Survey Says…Halfway Point in Our Online Course

 

According to the above Mid-Semester survey questions (based on 17 out of 22 who responded):

• 65% were spending 5-10 hours of course work. This is in line with course expectations.
• 65% felt that this was the amount of time that they expected. This what we told them at the face-to-face meeting.
• 53% felt that they were taking a more active role in class discussion on-line than they might have it the class were live.  This is what we were hoping!!
• 100% felt that the discussion questions were focused yet open-ended enough to allow for differing points of view. Perfect!!!
• 71%  were satisfied with the virtual discussion as it stands-  in others words, there shouldn’t be more or less responses to inital postings. So we will keep the required responses to initial posting the same.
• 65% felt that TWEN works well as a course management system for an online class.  This is good since since this is what most of the face-to-face courses here use.
• 76% were pleased so far with their experience taking an online course. Phew!!!

The students’ responses are very positive. 

Another survey is planned which will be directed toward student reaction to  the wikis and the group project. 

 The end of the course survey will include more open-ended questions and allow for more  feedback.

More TWEN Updates

• Customer Support Button/Page – (Based on customer feedback!)
  A new large, red “Customer Support” button has been placed at the top of every page on lawschool.westlaw.com/TWEN. When a faculty or student clicks on the button, they will be brought to the “Contact Us” page, which has also been redesigned with more clear information about how to utilize our 24X7 support options.
• Send to a Friend – (NEW, Starting Monday, 3/8/2010)
  We have implemented a new feature that will allow Westlaw Research User Guides (located on the User Guide tab) to be sent to multiple email addresses. Professors, students and account managers can share Westlaw research guides quickly to multiple people. To use the feature, just click the e‐mail envelope icon next to the user guide. From there, you can add multiple email addresses. The recipient will receive an email with the url link to the user guide. The email indicates who the sender was.
• Live Discussion/Chat (Starting Thursday 3/4/2010)
  Our upgrade to a more recent version of ChatBlazer for live discussions involves:
   Improved connectivity for customers during a chat
   Transcripts of moderated discussions will now display the moderator name, along with the original poster’s name (in the previous version, the original poster’s name was not displayed when the moderator releases the text)
   Images can now be uploaded to the discussions
   Emoticons can now be used
   Time zones – all Live Discussions are defaulted to Central Time and textual notes have been added that state: Please note that all date/time stamps are in Central time
   A slightly improved look and feel to the discussion room itself
• OnePass Re‐authentication for Public Records
  If a customer has their OnePass credentials saved on their computer, and then tries to access a public record within certain sensitive public records databases, they will be required to reauthenticate (i.e. enter their OnePass credentials again) before they will be allowed to enter the database/view the documents. The affected databases are: CRIM, RPF, RPALL, RPA, and RPT.
• E‐Mail Options – (Based on customer feedback!)
  When a customer selects the “All Participants” e‐mail option, the boxes next to eachparticipant’s will be checked. If the customer then proceeds to de‐select certain students from the list, the “All Participants” option will be de‐selected as well. All emails were being sent previously, but the lack of checked boxes next to recipient names caused some confusion.
• Upgraded HTML Editor – (NEW!)
  Students and faculty using an iPhone can now post to a document page or forum using the HTML editor on TWEN.
• Sign‐Up Sheets – (Based on customer feedback!)
  We modified the language on manual item sign‐up sheets to be more intuitive for customers. Text has been changed to: “For your participants to sign‐up, you must enter at least one item in the available boxes. To add more items than the current boxes allow, click Add More Items.”
• Wiki – (NEW!)
  The allowable number of stored (and comparable) versions of a wiki has been increased from 20 to 100. Look for usage tracking for Wiki in an upcoming release.
• OnePass Seamless Authentication Issue
  Users were being inconvenienced by having to log‐in with their OnePass again when they had clicked on “Westlaw Research”, after they have clicked on any sub‐navigational tabs within Lawschool.westlaw.com. This has been corrected, and now customers’ log‐in information is persisted throughout the session.
• Faculty Support Tool – (NEW!)
  Please ask your Academic Account Manager about this feature intended for faculty admin assistants, library staff, and other support personnel at your school.
• OnePass
  We continue to make improvements to our registration process and password retrieval process as we near the final transition date of May 31st 2010. All faculty and students will need to have a strong OnePass account by this date, and we are continuously coding solutions and improving our on screen help to assist customers through the process.

