At the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), one program was of particular interest to those who teach legal research: D7 - Instructional Technology in Teaching Legal Research: Tricks of the Trade in the Real and Virtual Classroom. More online courses throughout the United States and Europe are being taught, and the American Bar Association (ABA) has recognized both the demand and need for such courses in U.S. law schools. ABA Standard 306 allows law students to take up to 12 credit hours of their law school curriculum online, but no more than four credit hours per semester.
Three distinguished speakers talked about their experiences in teaching online Legal Research to law students or to law firm associates in July: Kristen Baginski, the University of Maryland’s Thurgood Marshall Law Library; Judith Ford Anspach, Indiana University’s Ruth Lilly Law Library; and Jennifer S. Murray, Assistant Director, Superior Court Law Library, Maricopa County, Arizona. They spoke of the instructional technologies they used, the challenges they faced, and the many benefits they observed during and after each time they taught an online course or training session. Susan Herrick, from the University of Maryland, was moderator.
Susan1 pointed out that one of the most challenging objectives of legal research instruction today is to keep pace with the technologies that students use in their daily lives. Students can do much of their legal research assignments at home or anywhere in the law school building, at the Starbucks around corner, and are less likely to do them in the library than a generation or two ago. Ms Herrick added that the ABA has looked at instructional technology in distance education in the context of the law school’s culture and attitude. She cautioned that we should not get lost in technology and make sure that our pedagogical goals of furthering excellence in legal research remains the priority.
Kristen Baginski2 was the first speaker during the program. Ms Baginski has much law firm experience and spent time at the University of Maryland teaching Advanced Legal Research (ALR) through Distance Learning. Kristen started off by saying that virtual learning is here to stay. The University of Maryland and other schools including Harvard have online classes and programs. Students today have expectations of taking online classes.
The University of Maryland began requiring ALR seven years ago. Without any formal “distance education” training, Kristen along with other teaching library faculty at Maryland began an online ALR course to offer to more students in an attempt to get through the backlog of third-year law students who were required to take the course. Ordinarily, there would be about 27 students in the traditional classroom course, but in an online ALR course they were able to get 70 students.
At Maryland, the library’s faculty would teach first-year legal research to law students in the spring and ALR in the fall. The online course was started in the summer. At the beginning, five librarians taught one course, but later decided to do it differently. They easily got approval from the curriculum committee for the online course. They had to make sure they were in compliance with the ABA guidelines. For example, there were certain ABA requirements for interaction.
More importantly, they needed buy-in from their Information Technology (IT) department to go beyond their traditional ALR classes. They found IT very willing and helpful to assist them all the time in this new adventure. Kristen described her IT as finding the online ALR proposal fun and educational for her students. Maryland’s IT had patience to instruct the ALR instructors.
The University of Maryland School of Law decided to use Blackboard.3 They used PowerPoint slides and blogs, and posted announcements to Blackboard. It was easy and familiar for students and faculty, because most used Blackboard at Maryland for the first-year class. They also used Captivate and PowerPoint voice-over. With very little money, Captivate allowed them to create PowerPoint voice-over, mouse-click demonstrations without a lot of ramping-up time. They could also add video. Kristen said that the class blog was very popular, but the discussion board was not.
Image from Kristen Baginski, University of Maryland School of Law, showing Adobe Captivate 2.
Image from Kristen Baginski, University of Maryland School of Law, showing PowerPoint Slide editing in Adobe Captivate 2.
There were four assignments and a final project for the course requirements. Most of the Maryland ALR students found the CALI exercises to be long, but Kristen said the Maryland instructors found them very useful and would use them again. Kristen posted pictures of each of the instructors to show how each of them looked. She also used the grade book feature of Blackboard.
Image from Kristen Baginski, University of Maryland School of Law, showing the Gradebook feature of Blackboard.
Image from Kristen Baginski, University of Maryland School of Law, showing a posted announcement regarding CALI.
Students at the bottom of the class found it hard to stay motivated at Maryland according to Kristen. Some students complained that time estimates were not true. Maryland instructors created treasure-hunting assignments. Although treasure hunts frustrated students, they felt the open-ended questions were not helpful in an online environment when instructors were not always present.
Judith Anspach,4 Director of the Ruth Lilly Law Library and Professor of Law at the Indiana University School of Law teaches a substantive course on Animal Law, and has taught ALR through Distance Learning since 2003. Her ALR course is a three-hour elective, which as she points out, might explain why her experiences differ slightly from Kristen’s. Professor Anspach pointed out that you do not have to be a techy to teach online. And teaching online doesn’t mean teaching just electronic resources. Judith used to teach ALR as a hybrid course - a three-hour session, where there is a two hour lecture, and a one hour hands-on module. She made the leap and taught the first online ALR during the spring semester of 2003.
