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In this monthly column, law professors comment on the many academic opportunities and challenges presented by Web technology.
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Teaching with the Web
Jerry Kang, UCLA School of Law
Introduction
Information technology can help us become better law professors, in our scholarship, teaching, and service. In this brief article, let me describe how I use information technologies -- specifically the World Wide Web -- to further the specific mission of teaching. In my view, the Web excels at three different teaching tasks: content delivery, in-class presentations, and out-of-class discussions.
1. Content Delivery
Administrative Materials
Obviously, the Web is a superb information delivery platform. It is thus an excellent way to deliver administrative materials to your students. This includes course information, syllabus, weekly assignments, and anything else that might be delivered on paper throughout the semester. There are least three advantages of delivering such content through the Web.
First, you save the time and avoid the disruption incident to passing out handouts during class. Second, if your law school network is reliable, you avoid the hassle of students asking for administrative materials that they have lost or never received. Third, you can offer a greater amount and variety of information. For example, on my Web site, I have information that includes a short biography and a detailed resume. For interested students -- and it seems that all students are oddly interested in unearthing more about their professors -- this is a valuable resource.
Educational Materials
It would be a colossal disappointment if delivering administrative notices were the end-all of the Web. Fortunately, you can use the Web also to deliver educational content. There are at least two reasons why delivering such content through the Web is better than delivering it through paper. First, standard text-based educational materials can be enriched with photographs, drawings, audio, and video. For instance, in my Asian American Jurisprudence course, we spend considerable time analyzing the Japanese American internment during World War II. To understand the scope of the human tragedy, however, one must not only read but also see what we did in the name of national security. Photographs tell this story more powerfully than any text. And photographs presented through the Web, with their greater clarity and visual immediacy, tell that story better than any low-grade photocopies of photographs ever could.
Second, sometimes, the Web is better than paper because the Web is the only place where you can find the materials you need. To take another example from the same class, I teach about a horrific hate crime, in which a UCLA graduate Thien Min Ly was stabbed to death by White supremacists in Southern California. After I had put together my course reader, I learned of a Web site dedicated to his murder. On that site are personal letters written by Thien's immediate family. They are extraordinarily powerful, presented again in a visual medium that is hard to forget. In a class that emphasizes constitutional history, doctrine, and high theory, I use the Web to provide materials that remind my students of the human stories that fundamentally animate our work.
2. In-Class Presentations
In addition to delivering administrative and educational content to my students, I also use the Web to provide in-class presentations. Naturally, I exploit the strengths of the Web over paper -- its ability to show images, audio, and video. For example, I make great use of conceptual diagrams that clarify a fact pattern or problem-solving algorithm. I tend to think visually and want to share with my students, especially my first-year civil procedure students, this way of analyzing cases and problems. Thus, I make extensive use of plaintiff-defendant diagrams, which map difficult fact patterns or concepts. Consider how the following image might make Pennoyer v. Neff easier to comprehend. Or, consider how this image might make the summary judgment standard and its relation to burden-of-proof easier to understand. Or, as used in my cyberlaw course, how an electronic cash system might work.
By projecting these diagrams onto a screen during class, I save the time that it would take to draw a similar (but less neat, clear, visible) diagram on the blackboard. Moreover, since the diagrams are linked to the weekly syllabus, they are available for review before or after class. Some students print out the diagrams before class to facilitate note taking. Other students do not panic about copying down the diagram precisely because they know that it is available on the Web, accessible at any time. This allows them more time in class to listen and to think. (By the way, there is a low-tech option for classrooms without computer projection ability. Make the diagrams available on the Web; however, for in-class presentation, simply transfer the diagrams onto a transparency and use an overhead projector.) My students react with uniform enthusiasm. They find the extensive use of diagrams and their easy availability on the Web extraordinarily helpful in the learning process.
3. Out-of-class Discussions
Finally, the Web can facilitate out-of-class discussions. We are familiar with how to use e-mail and listservs to communicate with our students. However, to promote a serious conversation out of class (as opposed to making brief announcements that will not generate a series of replies), I strongly recommend using a threaded discussion program on the Web. The virtues of these programs are that they organize postings by subject matter and archive them for easy access.
Do not fool yourself into thinking that because the discussion is online, its quality will somehow magically improve. In all likelihood, the truth will be just the opposite. Unless you create the proper incentives and environment, the breadth and depth of conversation will be disappointing. Most important, you must provide reasons for your students to participate. Students are short on time and are often quite good maximizers of self-interest. If they see no "value added" in spending time online reading threaded discussions, they will rationally not do so. One way to encourage student participation is to participate yourself. If you post interesting questions, comments, and explanations -- which help students understand material that may appear on a final exam -- students will eagerly visit your discussion site. Another way to encourage student postings is to consider online participation part of overall classroom participation, which affects the final grade.
Before spending any more time thinking about how to cajole students into participating, you must ask yourself the prior question: What is the pedagogical point? Of course, such discussions promote general technological literacy, which I believe law schools should more actively promote. More important, online discussions are a form of cost-effective office hours. Instead of explaining a complicated idea to one student who comes into office hours, it is better to explain that idea to the entire class through exchanges on a threaded discussion. This helps not only the office-hour "regulars" but also those who are a tad shy and rarely make it in. Indeed, occasionally, you will find a student who is quiet in class but gregarious online. Out-of-class discussions also allow students to explore topics that are slightly off-point that do not warrant in-class time but nevertheless may be interesting, provocative, and worthy of exploration. Finally, I have had some success having outsiders join our class discussions: The most interesting exchanges occur when the author that we have read and discussed agrees to respond to student postings.
Conclusion
In this brief article, I have only skimmed the many ways that one might use the Web to become a better teacher. There are plenty of others. For example, I look forward to the development of sophisticated computer-assisted legal instruction (in the form of self-tests and other learning modules that go beyond simple multiple-choice questions-and-answers) that can be distributed over the Web. However, even exploiting the basic Internet tools that are widely available today, I believe that we can all become better, more effective law teachers.
© 1998 by Jerry Kang. All rights reserved.
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The views expressed in this column are solely those of its author, and do not reflect those of JURIST, its Advisory Board, its staff or its host institutions.
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