View a demo of the Spring TWEN Enhancements Here.

Collaboration and Sharing Among Faculty

We encourage students to collaborate using wikis, blogs and e-mail. 

How does technology provide opportunities for faculty collaboration and sharing especially for those professors who are teaching their discipline for the first time.

A post on the Best Practices blog called on law professors to share  their selection of a coursebook,  learning goals and outcomes,  formative assessment techniques, etc. for the teaching of Contracts.

 One professor, responded: “My syllabus and powerpoint slides can be found on West’s Law School Exchange (http://exchange.westlaw.com).  Click on Groups, then on Recently Created Groups, then scroll down to “Contracts with Crandall & Whaley.”

Here is a list of collaboration tools for law professors-

Law School Exchange -  an online community that allows law school faculty to share, digitally publish, and find scholarship and teaching materials in collaboration  with an online community of peers. LSE also seamlessly integrates with TWEN. Once added to TWEN, material may be moved in and out of folders, hidden from students, and displayed upon entry. For more information, go to http://exchange.westlaw.com

Cali’s Classcaster -  provides faculty of CALI member schools with a way to interact with students and other law school communities. Through  the creation of a blog, faculty can upload audio recordings of their classes which can be listened to by students and other faculty. For more information, go to: http://classcaster.org

Cali’s Lawdfiles -10 minute audio recordings of law professors answering a very specific question that students will likely encounter in law school. For more information, go to: http://www.cali.org/content/lawdibles 

Cali Lessons - are developed by CALI, authored by law professors, used by law students, broken down into different topics under each class subject, and authored in a way that uses interactivity and variety as teaching techniques to help students master what is taught in law school. There are over 800 lessons in the CALi database.  These lessons can be linked to TWEN and LexisNexis web course. For more information, go to: http://www.cali.org/

 Cali’s Legal Education Commons - a  place to find and share legal education materials including cases, syllabi, podcasts, presentations, and more.  Faculty and librarians from CALI member schools can upload materials under a Creative Commons license that allows colleagues and students to find and use the materials. For more information, go to: http://www.cali.org/content/legal-education-commons

 Westlaw Twen  – an online extension of the law school classroom where professors can post syllabi, course materials, weblinks, audio recordings, ppt slides, etc. Professors can make their TWEN course available for National enrollment or allow other professors at their own school access to their courses. For more information, go to: https://lawschool.westlaw.com/shared/marketInfoDisplay.asp?code=MI&id=266 (must be logged in with WestLaw id).

 LexisNexis Web Courses – similiar to TWEN.  Professors can enroll in other courses other than their own. For more information, go to: http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/webcourses/faq_faculty.asp 

Cali’s eLangdell -  an online tool for creating, remixing, editing, and publishing legal coursepacks or even casebooks.  Law professors can submit a proposal to CALI for a writing a chapter and if accepted, CALI will publish it as an e-book.

-

-

 Center for Excellence in Law Teaching (CELT) – Albany Law School has created a web site to document ongoing reform and to support teaching and curriculum enhancement. The site links to  law teaching resources, Albany Law inititiatives and the Best Practices blog .  For more information, go to: http://www.teachinglawstudents.com.

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, organized by Gonzaga University School of Law and Washburn University School of Law,  provides materials that can be used to enhance teaching and learning in law school. It also publishes The Law Teacher twice a year. Professors are encouraged to submit brief articles explaining interesting and practical ideas to help other law professors become more effective teachers. For more information, go to:  http://lawteaching.org/

Law Professor Blogs is a network of blogs designed to assist law professors in their scholarship and teaching. Each site focuses on a particular area of law and combines both regularly-updated permanent resources and links, and daily news and information of interest to law professors. For more information, go to: http://www.lawprofessorblogs.com/

Spring 2010 Enhancements for TWEN

A new large, red “Customer Support” button has been placed at the top of every page on http://lawschool.westlaw.com/TWEN .

Course administrators now have the ability to create wiki pages for their courses.

