Association of American Law Schools
2001 Annual Meeting
Wednesday, January 3, 2001 - Saturday, January 6, 2001
San Francisco, California

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Wednesday, January 3, 2001, 2:00-5:00 p.m.
AALS Committee on Libraries and Technology

Distance Education in Law Schools: Rhetoric vs. Reality; Passion vs. Practicality

Richard A. Matasar*

  1. The Challenge of Teaching and Learning in a .Edu World
    1. Where We [the Carbon Paper Generation] Came From
      1. Active and Passive Learning
        1. Personally Interactive
        2. Listeners, Informative, Boring?
      2. Lecture-One Performance
        1. Live Theater
        2. Movies
        3. Radio
      3. Discussion Play Groups
      4. Yoda and Luke
        1. All Knowing Mentor
        2. Solitary Learning
      5. Read, Listen, Respond
    2. Where They [the .Com/Edu Generation] are Coming From
      1. Active and Passive learning Revisited
        1. Remotely Interactive
        2. Entertained Consumers of Information
      2. Entertainment Menus
        1. Television
        2. DVD
        3. Napster
      3. Strangers in Threaded Discussion Groups
      4. X-Men
        1. Mentor/Guide
        2. Peer Teachers
      5. Posing Questions and Responding in Emoticons
  2. Distance Learning-What’s Old; What’s New
    1. Definition
      1. Learning Outside of the Classroom
      2. Learning without Personal Interaction
    2. Old Style Distance Learning: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
      1. Reading (books, treatises, stuff!)
      2. The Reserve List
      3. Study Groups
      4. Correspondence Courses
      5. Independent Study
    3. New Style Distance Learning: Low to High Tech
      1. Audi-Video Tape; E-books
      2. The Web Site
      3. Threaded Discussions
      4. Synchronous Video Feeds
  3. Confrontation of Legal Education and New Style Distance Education
    1. Melding New Learning Styles, Old Teaching Methods, and Distance Learning
      1. Teaching to Today’s Students: to Entertain or not to Entertain
      2. Extending the Classroom: the Mother of all Study Groups
      3. Marketing our Educational Product
      4. Virtual Interaction
    2. Bridging the Gap: Administering between Us and Them
      1. Spreading the Word that the World is Changing
      2. Tapping Entrepreneurial Spirit
      3. Defining the Issue
        1. Distance Experiments
        2. CLE
        3. Adult Education
        4. Web Site
        5. Classes
        6. On-Line Degrees-Certificates, Masters, JD
      4. For Fun or Profit or Both
    3. Defining Law School Issues
      1. Why bother
      2. Internal Justifications
        1. Different Learning Styles
        2. Student Convenience
        3. Faculty Convenience
        4. Revenue Potential
      3. External Justifications
        1. Reputation
        2. Meeting Competition
        3. Creating a New Market
    4. Implementation Issues
      1. Choosing a Delivery System
        1. Technology Mix
        2. To Partner or Go it Alone
      2. Partners
        1. University
        2. New Venture
        3. External Vendors
      3. Going it Alone
        1. Audio-Visuals
        2. The Web
        3. Web TV
        4. Teleconference
        5. Satellite
      4. Costs and Benefits of the External Vendor
        1. 24/7 is Possible
        2. Income and Cost Sharing
        3. Dependency
        4. Reliability
      5. Costs and Benefits of Going it Alone
        1. No One to Blame
        2. Independence
        3. 20/5 Maybe
        4. Resource Choices must be Made
      6. Pesky Regulators: Jurisdiction over Various Products
        1. The ABA
        2. State Boards
        3. Regional Boards
        4. State Legislature
  4. Assessing the Value of the Enterprise
    1. Is Any of this Worth Anything?
      1. Fads Come and Go
      2. Core or Periphery
      3. Distractions from Mission
    2. Quality of the Teaching/Learning Environment
      1. Getting Faculty to Play
      2. Pandering to Consumers or Responding to a New Environment
    3. E-Community
      1. The Absent Faculty
      2. Passive Students
      3. New Voices Possible
      4. Life-Long Learning Communities
        1. Alums and Friends
        2. The Archive
  5. Envisioning the Future
    1. Consortia
      1. Linking Diverse Strengths
      2. Reducing Overall Costs
      3. Expanding Markets
    2. Brand Names
      1. Polo College of Law
      2. Get with the Program or Get Out
    3. Bottom-Feeders
      1. Billy Bob’s Law School
      2. Come One; Come All; Let the Bar Sort it out Later
    4. Low Cost Alternatives
      1. Reducing Student Debt
      2. Reducing Institutional Cost
    5. Law Writ Large
      1. Mass Markets for Law
      2. General Education

* Dean and President, New York Law School.

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