Law School Innovation

Harvard University Press to publish open access, peer-reviewed journal

Harvard University Press has unveiled its deal to publish the open access, peer-reviewed Journal of Legal Analysis. This development is interesting not just in piling on to the open access movement, or pushing peer review into legal academia, but because it raises some fascinating questions about the role of university presses in the digital age. HUP, like its peers, is an arm of a nonprofit institution, so it is under different pressures than the for-profit press. On the other hand, sales of paper publications still generate revenue... so what happens to publishers and journals when "publication" is both digital and open?

- Gene Koo

Death of an Innovator

Earlier this week, Robert Rauschenberg died. Though our paths crossed in various ways, I never met him. In an indirect way, though, he changed my life. It was at a lecture two years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by John Paoletti (of Wesleyan College) that I started thinking about putting art into one of my lectures. Paoletti made the work seem so real and alive that I was captivated, and that inspiration still colors what I do. 

For those who don't know his work, Rauschenberg created painting and sculpture, but is best know for his "combines," which were a mix of the two, usually incorporating things that he found on the street or elsewhere. He actually built real life right into the art, if you think about it. His work is dense with images; there is rarely anything simple about it. For example, in the combine pictured below (one of his most famous), there is a tire, a lot of images pasted onto the platform, and a farm animal. You can glance at it and think it is a lark, but if you look at it closely, at the images there, it pulls you in.  It is like a great lecture-- there are some big, obvious ideas, but also intricacies and subtleties, should you choose to see them.

When true artists die, they leave a lot of themselves behind. It is a strange but important kind of immortality, this immortality of ideas.

-- Mark Osler

Interesting discussion of generational law faculty realities

In my view, many debates about law school reform and innovations are impacted, at least indirectly, by generational dynamics.  Consequently, I found this new piece on SSRN by Gregory Bowman, titled "The Comparative and Absolute Advantages of Junior Law Faculty: Implications for Teaching and the Future of American Law Schools," of interest.  Here is the abstract:

In the ongoing debate about how to improve law school teaching, there is a general consensus that law schools should do more to train junior faculty members how to teach.  While this may be the case, this consensus inadvertently leads to an implicit assumption that is not true - that in all facets of law teaching, junior faculty are at a disadvantage compared to senior faculty. In fact, there are aspects of law teaching for which junior faculty can be better suited than their senior colleagues. This Article reviews scholarship concerning law teaching and identifies three teaching factors that generally favor junior law faculty: generational proximity to the law school student body; recency of law practice experience as junior practitioners; and lower susceptibility to the problem of conceptual condensation - extreme depth of subject matter knowledge that makes it difficult to see subjects from the students' perspective.

This Article employs the economic concepts of (a) economies of scale or productive efficiency and (b) absolute and comparative advantage to suggest how these junior faculty advantages could be harnessed to improve law school teaching.  With respect to productive efficiency, it is suggested that greater intra-faculty dialogue can increase a law faculty's output of effective teaching.  Currently, senior faculty members often provide assistance or advice to junior faculty in areas of senior faculty expertise or advantage - such as depth of knowledge in a course's subject matter - but this is largely a one-way flow of information.  However, if junior faculty were also to provide insight and advice to senior faculty regarding areas of junior faculty advantage, the quality of law school teaching might be significantly enhanced. Junior-senior faculty dialogue might be promoted through a variety of means, including faculty workshops and even perhaps teaching reviews of senior faculty by junior faculty.

With respect to the concepts of absolute and comparative advantage, this Article suggests that law school teaching could be improved through the specialization of teaching functions. Instead of professors individually teaching separate courses, professors might coordinate their teaching (that is, team-teach) across a number of courses in the law school curriculum, as a means to more effectively harness the respective strengths (and minimize the respective weaknesses) of junior and senior faculty in the classroom.  Through the leveraging of junior faculty advantages, overall law school teaching might be significantly improved.  This Article concludes by discussing the implications of these recommendations for law school culture in general and for the legal profession as a whole.

