Delivering and Using Digital Course Materials

  Douglas Leslie, University of Virginia

 

Three questions.

 

I. There are three questions to answer before choosing digital teaching materials or adopting digital tools in the classroom.

 

A. What do I want the students to learn?

B. Why?

C. What are the best tools to accomplish my goal?

 

II. The questions and their answers are critical because the best way of disseminating doctrine is not the best way of teaching students to think.

 

A. Teaching doctrine is best accomplished through lectures. They may employ a variety of audiovisual techniques. Teaching doctrine does not require that there be a classroom or a live person doing the teaching.

B. Teaching students to think cannot be accomplished at the same time that they are being asked to absorb and memorize doctrine. Teaching students to think requires interaction between teacher and student, and between student and student. This does not happen when students are typing doctrine into their computers or watching Powerpoint presentations.

C. So, lecture to teach doctrine, but not to teach students to think.

 

III. Why teach doctrine?

A. Teach doctrine in order to have something to cover on the examination. This is not a good justification.

B. Teach doctrine so the students will remember the rules when they are in practice. This is naïve. Do you think they save their outlines, or recall even a year later what the “four unities” are used for?

C. Get them ready for the bar exam. The bar review courses do that.

D. Teach doctrine to provide the material that will be used to teach thinking. This makes sense, but it does not justify a teaching technique from which students believe the best strategy is to prepare a 70-page doctrinal outline.

 

IV. What does it mean to teach students how to think?

A. Students need to learn to read (analyze) cases (and statutes) and to develop arguments on the issues.

B. Learning in this sense is a life-long undertaking. Tiger Woods practices.

 

Digital course materials and digital class presentations.

 

I. Digital course materials should be used only if they are animated. If they sing or dance, they need to be digital. Otherwise, they can be hard copy.

A. Don't put your text materials on the internet. It only adds a level of complexity. Send them to the copy center.

B. If you want students to remember doctrine, put it in song. “Hi, I'm Time. I'm one of the Unity sisters. My sisters are Title, Interest, and Possession.” The four sisters then sing, “We are family. Got all my sisters with me. We are family. Make up a joint tenancy.” For this you will need digital technology, otherwise not.

C. Digital case books. It has been tried. It failed. Why?

 

II. Digital lecture teaching.

A. Digitalizing your lecture gives you something to do with your spare time. It makes you look “cutting edge.” It usually results in a bad class.

B. Powerpoint encounters the TV generation of students. Eyes become fixed on the screen. Discussion is nill. Even more than before, the professor is on the top of the hill, delivering wisdom to the admiring masses.

C. Students have the Powerpoint slides before class, and so they zone out in class. Or, students don't have the slides before class, and they all write down every word in the slides. Or, the slides go by so fast the students cannot copy them down, in which case watch your back when leaving the class room.

D. If you would not have put it on the chalkboard, hesitate to put it on a slide. Having a slide saves time and substitutes for bad chalkmenship. But, technology should not drive the class.

E. The four best lecturers I have seen: one used animation, one used a chart, and two used no props whatsoever.

F. Typical law school uses of Powerpoint and its best use.

 

III. Why internet delivery of class materials?

A. Don't deliver materials over the internet, take them to the copy center.

B. For materials needing animation, burn them to CDs and distribute the CDs to the students.

C. If you want to sell your materials without a commercial publisher, internet delivery may be the choice. Distributing materials to students over the internet for free is not difficult. But best to have some family money.

 

Selling course materials over the internet.

 

I. An illustration (also a shameless plug): www.CaseFileMethod.com. It is my site for selling course materials. The first two CaseFiles in each set are not password protected, so check one out.

A. What the site offers.

B. It works for CaseFiles but could it work for traditional case books and doctrine courses?

 

II. The site.

A. How to acquire a website and why you may not be able to use the webspace provided by your school.

B. Website look and feel. This is a consumption good if you do it yourself—the warm and fuzzy feeling you get by spending mega-hours building a beautiful mansion-site when a log cabin-site would serve the same purpose.

 

III. How to collect revenues.

A. Dealing with buyers that cannot remember their passwords, or with those who hit “purchase” five times (my current record).

B. Why sales tax could put an end to such projects.