. Anyone else can join the course for one or all of the sessions. The presentations will be recorded and posted to the course blog.

The Seminar is FREE to all registered attendees.

Session Topics: (all at 2:00 pm ET)

1.      February 10, 2012 – The Virtual Law Office

2.      February 17, 2012 – Document Automation or February 18, 2012 – Document A Automation

3.      February 24, 2012 – Technology in Courts

4.      March 2, 2012 – Unbundling Legal Services

5.      March 9, 2012 – Online Legal Aid Forms

6.      March 16, 2012 – Contract Standardization

7.      March 23, 2012 – Free Legal Research

8.      March 30, 2012 – UPL in 21st Century

9.      April 6, 2012 – Soc. Media for Lawyers

Attendees need to register for the course, and they should follow the course website.

Within in seconds of anouncing this course through e-mail, this response was received: “This looks great. Someone from clinic will enroll.”

CALI has also added a new feature to their lessons that students are going to love: CALI Lesson resume.

• When a student leaves a lesson, the student can now return to the spot they left off with the scoring details saved.
   
• It’s automatic. It doesn’t matter if the student left the lesson by closing the browser, shutting down the computer, or losing internet connectivity. The only time resume is not available is when the student opts to “finalize” the lesson.
   
• While resume is automatic, we’ve added an “Exit & Resume Later” link. It offers a clear way for students to exit a lesson knowing they’ve saved their progress.
   
• To resume an open lesson, login to cali.org and, in the right hand menu, click “My Lesson Runs.” In the listed “current lesson runs,” you’ll find the resume link in the right column. Only lessons run after the first of the year have this option.
   
• When they reach the end of a lesson, students will now be given the option to complete and finalize the lesson. Once finalized, they cannot resume that lesson. They can, of course, run the same lesson again starting with a score of zero. There’s a “Complete the Lesson” link in the table of contents if the student would like to finalize the score prior to arriving on the final screen naturally.

Here’s a more detailed FAQ.

Students, ENJOY!!!!

Albany Law Faculty Workshop and CELT Series

Date: February 1, 2012        Time: 12:00-1:00 pm

Speaker:   Kim Novak Morse, Associate Director of Writing Support Services, St. Louis University

Topic:  “Laptops, Law Students, and Course Performance: An Empirical Sketch of the Contemporary Law Classroom” 

Abstract:

What are law students really doing behind those laptops? Is it as bad as we think? In an IRB-approved study, I captured the actual extent of 1-3Ls off-task laptop behavior over the semester.  Later, I correlated their off-task use with final course grade and LSAT scores.

The findings are rich with implications. Besides unexpected patterns of use, we learn students re-direct their attention back to class in consistent ways that, we as teachers, can orchestrate. This workshop offers concrete ways to re-direct students’ attention away from their laptops for more meaningful engagement. 

Professor Kim Novak Morse joined SLU LAW in 2005 after ten years of teaching critical reasoning, writing and research to undergraduates and graduates. Morse draws on her undergraduate and graduate studies in philosophy and writing pedagogy to make legal analysis and writing more accessible for the budding law student.

Morse is committed to developing student excellence in legal writing. Besides offering legal writing workshops throughout the academic year, she advises students on both class and non-class writing projects. In 2006, she founded the country’s first Student Legal Writers’ Association at the School of Law. In addition to offering writing events, the writers’ forum allows students to work on independent projects to develop their legal writing and research outside of class with the aim of publishing their scholarship. She has also filled the gap for regional law students wishing to sharpen their presentation and scholarship skills by establishing a successful Annual Law Student Symposium.

Professor Morse’s research interests include legal writing pedagogy, curriculum development, history of legal education, and law in higher education.

About 30 of our faculty attended this workshop.