Amazing law school insights from an innovative source

I was at first amused and then amazed by the terrific law-school-selection advice to be found in this great column by Clay Travis at CBS Sports.  Though the first 7 points are cheeky, the final 10 are remarkably insightful about so many aspects of law school.  Here are extended snippets from a must-read piece for everyone around a law school or aspiring to be around a law school:

Judging by the e-mails to ClayNation the overlap between lawyers, aspiring lawyers, and sports fans is substantial.... So without further ado, here's ClayNation advice on how to pick a law school.

1. Visit the school when there's good weather, if at least half of the guys aren't wearing shorts, flip-flops, and t-shirts, then you don't want to go there.  Law school should be fun because being a lawyer isn't fun....

2. Don't be completely seduced by law school rankings....

4. Go sit in the law school library for a half-hour. Pretend to read a newspaper and check to see how often the students smile or laugh when interacting with each other. If no one ever smiles or laughs it's a horrible sign.

5. Think about the size of the law school....

8. Assuming the law school is above 80 percent, comparing bar passage rates tells you nothing about the quality of a law school. Don't be moved by the trumpeting of these stats. By the time you're studying for the bar exam you realize that most intelligent people could spend three months studying the Barbri course outlines, memorizing the absurd MBE fact patterns, and pass the bar exam. But by that time you've spent three years learning how to be a lawyer. Congratulations. Once you've practiced law for a couple of years you wouldn't be able to pass the bar exam. It's a great system.

9. The better the school you attend the more it costs but the less hard you have to work while you're there....

10. If you destroy the LSAT and have a good GPA you may have a decision to make regarding whether to take a scholarship to a lesser school or pay more to go to a more selective school.  It's hard to give advice in this situation because no matter what you think now, you have no real idea whether you'll actually like practicing law....

15. Where should I go to make the most money?  If money is your ultimate goal you shouldn't be a lawyer. There are thousands of ways you can make much more money. Plaintiff's lawyers notwithstanding, as a lawyer you're ultimately hamstrung by how many billable hours you can crank out. And every hour you bill is one less hour you get to have a life. Be careful chasing those big firm golden handcuffs, be careful.

16. Keep in mind that the law is completely unbalanced when it comes to career search.  The most competitive jobs in the legal profession are either the highest-paying or the lowest paying....

And if you're miserable [in law school] keep in mind that after six months of practicing there's a 100 percent chance you'd rather be a law student again. Law school is one of the few places on earth where students compete to one day be able to go back to law school. If you doubt this pick up the resumes of your favorite professors who are under 45. Look at how few years they actually spent practicing law. Yep, in the circle of law-school life, as soon as you leave, you start working on finding a way to get back.

Harvard votes YES to open access scholarship

Harvard Law School's faculty unanimously last week to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free. The school's announcement, issued today, notes that Harvard is the first law schol to make this commitment to open access. (Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences had also voted unanimously for open access in February.)

Joe asked what new innovations we might expect with the appointment of John Palfrey to Harvard's newly created position of Associate Dean of Library and Information Resources. Here is what he had to say about this new development:

This exciting development is something in which the whole Harvard Law School community can take great pride... The acceptance of open access ensures that our faculty's world-class scholarship is accessible today and into the future. I look forward to the work of implementing this commitment.

Law schools, quite unlike almost every other academic institution in the United States, occupy an enviable position because we almost all have retained full rights and permissions to our own scholarship. For all the grumbling faculty occasionally evince about student- rather than peer-edited journals, this has also proven a tremendous advantage for schools, as there are no contracts and rights to negotiate with third-party publishers. Thus legal scholarship has the potential to leap forward by large bounds with policies like Harvard's in place.

Update: Dean Wayne Miller correctly points out that Duke Law School has been pushing the Open Access agenda in their journals since 1997 and for all faculty scholarship since 2005. See his comment for more information, citations, etc.

Seeking information and ideas on innovative final formats

I have long been troubled by the traditional time-pressured, in-class law school final exam format.  In over a decade of teaching, I have always used a take-home format for my upper-level courses: I will often use a  48-hour format if I want some issue-spotting questions and a two-week format if I want more policy/research questions (and I always have strict word limits for each question).