Two years ago, the online course exceeded all of her expectations. Judith began teaching ALR online in the summer rather than the spring. She wanted to teach the online ALR to prove to the law school that there was a demand for online courses and a high demand for advanced legal research. Judith told the Registrar’s Office that she would take anyone to register for the course. Judith knew once the class began she had to get back to the students with timely feedback. She began with 36 students in the spring of 2003. The next time she taught it, the Registrar capped it at 30 students, and it closed in 5 minutes with a waiting list of 90. Judith then doubled it to 60 and let 6 more students into the class. She says that each time you teach it you decide to make it better. The number of students keeps growing. She added a fall and spring semester to the summer session in the hope that she can get the number down to 50 students next summer.
Judith also experimented with an online option for first-year students in their legal research and writing course. Thirty-five students were in Judith’s online first-year legal research class. The feedback was positive among her first-year students. Most said they did more work and were better prepared for their legal writing assignments than their counterparts in the traditional classroom. The main advantage is flexibility.
As Professor Anspach pointed out, with some students in an evening program, the price of gas, parking, flexibility, business trips, students with children, you cannot put a price on the value of an online ALR course she provides Indiana University students. Students can do the work anytime and anyplace; even all of the McDonalds in the Indianapolis area now have wireless Internet connections, so students can usually find an Internet connection to complete their assignments. While working on a module, they can stop and repeat a module, and work on a module some more. If they get stuck, they can email or call Judith. She can teach from anyplace that has an Internet connection. She doesn’t have to worry about getting someone to cover for her if she is out for a conference.
According to Professor Anspach, another advantage is that she can look at the material students drop off in her electronic inbox (on TWEN or Oncourse),5 and she can tell right away, which student doesn’t understand, for example, what a companion bill is after the completion of a legislative history module. That is something not easily found out in a traditional classroom setting. She points out that there has been a lot written about Generation X and the Millennials. Judith said that the modern student does like to multitask. Judith recalled one of her experiences while completing a teacher evaluation. While sitting in the back of a classroom, she could see students emailing, making airline reservations, doing crossword puzzles, and doing other tasks. The online ALR is better suited for multitasking students who can stop what they are doing, make an airline reservation, and then comeback to the module they are working in to complete the assignment.
A recent ABA study on distance education showed that a strong majority of students had a greater mastery of the subject matter after taking an online course and concluded it was among a student’s best law school experiences. This was consistent with the results that Professor Anspach found in her ALR class over the past few years. One disadvantage is the labor-intensiveness of the course. “It’s like writing a book rather than teaching a class” unless you revise every module you’ve done, according to Judith.
Another disadvantage is that you have to be online nights, weekends, and before you go to bed. You must maintain an online presence. You don’t lose communication with your students. Judith often gets messages from her students about their personal lives. Messages received about a puppy, recent marriage, or new baby boy or girl is not uncommon. Judith had gone from teaching 25 to 30 ALR students per year at Indiana University to 160 students in one year because of online instructional technology. She endorses the CALI lessons and the use of videos. Very clear instructions must always be given to ensure reasonable time management. You can cut down on your email by sending out announcements after receiving one email from one student. You can often anticipate a problem before it mushrooms.
The third speaker of the program was Jennifer S. Murray,6 the Assistant Director, Superior Court Law Library Library, Maricopa County, Arizona. Jennifer talked about the various technologies that can be used to teach legal research mostly in a law firm setting by focusing on the ones she used as a law firm librarian. A webinar is a synchronous communication. A recorded webinar is a webcast for people to view at a later time. A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration.7 A screencast is a subset of webcast.
Jennifer was in charge of training summer associates in 18 of their 23 offices nationwide. Rather than doing the training 18 times, she decided to do a record webinar so that associates throughout 18 offices could learn legal research. Her law firm used a recorded webinar to teach legal research to summer associates. The recorded webinar allowed associates to play the lesson at their convenience.8 They could pause the session or rewind to review a section using the navigation buttons. The lesson was done as a lecture. Only the presenter and host can be heard over the Internet.
Jennifer recommended recorded webcasting for those gun-shy of a full-blown online class - a hybrid alternative in an academic setting. Three popular webinar products are iLinc, Telstan, used by AALL, WebEx; two popular screencasting products are Captivate and Camtasia. She thought that screencasting was a much easier route for most to pursue.
