Calling all educators - please inspire me!

[Delster]

I teach seminars as part of my grad school commitments. Usually I have no trouble coming up with ideas to get the students engaged with the material set, but for the next cycle of seminars that are coming up I''m a bit stumped.

Normally I have a ''problem scenario'' to work through and I put them in pairs/threes and assign them to ''clients'' and in stages I get them to brainstorm and then share their ideas of how to work through the problem. Eventually we run a little mock trial towards the end of the class.

The next seminar, though, has no scenario. They have been assigned two questions to prepare - each one asks them to discuss trends in a particular area and to analyse the merits/demerits of recent developments in the area. To compound things, they have not yet covered this material in lectures.

The lecturer wants them to prepare them for essay style exam questions but I can''t make them practise essays in a seminar that''s supposed to be interactive! I am at a loss for exciting ideas on how to bring this topic alive and get them talking while still honing their essay-writing skills...

The students are undergraduates, studying for law degrees. They are very high achievers, and very motivated (although that doesn''t guarantee they''ll come to class with the material prepared!). The classes have between 8 and 12 students in them, although it''s not unusual to have 15 turn up.

I would love to hear suggestions for ways to make this class more exciting for them! I am very anxious not to let this seminar descend into the ''mini-lecture'' territory. Help me please?

 

[Haven]

Is this seminar centered around a particular concept or idea? If it is then I''m sure I''ll be able to come up with something good. If not--can you give us some more specific information about the facts that you''ll be discussing?

And now for a totally unrelated question--Are you outside of the U.S.? I''m curious about where you only need an undergrad degree to study law. Thanks!

 

[Delster]

Hi Haven - the seminar is on legislative intervention aimed at protecting consumers.

I''m in Ireland. Our undergrad law degree is academic in nature and it doesn''t entitle you to practice. For that you need to do further vocational type postgraduate degrees that are run by the professional bodies and for which there are competitive entrance exams (black-letter law exams, not like LSATs). The postgrad degrees are not provided by the universities here although in the UK they are. To make it even more complicated, for the postgrad degrees, you don''t necessarily even need a law degree! It all depends on the type of practice you''re interested in (solicitor/barrister).

Hope that helps!

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,
Can you consider the answers they submit to be a first draft only. Divide the class up as usual and use sub categories (more details) for their discussions on their own. I personally can see a good discussion on credit card fraud or I.D fraud and what legislative intervention should happen. Should busines be responsible for safe encryption or the credit card companies?
Government intervention on the internet(big trend). Should it be taxed.

For me this would be an interesting class. Just have 3 or 4 people solve or discuss the problem . It seems fun to me.
Thanks.
Annette

 

[Delster]

Hi smitcompton, thanks for the suggestions!

They won''t actually be submitting any written work, either in advance or afterwards. And they''ve been assigned a very specific question (to analyse very specific pieces of Irish legislation) that they have to come prepared to discuss. I have no say in the material they will cover, just some say in how they cover it. If that makes sense.

I like the idea of pulling out sub-topics and putting them in groups. Maybe I could even get them to explain their sub-topic to the rest of the group and let the others ask questions?

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,
I slept on the question and you have made it clearer to me what your role is. One other thought ocurred to me. I learn from field work. I think a small group could talk to either the legislator(sponser of the bill) or legislative aide to find out how the bill is passed, who opposes it, what are its chances of passing, ect. If you have 3 or 4 problems to solve, each group reports back and all students learn about more than their problem. Give them some field work. Let them learn about the legislative process directly. They can also contact consumer groups to see if there is a side the legislators may be missing. Enjoy!
Thanks,
Annette

 

[bee*]

We have these seminar type things in college every week. I''m not sure if you could teach it the same way that we have to learn it, but everything we do, we have to assign it into four groups-facts, ideas, plans and then for the material that we have to learn, learning objectives. We get a page at a time with some information on it. ie, the type of dog,cow,cat etc, why the owner has brought it in, some background history, and then we have to discuss each page and think of what we would do next etc. It''s really helpful as it actually puts us in a vets position and we have to decide what we would do and then later on when more sheets are handed out, we''ll find out if we took the right course of action. Not sure if you could adapt that to your course though.