In first-year classes, however, the use of non-traditional exam formats seems to create added stress for students and also creates some additional administrative headaches.  For this reason, I have traditionally used the standard in-class final exam formats for first-year classes (though I have been noticing some colleagues gravitating toward the one-day, eight-hour take home format for more and more 1L classes).

Never content to make things easy, this term in my Spring 1L Legislation course, I decided to try a combined take-home/in-class format (details here).  Though I do not yet know if my students liked this approach (perhaps they will tell me here), I do know that I liked the basic concept of combining the take-home and in-class formats for 1Ls.  I am wondering if anyone else has ever tried this and, more generally, about experiences and ideas concerning truly innovative final formats.

Posted by DAB

Innovation from the Dean's Staff

One trend in many schools over the past thirty years has been that growth in the Dean's Office has outpaced hiring in other areas.  In part, this is because the functions of the that office have multiplied, and the Deans themselves are more involved with development than in the past, leaving less time for other activities.

Though some at these schools have decried that growth (especially relative to the size of the faculty), I have noticed that much of the innovation I have seen, especially in the area of technology and student services, has come from the people in those offices.   They see things from a different angle than professors do, and this might allow them to create new ways to serve our consituencies.  For example, many schools (including mine) have revamped orientation, and this has been the work of the Dean's staff.  It might even be said that they are producing more innovation than we professors are, if we are to look at all the functions of the law school as a whole.

-- Mark Osler

Will Palfrey's Appointment Lead to Technological Innovations at HLS?

John Palfrey has been appointed Associate Dean, Library and Information Resources and a tenured professor of law at Harvard Law School. Bios here, here and here. John's name should ring a bell. He is Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and an accomplished author. Among his many works are Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (MIT Press, 2008)(co-editor and contributor)[Law Librarian Blog post] and Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (with Urs Gasser)(Basic Books, forthcoming August 24, 2008)[Amazon]. About technology in the law school curriculum, see his What is Technology's Role, an op-ed that was published in The National Law Journal on November 8, 2006. -- Joe Hodnicki

Why empirical research is better at raising questions than answers --- some ruminations about ruminations about the Yale clerk study

Guest blogging at Balkinization, John Donohue has this very lengthy post, titled "Why I'd Stick With Yale Clerks -- Some Econometric Ruminations," which takes issue with this new provocative paper based on empirical research concerning Yale law clerks and judicial opinions.  Here is the start and end of Professor Donohue's analysis in the post:

Another illustration of empiricism gone astray is provided by a new working paper by Royce de Rohan Barondes, which adopts the following provocative title: "Want Your Opinions Questioned or Reversed?  Hire a Yale Clerk."  The man bites dog nature of the claim is sure to raise interest in the paper, since Yale is obviously one of the most elite law schools in the U.S., and the hardest to get into. Unfortunately, counterintuitive empirical results almost always turn out to be wrong if they are not based on an appropriate empirical methodology for the inquiry at hand. In my opinion, the methodology of the Barondes is flawed, and the conclusions drawn from this research are either incorrect or unfounded.  My review of the Barondes paper (as well as my own personal experience with Yale Law students) affords little reason to believe that the value of a Yale Law clerk is less than the law school’s preeminent ranking would suggest....

In sum, I am confident that a more suitable methodology than the one employed by Barondes would reveal that Yale Law clerks are extraordinarily capable and effective public servants.  All judges will likely be pleased to hire them.

The dissection of the Yale clerk study between these two paragraphs is effective at raising a lot of great follow-up questions about the Barondes paper.  But, I highlight the start and end of Professor Donohue's analysis because I am really stunned by the initial assertion that there is "little reason to believe that the value of a Yale Law clerk is less than the law school’s preeminent ranking would suggest" and by the ending assertion that he is "confident that a more suitable methodology than the one employed by Barondes would reveal that Yale Law clerks are extraordinarily capable and effective public servants."  (Perhaps this ending assertion was written with tongue-in-check, but the post title suggests otherwise.)

It strikes me as very fitting and valuable for one empirically-oriented law professor to question and critique another law professor's empirical research.  But, I am troubled that the critic (who is clearly biased by where he teaches) concludes his analysis by asserting with confidence that sounder research would prove the antithesis of what the critiqued study suggests.

