Saturday, February 27, 2010
This is more of a note to myself than anything else. The course feedback forms for my Discovery class (the first I've ever gotten) suggest that there are several things that the students would like to see. Some are beyond my control-- I can't make it a semester-long offering, and making it a two credit class would be a bigger lift than I feel like I could handle. They'd like the materials posted earlier, and that I can do. Next time I'll put it all up at the beginning. This was the first year I'd used UBLearns; in years past I used the law school's web site. It would be nice if I could keep the UBLearns site up all the time, and just keep posting to it, but that is probably not happening either.
I did a little more lecture this term than I have in the past, but I did not give a lecture on the basic structure of a deposition. I'll do that next time. One or two wanted more material on discovery issues apart from depositions. I thought I had that covered, (we talked about other discovery devices, we talked about e-discovery and some other stuff) but I can add more.
This year's group was unusually strong I thought, and it was a lot of fun to work with students who were so enthusiastic. Someone suggested that I "allowed one student to dominate". I try hard to avoid this, and I'm a little surprised by the criticism, but I'll make a note of it. My usual practice is to be Socratic, and to spread things around, but sometimes after batting things around it is tempting to go to the student who you know will have the answer, if only so that the necessary point can be made and the class can move on. A couple of students suggested that the organization of the course could use more structure. I'm not sure how I'll approach this- I followed my syllabus, and we covered a lot of ground. Maybe the solution is to tie the theme of the case materials we are using to the case we are going to cover in the next class, instead of commenting on the case materials in the lecture that follows. Instead of "Last time we saw an example of how to use documentary materials..." tell them about the issues in the next problem and talk about approaches to those issues. I'm not crazy about that-- I like giving them problems and making them wrestle with the problem themselves before I suggest possible solutions.
I did a little more lecture this term than I have in the past, but I did not give a lecture on the basic structure of a deposition. I'll do that next time. One or two wanted more material on discovery issues apart from depositions. I thought I had that covered, (we talked about other discovery devices, we talked about e-discovery and some other stuff) but I can add more.
This year's group was unusually strong I thought, and it was a lot of fun to work with students who were so enthusiastic. Someone suggested that I "allowed one student to dominate". I try hard to avoid this, and I'm a little surprised by the criticism, but I'll make a note of it. My usual practice is to be Socratic, and to spread things around, but sometimes after batting things around it is tempting to go to the student who you know will have the answer, if only so that the necessary point can be made and the class can move on. A couple of students suggested that the organization of the course could use more structure. I'm not sure how I'll approach this- I followed my syllabus, and we covered a lot of ground. Maybe the solution is to tie the theme of the case materials we are using to the case we are going to cover in the next class, instead of commenting on the case materials in the lecture that follows. Instead of "Last time we saw an example of how to use documentary materials..." tell them about the issues in the next problem and talk about approaches to those issues. I'm not crazy about that-- I like giving them problems and making them wrestle with the problem themselves before I suggest possible solutions.
// posted by Bill @ 3:51 PM 
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