Ten Takeaways I Have Learned Along the Way
ACC Annual Meeting
October 17, 2016
So You Want to Teach!
Ten Takeaways I Have Learned Along the Way**
Frederick J. Krebs
1.You have a variety of resources available to you—use them! For example, Georgetown provides a wealth of information, including explanatory memos as well as seminars on topics such as preparing to teach, using technology and library resources, drafting and grading exams and teaching foreign trained students. I suspect most schools offer similar support—use it. Appendix A provides excerpts from the memorandum Georgetown Law provides on Best Practices for Course Design and Management.
Appendix B suggests some books about teaching and the in-house practice that you might find helpful. You mightalso consider contacting ACC about using some of its practice resources.
2.Start at the end when you develop your course. Identify what you want the students to learn or the skills you want them to develop and work back from there.
3.Know why you have placed every document in the reading list and edit closely. It is easy to stick a number of articles or cases in and overwhelm the students.
4.Specify your expectations up front for items such as attendance and class participation. For example, if you require attendance (and I think you should) tell them and grade for attendance. Explain failure to attend will affect their final grade and why.Discuss the importance of participation, encourage it and be supportive when students do participate. People do not learn when they are scared.
5.Seek student feedback. Ask them for suggestions as the semester proceeds and either follow them or explain to the students why not. Do not simply ignore them.
6.Read the student evaluations at the end of the semester and use them to improve the following year. I frequently incorporate what I learned from student comments about the previous class into my opening discussion on expectations the next year.
7.Consider team teaching. Your schedule may need some flexibility as you likely are very busy and unexpected work demands may arise.
8.Be practical and bring the students out of their ivory tower. Move away from academic minutiae and play to your strength—exposure to what it is like in the real world and things they can use when they practice law. Try to use current events to stimulate discussion. Encourage students to circulate articles on breaking matters relevant to your topics and discuss them. You may find some useful resources on the ACC website, especially when you focus on the practical.
9.Consider using guest speakers but be sure to work with them so they are prepared and do not just offer war stories without a purpose. Their personal stories or anecdotes can spice up the class and emphasize the practical impact of the issues being discussed. You have a wealth of contacts—use them when it is appropriate.
10.Be prepared. Teaching will be a challenge and require more work than you anticipated but you will be impressed by your students. They are sharp and want to learn. Help them do so and have fun!
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**These takeaways include things I learned from my students at Georgetown as well as ideas that I picked up fromcurrent and former participants in this Annual Meeting session including, David Benck, Pat Hatler, Mark Roellig, Mike Roster, Stephanie Sciullo, Danette Wineberg and John Villa. Thank you.
APPENDIX A
Excerpts from Georgetown Law July 25, 2016 Memorandum on
Best Practices for Course Design and Management
(Prepared for Georgetown Faculty and used with permission)
Course Syllabi
Basic Information – what every syllabus should contain
We expect faculty to draft a syllabus for each course that they teach and to review the content of the syllabus with students in the first class meeting. The course syllabus should also be posted on your course webpage (discussed further below) and/or distributed in the first class meeting.
At a minimum, a course syllabus should contain the following basic information:
Course title
Faculty name(s)
Semester and class meeting times
Contact information
Office hours (Many adjunct faculty meet with students by appointment or offer to meet with students before or after their class.)
A clear, precise statement of your student learning goals
A clear, precise description of your plan for evaluating students (which must be consistent with what is listed for your class in the Course Schedule). This should include both the percentage of the final grade associated with each assignment and the specific evaluative criteria you will use to assess students’ individual performance on those assignments.
A class-by-class listing of topics and reading assignments
Attendance and participation policy
All relevant deadlines and your policy on late assignments
Course recording policy
Laptop policy
Syllabi for experiential courses may require additional information on topics such as withdrawing from the course, client confidentiality, experiential projects, fieldwork assignments, and/or in-class simulated exercises and self-reflection activities. The Law Center Contacts for experiential faculty will provide such faculty with syllabus templates before the semester begins.
In the following sections, we provide more detailed guidance on the core parts of the syllabus.