Perhaps more important than my critique of the Donohue critique is my broader observation that empirical research and analysis is far more effective at raising important normative questions than at answering even descriptive ones.  To focus again on start and end of Professor Donohue's comments, I wonder what judges, professors, practicing lawyers and lay people perceive or believe to be "the value of a law clerk."  Similarly, I wonder what judges, professors, practicing lawyers and lay people perceive or believe to be the ways in which young lawyers can and should be "extraordinarily capable and effective public servants."  Those are the big questions that neither the Barondes study or the Donohue critique really explores.

Tenure, Scholarship, and the Slow, Slow Turn

My home institution is now in the midsts of a tenure controversy (not involving the law school, which had no candidates up for tenure this year).  All the usual tenure-controversy events are playing out:  overheated meetings with the administration, anguished cries from those denied tenure and their supporters, and a fair amount of befuddlement about how the process worked and is supposed to work.

What surprises me is that these controversies occur so often within the broader academy.  You would think that by now the tenure process would be rationalized and normalized to the point where it was no longer seen as something akin to Goya's painting of Saturn devouring his children (depicted here).   

In short, it seems to me that there are three groups involved in the process-- the teaching faculty, the deans/department chairs, and the upper administration (provost/president).  As long as they all have the same expectations, tenure considerations seem to go relatively smoothly.  It is when there is a disjuncture in the expectations of these groups that trouble arises.

One way those expectations get out of whack is when innovation comes from the top down.  For example, consider the simplest (and most common) of innovations-- the expectation of more scholarship.  If this innovation is decreed by the upper administration, there is a time lag before those expectations can fairly be made a part of the tenure process, or else the rules are being changed as people are approaching tenure decisions.   Such patience is difficult, though, when pressure for better numbers are being placed on those administrators by their own bosses, the trustees.  This is especially true where the senior faculty and even the deans resist the change, often because the innovation is seen as a rejection of the values or practices that have informed their own careers. 

The battleship turns slowly, as too many institutions have learned the hard way.

-- Mark Osler

Self-serving paternalism: reflections on Baze and law school learning bans

Another full read of Baze led me to a couple unexpected insights: (1) the Justices are very comfortable using 21st-century materials, even as some law schools and professors try to preserve 20th-century teaching norms, and (2) the raging debate over banning laptops or the Internet in law school classrooms is somewhat akin to the debate between Justices Stevens and Scalia in Baze concerning a constitutional ban on state use of capital punishment.  Let me explain each insight in turn:

1.  In the Baze lethal injection ruling from SCOTUS, a majority of the Justices' opinions (4 of the 7) cited to websites, and I counted a total of 13 references to website materials.  Among the cites, Justice Stevens' referenced a forthcoming law review article now appearing only on SSRN, and two opinions cited to two distinct transcripts from legal proceedings that have been made widely available through on-line posting.  I am not sure if all these citations officially make Baze the most web-friendly ruling in Supreme Court history, but they clearly reveal that the Justices understand that effective judging in the 21st century — and thus effective lawyering in the 21st century — requires an Internet connection.

And yet, on the very same day that the web-friendly Baze decision is released, we get this report that the University of Chicago Law School is now blocking student access to the Internet in classrooms "to help them concentrate on course instruction."  Even though the Justices now clearly appreciate that effective judging and lawyering in the 21st century requires an Internet connection, the super-smarties at the University of Chicago Law School apparently now believe that being an effective law student requires preservation of a 20th-century teaching environment by banning Internet connection in the classroom.

2.  I realize that I am troubled by Internet bans and laptop bans in the law school classroom for some of the same reasons that Justice Scalia is troubled by Justices Stevens' advocacy in Baze for a constitutional ban on the death penalty.  Responding to Justice Stevens' arguments that the death penalty is now unconstitutional, Justice Scalia laments what he sees as misguided (and constitutionally inappropriate) self-serving paternalism: "Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule by judicial fiat.  In the face of Justice Stevens’ experience, the experience of all others [such as legislatures, social scientists, and citizens] is, it appears, of little consequence.... It is Justice Stevens’ experience that reigns over all."