BACKGROUND ON THE STUDY:

•  observational study of 6 law school classes (95 students for one semester)
  • 1L (Contracts & Crim Law)
  • 2 L (Taxation, other class opted out)
  • 3L (Sec. Transactions & Conflicts of Law)
• 6 Research Asst. observed 12 students at a time
• Timed students’ off task behavior – frequency & duration
• also observed classroom conditions when students were off-task

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

• What is the extent of laptop misuse in class?
• Is there a correlation between laptop misuse & course grade or misuse & LSATs?
• Whichclassroom behaviors promote off-task behavior?
• How can faculty re-direct students’ attention when they are off-task?

RESULTS:

• 2Ls were off-task more frequently & for longer duration.  3Ls the least likely to be off-task. (NOTE:  there were fewer 2Ls in the study and 3L classes were smaller in size… Did this skew the results?)
• Students with higher LSAT scores were off-task more frequently & for longer duration.
• There was no relationship between percentage of time off-task and final grade.
• There was no relationship between percentage of time off-task and LSAT scores.
• The following behaviors promoted off task behavior:  socratic method with 1 student, 1 student engaging prof, prof’s monotone voice, 40 min into the class, calling on students in a predicted order…

SUMMARY:

• Students are off-task but not as many or as often as we think.
• Students that are off-task aren’t the ones we may think.
• Being off-task doesn’t necessarily negatively affect one’s final grade.
• Rather than banning laptops in the classroom, professors should instead employ teaching methods that engage students and methods that will re-direct their attention when they do go off task.

Click HERE for Professor Morse’s presentation. (pdf)

Of course, the meaningful use of technology by faculty can re-direct students’ attention such as, PPT slides, interactive whiteboards.  There are also technology tools that can engage students in the classroom such as, clickers and online response systems.

Laptops are, for the most part, essential for law students as they take notes in class and summarize, organize and synthesize when they are hearing.

I am glad that Prof. Morse’s supported this!!

LexisAdvance for Law Schools is Here!

Everyone should have received this e-mail:

Dear….,

You now have access to Lexis Advance™. It will make your legal research faster, easier and retrieve more comprehensive and relevant results. All faculty, law students, law firms and government accounts now have access to Lexis Advance. Here’s all the information you need to register right now.

How to get started: You must register separately for Lexis Advance. Use the ID and password in this email to sign in by following the steps below.

1. Go to advance.lexis.com.
2. Enter your ID: xxxxxxx.
3. Enter your temporary password: xxxxxx.
4. Click Sign In (you’ll be prompted to create a new ID & password). You can use the SAME ID & PASSWORD AS lexis.com® if it meets the Lexis Advance criteria outlined here.

See what faculty and other legal professionals are saying about Lexis Advance. Once registered, learn more about Lexis Advance here.

So how is LexisAdvance different from WestlawNext®?

Check out Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library’s web page - https://www.law.csuohio.edu/lawlibrary/guides/wexisnextcompared

This page shows the Similarities of LexisAdvance (for Law Schools) and WestlawNext.  It also higlights 14 main Differences in LexisAdvance and WestlawNext.

There is also a comparison chart – https://www.law.csuohio.edu/lawlibrary/guides/wexisnextcompared#chart

**To be noted:

Integration with Course Management and other software

LEXISADVANCE Not yet integrated with LexisNexis Web Courses, CaseMap, and Lexis for Microsoft Office.

WESTLAWNEXT Integrated with TWEN.

However, Westlaw Next has been around longer so I am sure Lexis will be making updates in the coming year.

So take a look at the chart and the comparisons and judge for yourself!!

Mobile Apps for Law School

Welcome back students and faculty!

Thanks to UCLA School of Law for this great site: Guide Overview – Mobile Applications for Law Students and Lawyers – LibGuides at UCLA School of Law. 

It provides information about current mobile applications that might be of interest to law students and lawyers. You can download links for apps are provided for Android, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Blackberry, Palm, and other devices. (I did!!)

 

 Check back often as new apps will be posted regularly!

Albany Law’s Instructional Technology Blog – 2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.