Student Learning Outcomes
In organizing what you plan to teach as well as how you plan to teach it, your starting point should be: what do I want my students to learn? Your course syllabus should contain a clear, concise statement of the learning outcomes or goals that you have for your students. These goals should describe what you want your students to know upon completion of the course, what skills you expect the students to acquire, and what values your students should understand and integrate into their professional lives. You should articulate the level of proficiency, or competency, you expect for each of these by the completion of the course.
As you reflect on your learning goals, the following prompts may be helpful:
- What behaviors, insights, and knowledge will be indicative of real learning?
- How will I know if students have learned what I hoped they would learn?
- What behaviors, insights, and knowledge will be indicative of real learning?
Evaluation/Assessment Plan
In your syllabus, explain your plan for evaluating students’ performance. Provide the percentages allocated to each assignment (including, where relevant, to the final exam or paper, and to class participation). Include detailed information about requirements and expectations for assignments. If you are giving an exam, state whether it is an in-class or take-home exam and the time frame for taking the exam. This information is extremely important to students and your syllabus should match the information in the Course Schedule in order to avoid confusion later. Once you have stated your exam parameters in your syllabus and reviewed them in your first class meeting, you should not change them. We also encourage you to share your grading rubric. Explain how you will assess the assignments and award credit. For example, in grading papers, will you evaluate citations, grammar, and the quality of the writing? (See the section on Evaluating Students below for more information on creating an assessment plan.)
Faculty teaching experiential courses should provide detailed information on how students’ practical work will be evaluated. Where students are conducting fieldwork outside of Georgetown Law, faculty should be clear that those “fieldwork” credits will be graded on a Pass/Fail basis, and should indicate how the faculty member will interact with the fieldwork supervisor to determine that aspect of the grade. In experiential courses where students are completing projects or simulations as part of a group, faculty should be clear on how individual performance will be assessed. Faculty who would like to discuss strategies for assessing students in experiential courses (including those involving group work) should talk with their Law Center Contact.
Class Topics/Reading Assignments
Students appreciate knowing at the start of the semester how the course will be organized, what topics you plan to cover in each class session, and the weekly reading assignments. Your syllabus should contain this information. Many students rely on class syllabi to budget their time for completing assignments in their classes. Some students, particularly part-time students with full-time jobs, will read ahead in their classes or will frontload their reading on the weekends.
A common question faculty ask is how much reading to assign for each class. There is no simple answer to this question; however, consider the following points: 1) a rule of thumb that some faculty use is to expect about two hours of preparation for each hour of class. For experiential courses, that number may vary depending on the other time demands that the legal work requires; 2) in gauging the amount of time it will take students to complete a class assignment, remember that students, who are reading the material for the first time, will read more slowly than you; 3) the type of reading assigned will dictate how much time you will want to allocate to a given class session. For example, a newspaper or magazine article may take less time to absorb than a dense statutory text; 4) many experienced teachers find that student preparation and class discussion is improved by assigning fewer pages but requiring students to read more carefully and to fully digest the material; and 5) what you ask students to do and know in class based on the reading will influence how they read, so consider how your choices affect theirs. For example, if you plan to spend time in class drilling down into the language and structure of a case or statute, only assign the pages you will be focusing on and expecting them to know. Conversely, if you plan to lecture broadly on the evolution of an area of law or policy, more pages are appropriate.
The more you can let students know what you expect them to do with the material you assign, the better prepared they will be. Time commitments in experiential courses can be less predictable but general guidance on seminar assignments and non-case related readings should be reflected in a syllabus to assist students in managing their time.
Weekly readings in experiential courses should be closely tied to the practical work students are conducting at that point in the semester. Some weeks, depending on the practical assignments students are working on or simulated exercises in which they will be engaging, more or less reading may be appropriate.
Attendance and Participation Policy
The Law Center requires regular and punctual attendance. Within that policy, faculty have discretion to outline more specific attendance requirements and rules. In your syllabus and in your first class meeting, state your policy on attendance and how you will enforce it. Also, explain your expectations for the students’ participation in your class and how you will account for their participation. Some faculty factor class participation into the final grade. In seminars and experiential courses where class participation is key to the success of the class, that percentage may be as high as 20-25% of the grade. If attendance or participation are part of the final grade, it is important to explain to students how you will grade them on it and to create a rubric or other tracking mechanism for yourself to ensure you are properly identifying and marking the student behaviors indicative of successful participation.