I have the same reaction to all the professorial self-congratulation about the positive impact of banning the Internet or laptops in the classroom.  I can fully appreciate why the experience of some law professors — particularly those professors who use only traditional casebooks and have not updated their teaching materials, styles or notes in light of modern technology — might be improved if students cannot access 21st-century technologies in the classroom.  But I have never thought that my experience in the classroom, rather than the experience of my students, is of paramount importance.  Thus, unless and until my students tell me that they prefer a classroom setting without laptops or the Internet (or alumni/practitioners tell me that a web-friendly classroom was not helpful training for their future careers), I will keep trying to create and improve a 21st-century classroom experience for students rather than self-servingly conclude that preserving a 20th-century teaching environment is needed "to help [students] concentrate on course instruction."

Cross-posted at SL&P

What if there were two competing rankings?

In an earlier post, I suggested the idea of a BCS calculation for law school rankings, which would combine the U.S. News poll with other, less prominent, rankings.  It is a project I intend to pursue, and am now evaluating other rankings which could be included.

This plan is not entirely consistent with the BCS calculations, which include not one but two major rankings and several minor ones.  The two major polls (of writers and coaches) contribute the most weight to the final outcome.  Because there is no other ranking as important as U.S. News, it is impossible to come up with an identical two-major construct in evaluating law schools.

The dominance of U.S. News in this area is intriguing.  Why has no other major media source challenged this dominance, given how lucrative those issues must be?  Britain provides a counter-example, where both the Times and Guardian newspapers compete in producing university rankings.  Notably, they use different formulas, with the Times being more focused on research and total resources.  Wouldn't it be great to see Time Magazine, for example, step up to the plate?  Perhaps a second major ranking could even include a measurement for innovation...

-- Mark Osler

Vision 2020: Digital Ubiquity and University Transformation

The University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) is hosting Vision 2020: Digital Ubiquity & University Transformation: 2008 Higher Education Leadership Summit, August 6-8, 2008. The conference is co-sponsored by Apple. Details on the conference website.

The deadline for submitting presentation proposals is May 2, 2008. "Academic officers, instructional and academic technology managers, faculty, staff, IT staff and librarians from higher education institutions who have designed and implemented innovative solutions taking advantage of digital ubiquity are encouraged to submit proposals. 1:1 Apple notebook, iPod, iPhone or other intense integrations are particularly encouraged." Submissions should relate to one of the themes listed below;

• Presentation Themes
• Creating a Shared Vision on Campus
• Building a Culture of Innovation
• Designing a Curriculum for Digitally Equipped Students
• Faculty Development
• Teaching Excellence in a Digital Learning Environment
• Measuring Results

-- Joe Hodnicki

Professors Going Paperless

The Affordable Textbooks Campaign is a coalition of Student Public Interest Research Groups and Student Government Associations in fourteen states who are working to make higher education more affordable. Continuing their campaign to draw attention to the cost of textbooks, the Campaign recently celebrated a milestone— reaching 1,000 professors who have signed a statement supporting the use of free, online and open source textbooks. Looks like only two law professors have signed the Open Textbooks Statement to Make Textbooks Affordable.

Course ePacket Practices. Georgia State has been sued for course ePacket practices by Cambridge UP, Oxford UP and Sage Publications. According to the suit, “hundreds” of Georgia State professors have posted “thousands of copyrighted works” without permission on the University's library electronic course reserve system, Blackboard, departmental Web sites and individual course syllabi posted online. Details on Law Librarian Blog. -- Joe Hodnicki

Men, Women, and Legal Education

Last year, I was conducting a jury selection simulation with a group of our third-year students.  One of our better students was conducting the voir dire, and he generally asked the right questions.  However, I noticed that he was talking only to the male members of the panel (composed of fellow students), which was split evenly between men and women.  After that, I kept track carefully, and noted that he did not converse with any of the women over the last 20 minutes of his exercise.   This not only would alienate the women on the panel, but resulted in his having inadequate information on those members of the venire.

