An adventure in distance learning

Earlier this week, I got the chance to give a guest-lecture to the students in Chapman Law School's LLM program in Prosecutorial Science.   The program is only for prosecutors with at least five years of experience.  Most of them take most of the lectures via videoconference from their own offices spread across the state of California.  I found the experience fascinating.  The students appeared on a checkerboard pattern on a pair of large screens at the end of a conference room.  It reminded me of Hollywood Squares-- well, if Hollywood Squares had ever hosted an extended discussion of the death penalty. 

I came away impressed.  The technology allowed me not only to hear the students, but to see them, even to tell if they were paying attention.  Importantly, it allowed for the Chapman program (which seems well-conceived and well-executed) to exist at all.  While distance learning will not replace our core classes, I now see the advantage it offers in reaching into places (like prosecutors' offices) previously inaccessible to us. 

-- Mark Osler