The TWEN email feature gives users the ability to save drafts of crafted e-mails for future use.

Increased flexibility on Document Page, including the ability to hide entire folders and move documents among document pages for the course.

  

View a demo of the Spring TWEN Enhancements Here.

What Do Students Want? (related to Technology)

According to a recent article in Campus Technology, Carol Smith, CIO at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, gained her insight into student needs through the indirect approach of observing needs that students don’t always overtly express.

Here’s what she found that students want:

• Event calendaring - an easier way for them to manage their schedules in order to prevent scheduling conflicts
• Collaboration support - a way to allow students to work on and share documents with each other and to make sure faculty members are more aware of what collaboration tools can be used in the classroom, and encourage students to use these tools.

Wayne Brown, VP for IT at Excelsior College (online) cautions that ”while student expectations may have an impact on prioritization of technology projects, those expectations can’t drive decision-making for IT leaders.”

It is, of course, a challenge is to keep up with student needs, especially when technology keeps changing. To make sure IT keeps up, Case Western has put together an emerging technology group.

Lev Gonick ,VP for IT services and CIO at Case Western Reserve University (OH) suggests two areas for IT leaders to watch:

• “YouTube meets the classroom” - using video to allow students to create more personalized learning
• Helping to organize “the tsunami of educational resources available to students.”

So what do law students want? 

Multitasking law student

Informal surveys and discussions have revealed that our law students want  much of  what is mentioned in the Campus Technology article.

Both of  the course management systems (Lexis Blackboard and Westlaw Twen) used by law schools are looking at updating  their calendaring functionality and collaboration tools.  Blackboard already has discussion boards and the ability to sync directly to Facebook.  TWEN offers discussion forums and wikis as well as a master calendar.  Its document pages have RSS feeds. (See these posts written by a 3L Albany Law student – 2010 Guide to Technology: Basic RSS ,  2010 Guide to Technology: Advanced RSS )

Students have been making digital videos to improve their lawyering skills. CALI offers interactive exercises related to law school content.  Lexis & Wedtlaw are the databases used by law students for legal research.

However, in order to enhance the educational experience of law students, these technology tools must be used by faculty and they must be used effectively.

ELI’s Seven Things You Should Know

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI’s) 7 Things You Should Know About… series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. Each brief focuses on a single technology or practice and describes:

• What it is
• How it works
• Where it is going
• Why it matters to teaching and learning

This is a great place to go to quickly learn about the latest technologies. Here are some examples:

• 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools
•  7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave 
•  7 Things You Should Know About Collaborative Annotation
• 7 Things You Should Know About Telepresence
• 7 Things You Should Know About Microblogging
• 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments
•  7 Things You Should Know About Lecture Capture
• 7 Things You Should Know About Flip Camcorders
• 7 Things You Should Know About YouTube
• 7 Things You Should Know About Blogs
• 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis
• 7 Things You Should Know About Podcasting
• 7 Things You Should Know About Creative Commons
• 7 Things You Should Know About RSS
• 7 Things You Should Know About Screencasting
• 7 Things You Should Know About Skype
• 7 Things You Should Know About Google Apps
• 7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
• 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook II
• 7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Worlds
• 7 Things You Should Know About Clickers

and many more….

The Medium is the Message

To quote Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message.  In this case, the medium  is “online education.”

According to several sources, online education is superior to face-to-face instruction. See: Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies.  Also See the NY Times article Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom.

Ralph Losey in his post entitled, Why Online Education Will Surpass Traditional Face-to-Face Education in the Next 5-10 Years  discusses what online education should and will look like in the future and why online education is already better than traditional classroom instruction.

Another article by Mark Kassop from the Technology Source lists 10 ways in which online learing excels over traditional classes. Though it was written in 2003, his arguments are even more valid today.

Consequently, in his blog, Losey calls “upon all schools to embrace this coming change, including law schools and the ABA which accredits them.”

NYU already offers an  online program where students can receive online all but two credits of the Master of Laws in Taxation. Albany Law School is currently offering Government Ethics Online. 

Will other law schools follow suit?

New Westlaw and Lexis Platforms in 2010

Westlaw launched an entirely revamped online search service called WestlawNext on Feb. 1, 2010.