During the critique, I remarked on this disparity, and it opened the floodgates from the female students on the panel, who noted that in both college and law school they had consistently been called on less than the males in the same classrooms.   I trust that these students were telling the truth, especially given their unanimity on the issue.  I explored further, and found that it was not that male volunteers were called on more often, necessarily, but that men were more likely called on when no one volunteered an answer, and that this tendency was exhibited by both male and female professors. 

This is a topic I haven't heard discussed, at least within my own faculty.  (I have always kept track of who I call on, which enforces a rough equivalence among all students.  Admittedly, my purpose was not to offer equal opportunities, but to track class participation).  Do other schools pay some attention to this issue?

-- Mark Osler

Isn't bar passage a terrible law school ranking metric?

Responding to Mark's post on US News rankings, co-blogger Anupam comments that a useful ranking metric "might be Bar Passage, adjusted to reflect the jurisdiction's overall bar passage rate."  I could not disagree more, in part because I think bar passage is a very harmful aspect of the US News ranking system.  Let me explain:

Bar passage rates tell us what percentage of a law school class has passed the — silly? culturally biased? poorly graded? — timed high-pressured test that many jurisdictions use as one barrier to being a licensed lawyer.  I have long been troubled by bar exams for lots of reasons (too numerous to detail here), and I am especially troubled that US News gives these exams extra legitimacy through its ranking criteria.  Let me (too) quickly explain my anti-bar bias:

1.  I do not think the sole or chief goal of law schools is to help a student pass the timed high-pressured bar exam.  Notably, major law schools clearly don't think this should be their sole or chief goal: if they did, law school classes would look and sound and operate much more like Bar-Bri classes.

2.  Because law school is obviously about a lot more than bar passage, every rational law student (with sufficient resources) takes a bar prep course.  Consequently, it seems fair to assume that bar passage rates reflect the quality of a bar prep course more than the quality of law school instruction. 

3.  Bar passage rates also, obviously, reflect the quality of the student body that a law school admits.  But US News and other rankings already use a variety of other metrics to directly assess/reward the quality of the student body that a school admits.

4.  In my view, students and faculty at most schools — at least those outside the top 10 — already obsess way too much about bar passage rates (in part because US News has used this as a metric).  I do not want there to be even more energy focused on a timed high-pressured test that seems, in my view, to be pernicious in many ways.

Of course, I may be wailing on Anupam's comment principally because I have long wanted to wail on the craziness I see in bar exam realities.  So, because I realize I may be blinded by my anti-bar biases, I would like to hear Anupam and others explain why bar passage might be a useful and valuable law school ranking metric.

The Leaky-Boat World of U.S. News

As everyone at any law school anywhere knows by now, the U.S. News law school rankings are leaking all over the internet (so to speak).  As I have said before, I find it unfortunate that those rankings don't reward (and, in fact, probably hinder) innovation in law teaching.  Like everyone else who seems to opine on such things, I wish these rankings did not matter so much (of course, those heading up the list are less fervent in their critique than those headed the other way). 

But, they do matter.   Students too often choose a school based on the rankings, and academics pay attention to rankings when considering jobs.   Donors care, as do currently enrolled students.  Everyone's parents, for some reason, seem to follow these damn rankings.

They won't go away.   Maybe they shouldn't go away.  But I do have an idea about what could be done to mitigate the effect this one set of rankings has.

Not so long ago, college football's Bowl Championship Series began ranking teams by using a composite of other rankings.  They were not all weighted equally-- rather, the major press and coaches rankings were given greater weight.  With the proliferation of rankings these days, perhaps we need to create a Bowl Championship Series ranking system, creating a composite which gives the U.S. News rankings a stronger weight than others.

If so, which other rankings should be included?  I would be willing to create this composite once the official rankings are out.

-- Mark Osler

Beyond the Law School Realm - GoCrossCampus.Com

Law schools can sometimes be slower in modernizing when compared to their undergraduate counterparts, at least when it comes to technology (although this is not always the case). This is particularly true when one examines the growth of distance or electronic education, as the undergraduate institutions are well established in a field that law schools are just starting to investigate.  I, therefore, have to wonder if the gocrosscampus.com movement will eventually hit the law schools, or maybe it already has arrived. The New York Times here explains the "game" or what some may see as a social networking forum. Like Second Life, it provides a web space to use beyond the walls of a classroom.  In contrast, however, gocrosscampus has a game-like approach - and a war game at that - with a goal of conquest.  As law schools move more to a mediation and alternative dispute approach, conquest seems like it should be frowned upon.  Social networking, however, is important. One has to wonder if down the road there will be a law school adaptation to this latest technology game.

ellen s. podgor

Is Amazon's Kindle Doing Better Than People Expected?