Webinars, screencasts, and webcasts allow your instruction to be used 24x7. This is a way to accommodate users after hours. If associates or students don’t understand something, webinars and webcasts would help. That teachable moment might be at 2:00 a.m. If you need to Shepardize online after hours, a webinar would help.
Jennifer began recording webcasts by using a prepared script. She explained that even if you have taught before, if you just go online and start talking, you will have to go back and edit a lot if you don’t have a script. However, if you have a script, you can change what you need to change. You can change 3 minutes rather than change 30 minutes all over again. Using a script, you would have better quality in less time.
Once your script is done, you have to do the recording. Jennifer recommended putting a note on the door and go completely offline because if you do the recording at work, someone is likely to knock on your, call you on the phone, or instant message you. Unfortunately, webcast recorders will capture any interruptions on your screen. It’s the opposite of what we normally do, but if we can ask our colleagues not to contact us unless it’s urgent for about 90 minutes, you can produce a high quality webinar.
Initially, it is a steep learning curve. Jennifer recommended allowing about 90 minutes to create your first webinar. The curve should come down, perhaps to 45 minutes to do the next half-hour webinar. Any of the webinar products will have good editing technology. She suggested that when recording a webinar to make strategic pauses, knowing where you are going to re-record. She also cautioned about file sizes that can be quite large and the need to talk to IT because there could be file server space issues.
As far as applications possible in an academic setting for ALR and seminar students, Jennifer referenced a talk given by Harvard’s Terri Gallego O'Rourke9 regarding the benefits of webcasts to international LL.M. students where English is a second language. Recorded technology allows international students to replay and work on modules in an in-depth manner.
During the question and answer session, Kristen Baginski pointed out that Maryland had originally incorporated print materials and required students to use a substantial law library in the greater Baltimore area. Then, they changed to online sources only. They did not make access to a law library a requirement. They do discuss print sources and rely on screen shots of print material in the CALI materials. Judith Anspach explained that when her course was originally taught in the spring semester students were all at the law school in Indianapolis. However, in the summer, they are spread all over the country. Therefore, she uses a text with good illustrations and PowerPoint screenshots and CALI materials to discuss print materials. In the law firm setting, Jennifer used PDFs, screencasing, and recorded webinars that compared Westlaw, Lexis, and print materials.
The three presenters, Kristen, Judith, and Jennifer, brought out the various instructional technologies and applications for teaching legal research to today’s law student. Much has changed in law libraries and legal research over the past 30 years. Students prefer to do legal research when they want to and where they want to, no longer confined by time and space. As librarians, we need to anticipate their needs, and stay ahead of the learning curve. These three presenters, and their moderator, Susan Herrick, were able to do this along with their many other duties. In the end, the librarian continues to be seen as the leader among legal researchers and research instructors armed with new educational technology and the knowledge to use it wisely.
1 Susan Herrick teaches Advanced Legal Research: Health Law and LAWRII: Research at the University of Maryland School of Law.
2 Kristen Baginski has just recently become the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Mayor of Pittsburgh. USMAI Consortium of Libraries E~News, no. 11, p. 8 (June 7, 2007). Prior to joining University of Maryland, Kristen was the Research/Instructional Librarian for Reed Smith’s Philadelphia office. Prior to that, Kristen was a Legal Analyst for LexisNexis, where she participated in the creation of indexes for a variety of state statutory codes. University of Maryland Thurgood Law Library News, Library News for September 2004, “Featured Staff: New Librarians Sustain Collaboration,” available at http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/librarynews/newsarchive.asp?month=September&year=2004 (last visited August 26, 2007).
3 Note that Blackboard is similar to Oncourse, WebCT, TWEN, and LexisNexis web course products. This author endorses no web course product but is only reporting the experiences presented by this speaker during this AALL program.
4 Previously the Law Library Director at Hofstra University, University of New Mexico, and Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
5 Note that TWEN or Oncourse is similar to Blackboard or LexisNexis web course products. This author endorses no web course product but is only reporting the experiences presented by this speaker during this AALL program.
6 Previously at Greenberg Traurig, Arizona State University’s Ross-Blakley Law Library, and the University of Southern California Law Library.
7 Wikipedia, Definition of Screencast, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast (last visited August 26, 2007).
8 Introduction to QuickBooks Point of Sale v5.0 Certification, available at http://accountant.intuit.com/member_programs/qb_advisor/pos_cert/poscert50_introduction.ppt (last visited August 26, 2007).
9 Reference Librarian, Anglo-American Law & Instructional Services Coordinator, Harvard Law School Library.