Class Participation: Some additional thoughts on creating an inclusive environment for students in the classroom and through office hours
Faculty each have their own style for organizing and conducting a class, and students have their own styles of learning and participation. While we may want all our students to feel equally empowered in our classes, the fact is not all students feel fully included and respected within the dynamics of a given class. Simple awareness of this fact will go some way toward improving the classroom experience for everyone. Some basic, additional steps include trying to learn students’ names, reaching out to meet those who are the quietest, and being as explicit as possible about expectations within the class and opportunities to meet with you outside of class.
Inside the classroom, class participation can be a source of frustration or exclusion for students. Cold-calling (when it is done systematically) and panels both have the benefit of distributing participation more evenly. Relying only on volunteers often has the tendency to lead to a handful of the same students dominating class discussion. When seeking volunteers to answer a question, consider adopting the 5-Second Rule: rather than calling on the first person to raise her hand, wait 5 seconds for additional volunteers and call on those who speak less often. The 5-Second Rule favors thoughtfulness over speed and gives you an opportunity to increase the pool of volunteers. Providing a few questions before class and starting with those or allowing for a few minutes of group discussion of a hypothetical during class are additional options for varying your approach and increasing class participation. Lastly, some faculty find it useful to encourage other methods of participation such as assigning students to lead a designated discussion thread on the course website. This approach can foster participation from different students than those who often volunteer in class.
Outside the classroom, please consider if your office hours are attracting the same repeat players. If so, you may want to experiment with how you schedule and hold office hours or simply encourage students who have not come to office hours to schedule a time to meet with you individually. Quieter students who make interesting points or write a thoughtful exam are worth emailing or meeting with; it can give them a meaningful boost in confidence. In general, we ask you to be on the look-out for students in need of encouragement or mentorship.
Deadlines and Policy on Late Assignments
Be very clear about the deadlines for each assignment, including drafts. State whether or not you will accept late assignments for grading and how lateness will impact the student’s grade. If you have a strict rule against granting extensions on papers, please explain that in your syllabus.
End Georgetown Memo Excerpts
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Appendix B
Other Resources:
Here are some resources that you may find helpful if your course focuses on the in-house practice as opposed to a substantive area of the law. Additionally, no matter what your subject you may be able to arrange for ACC to provide students temporary access to portions of the resources on the ACC website.
A. Teaching Law by Design for Adjuncts, Sophie Sparrow, Gerald F. Hess, Michael Hunter Schwartz (Carolina Academic Press, August 31, 2010)
Professors Sophie Sparrow, Gerry Hess, and Michael Hunter Schwartz, three leaders in the teaching and learning movement in legal education, have collaborated to offer a new book designed to synthesize the latest research on teaching and learning for adjunct law professors. The book begins with basic principles of teaching and learning theory, provides insights into how law students experience traditional law teaching, and then guides law teachers through the entire process of teaching a course. The topics addressed include: how to plan a course; how to design a syllabus and select a text; how to plan individual class sessions; how to engage and motivate students, even those tough-to-crack second- and third-year students; how to use a wide variety of teaching techniques; how to evaluate student learning, both for the purposes of assigning grades and of improving student learning; and how to be a lifelong learner as a teacher.
B. The Inside Counsel Revolution, Ben W. Heineman, Jr. (American Bar Association, 2016)
This is a widely acclaimed book written by Ben Heineman, GE’s former general counsel and one of the icons of the in-house practice. Go toAmazon to find out more about this book:
Here is what I said about it in my review:
Stated simply--if you are a General Counsel, or you wish to become a General Counsel, or you are someone who works with a General Counsel-- this is a book you should read. It provides a clear understanding of the key issues facing in-house counsel as well as useful, practical advice about how to deal with them. Any additional praise I offer likely will repeat what other reviewers have already said about this book (and with which I heartily agree). I will say that Ben Heineman has that rare ability to take the complex and make it simple. This is what good lawyers do and that is what he has done in this book. This is a book for the practitioner as well as the academic; the inside lawyer as well as outside counsel; and the CEO as well as the Board of Directors. I have worked with the in-house legal community for nearly 30 years and this is the best book I have read on the art and craft as well as the inherent tensions of being an in-house counsel. I plan to use it in my law school class.