See WSJ, Amazon Hopes to Resolve 'Kindle' Backlog Within Weeks

ellen s. podgor

Report on Tech "Experiment": Teaching from home

posted by Elmer Masters

With permission from Prof. Jonathon Ezor of Touro Law Center, I wanted to share this post from the teknoids mailing list. Prof. Ezor made good use of available technology to hold classes that would have otherwise been canceled.  This provides a reasonable prototype that other schools can look at for developing distance ed applications.

From the Teknoids post:

I thought the Teknoids community might be interested in the below report I
sent to our faculty and deans regarding an experimental effort that allowed
me to teach my Cybercrime class from home twice this week, after various
family illnesses made it probable that I would otherwise have to miss the
class.  Special thanks to Touro's IT professionals (including frequent
Teknoids participants Peter Stanisci and Matt Perna, along with their
colleague Rich Quinn) for their enthusiastic, last-minute help in making this
work.  {Jonathan}

---------------------------cut here--------------------------------

To my colleagues:

As promised, I am reporting back after my experiment teaching my Cybercrime
class from home.  Although I had initially only planned on doing so once, on
Monday, I ended up having to do so again this morning as well (again on very
short notice--kudos to the IT department), so my report is based on two days
of experiences.

In short:  It worked.

More specifically, it worked adequately, particularly given how little
advance planning had gone into this impromptu experiment.  We used two pieces
of software: the free audio/video chat program Skype (http://www.skype.com),
and a free Skype add-in called YugmaSE (http://www.yugma.com) which allowed
me to share my computer screen and/or a window (in this case, a PowerPoint
presentation) with the students via Skype.  Peter Stanisci and the IT staff
had already built a rolling computer setup with an attached video camera they
call the Kramer Cart (after Lynne Kramer, who used it first to record her
trial advocacy students), which had Skype installed on it.  They added the
YugmaSE software and brought the cart into the classroom, pointing the camera
toward the students and using the room's screen and projector to show the
Kramer Cart's computer display.  They connected the entire setup to the
Internet.  On my end, I was running Skype and YugmaSE from home, connected to
my home Internet router, with my own Webcam and microphone.  At the start of
class, we established a standard Skype connection (audio and video), then
started the YugmaSE software and set up the screen sharing on both ends.
Once I began the PowerPoint presentation, the students were (from what I've
heard) able to see the slides and hear me clearly (I turned off my camera
while showing the presentation, to save on bandwidth).  Although the
classroom lights were out to make the screen more visible, I could see the
students fairly clearly, and hear them as well (although it was easier to
hear them when I was wearing headphones, versus using my laptop's own
speakers).

It was not entirely bulletproof.  During the first day, the PowerPoint
connection froze and had to be restarted in the classroom, although I was
able to continue the lecture and discussion portion.  Today, it was my
computer that crashed (probably because I hadn't prepared it appropriately
before starting), and the students had to wait for 5 minutes while I called
the room via telephone and rebooted my machine.  The students also had to
bunch themselves together a bit in their rows to fit the camera's field of
view.  That said, this very cobbled-together, free setup saved me from having
to reschedule two classes, and I accomplished real teaching.

I would not recommend this solution for everyone; it requires a reasonably
high level of technical sophistication by the teacher, and needs an IT person
in the room just in case.  It does, though, give us a backup for certain
situations, and shows a method that (with the right, non-free resources)
might scale up to reliable ways to do this.  Beyond that, it was just fun to
try.

I welcome your feedback, and would be happy to show you the software on my
office laptop.  Thanks for your collective interest.  {Jonathan}

-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Assistant Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
225 Eastview Drive, Central Islip, NY  11722
Direct: 631-761-7119  Fax: 516-977-3001
e-mail: jezor@tourolaw.edu