All the links relating to WestlawNext are posted on this page - http://legalcurrent.com/2010/01/29/legal-links-of-the-week-westlawnext/

Lexis plans to follow with its own revamped platform later this year.

Both platforms are aiming to be easier to use and more aesthetically pleasing.

LexisNexis also unveiled at LegalTech in New York this week its newest offering: a partnership with Microsoft.

Lexis will now be integrated into Microsoft Office products, allowing users to do legal and general research directly while working in Microsoft Word, Outlook and SharePoint. Users, who must have a Lexis subscription, need only click on a Lexis tab in the ribbon of utilities available in Microsoft Office 2007 and the forthcoming 2010 version to start researching, Shepardizing cases or even gathering information from Bing or Google search engines. There is no need to navigate separately to the Web and log on to Lexis or a search engine.

Here’s how it works from the press release:

While reviewing a Word document or an Outlook e-mail message, Lexis for Microsoft Office users can seamlessly access content and resources from LexisNexis, the open Web, or their law firm or corporate files. Key features include:

“Search” – A single search box that delivers one-click access to the vast collection of legal content from LexisNexis, the open Web and the user’s internal company information database. Results from all sources are displayed in a window next to the active document.

“Background” – This function provides background information on “entities” such as people, companies, organizations and cases mentioned in the text of a Word document or Outlook message. It automatically indexes the working document with hyperlinks to relevant information from internal, LexisNexis and Web resources. Upon clicking the hyperlink, the information is displayed in a side pane within the Microsoft Office applications. The Background feature will also display full Shepard’s® reports and apply Shepard’s® SignalTM indicators directly to the cases cited within the text of the document. Full text versions of case law, news and information cited within an e-mail message or Word document can also be accessed through the lexis.com® resources directly within the Microsoft software application.

“Suggest” – Similar to the Background function, this functionality interacts with any text in a Word document or Outlook message. By manually highlighting text, the user can prompt a search that will pull up relevant information from internal, LexisNexis and Web resources. The content is displayed in a side pane within the application

and the Westlaw vs Lexis competition goes on………..

More Iphone Apps for Law Students

 iPhone now offers a BARBRI Alternative for Calif. Test Takers that cost $1000. (Will NY be far behind?)

There is also a  new iPhone app from Fastcase which makes  it possible to perform legal research just about anywhere—and both the app and the research are free.

Other iPhone apps:

• Black’s Law Dictionary 8th Ed with Audio Pronunciations
• CLE Mobile From West LegalEdcenter
• The Constitution of the United States with Audio Narration

 

WordPress even offers an iPhone app to be able to post and upload content  to one’s blog.

Two Useful Free Tools for Staff Development

As new technologies emerge, it is crucial to offer staff development opportunities to faculty so that they can learn to use these tools.  To meet the challenges of their busy schedules, an alternative to face-to-face workshops needs to be  implemented.

That’s where Jing and Screencast.com come into play.

Jing by TechSmith  is a fast and easy way to capture images and create videos of what you see on your screen. You can use this software to capture screen shots to create directions that can posted online or e-mailed.

Here’s one on “How to embed a YouTube Video in TWEN.”

You can also use it with a microphone to add audio to the video capture of the screen. In other words, making an instructional video that can be shared.

Here’s one on “How to embed a Slideshare.net  ppt in TWEN” – http://www.screencast.com/t/MTU5MDI2 

Screencast.com is TechSmith’s media hosting solution that Jing uses to securely host your content.  The video that is created with Jing is a flash video.  With Screencast.com, you can upload your Jing video and provide others with a weblink to watch the instructional video or you can embed the video into a webpage.  You can also shore screenshots images here.

Both of these tools are FREE!

 (For an additional cost, you can purchase upgraded versions with more storage space and more options.)

*****************************

From this blog  post, I just learned about another FREE screencasting application called Screenr.  It is different than Jing in that you do not have to download any software; it is entirely web-based. It captures what you do on your screen and then converts it a web video format and can post a notification to Twitter. You can then download the video as an MP4 movie file and upload to an iPhone or iPod.

Here’s my first one: http://screenr.com/bZd