Haven-you don''t have to have an undergrad over here to do veterinary or medicine either. You can go straight in from school!

 

[Haven]

Date: 11/27/2007 1:00:42 PM
Author: Delster
Hi Haven - the seminar is on legislative intervention aimed at protecting consumers.

I'm in Ireland. Our undergrad law degree is academic in nature and it doesn't entitle you to practice. For that you need to do further vocational type postgraduate degrees that are run by the professional bodies and for which there are competitive entrance exams (black-letter law exams, not like LSATs). The postgrad degrees are not provided by the universities here although in the UK they are. To make it even more complicated, for the postgrad degrees, you don't necessarily even need a law degree! It all depends on the type of practice you're interested in (solicitor/barrister).

Hope that helps!

Ow wow--it sounds like an awful lot of work to get into the field of law. Thanks for the info! I attended law school in the US and it was extremely easy to get into a top school--all you need is a high GPA from undergrad, and a great LSAT score, and you're practically guaranteed a spot in one of the top schools.

Anyway, I'm not sure how inspiring this idea is, but what if you found several articles/essays/anecdotes about consumer experiences that raise questions about legal protection. You could photocopy four of each article, place them randomly around the classroom, give the students time to read and reflect on the piece they find at their desk, and then have them find the others in the class with their piece to share their responses. Once the groups have shared you can have each quickly share their conclusions with the entire seminar, depending on the number of students you have, of course. This would be a way to get them engaged with the issue of consumer protection while giving them a some knowledge and background of actual scenarios, and I'm sure various individuals would naturally bring up a range of issues from protecting the consumer to protecting the seller.

OR, I could be completely off and you might think this is a horrible idea. I certainly wouldn't be offended if you did!

Good luck!

 

[Delster]

Date: 11/28/2007 2:33:44 PM
Author: smitcompton
Hi,

I slept on the question and you have made it clearer to me what your role is. One other thought ocurred to me. I learn from field work. I think a small group could talk to either the legislator(sponser of the bill) or legislative aide to find out how the bill is passed, who opposes it, what are its chances of passing, ect. If you have 3 or 4 problems to solve, each group reports back and all students learn about more than their problem. Give them some field work. Let them learn about the legislative process directly. They can also contact consumer groups to see if there is a side the legislators may be missing. Enjoy!

Thanks,

Annette

Hi Annette! Those are seriously great suggestions - I would love to be in your class, your ideas are so exciting! Sadly, I only have an hour to spend with these classes, and the classes are next week. I was only given the topic this week. Actually there isn''t even a set question, but that''s a whole other story...

But WOW if I was teaching the whole course how much would I love to try your idea?!?

 

[Delster]

Bee we don''t have the same approach really and as the undergrad degree is soooo academic it can be quite hard to get students to role play dealing with a client. They just don''t ''get it'' at this stage. It''s a whole other story in the professional degrees, literally everything you do in there is client focussed!

Now, that said, you have reminded me that I haven''t talked to this group yet about methods of researching topics for their exam study. We have an acronym that kind of relates to your ''facts, ideas, plans, learning objectives'' - ours is Issues, Law, Application, and Conclusion. Last class before Christmas is an excellent opportunity to flag this with them again - thanks for reminding me!

 

[Delster]

Haven! Your idea just lit me up! I am DEFINITELY going to try this! I''m going to go and find newspaper clippings about consumer issues (we have a dedicated consumer issues column weekly in one of the national newspapers) and get them to think about the problems, and work out how to advise the client, and then get them to analyse the ''value added'' by the legislation. I might even get them to present their advice to the group and ''defend'' it. And then I''ll tell them with the columnist told the consumer and let them critique the advice given. This is going to be lots of fun!