CARNEGIE REPORT

EXPLODING THE CASEBOOK METHOD:

COMPUTER-BASED LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

THE LEARNING SCIENCESLearning Sciences explores the relationship between the design of learning environments and how people learn.Leverage cognitive theory and cognitive modeling to identify the instructional conditions that cause robust student learning. Seek methods to produce and measure robust learning that is retained for long durations, transfers to novel situations, or aids future learning.

CASE DIALOGUE METHODFirst, students read former legal appellate court decisions, in preparation for class. Then, during class, the professor asks questions of students related to the cases, trying to point out that student assumptions of the legal aspects of the case are in error. Finally, questions are meant to elicit student abstraction of legal rules from within the case.

CLASS STRUCTUREEach course is presented commonly in a semester format, with only three hours per week of instruction for each large substantive area of law. Classes often have 100 or more students. Students have extremely limited interaction with their professors in class, and thus have limited opportunities to ask questions and refine their learning. The large amount of material within each substantive area of law, means there is insufficient time to cover the important doctrinal considerations within each large area of law.

CASE DIALOGUE METHOD and ANALOGICAL LEARNING THEORY

Analogical reasoning requires students to abstract rules of law from consideration of numerous cases. As they ferret out trends and compare facts and analytical flow, students will develop an ability to analogize from given cases to new ones.CARNEGIE REPORTThe case dialogue method of legal education is so prevalent throughout law schools that it is described as a signature pedagogy. A signature pedagogy represents the primary model of instruction in a professional school, which is unique and identifiable in the field. As a signature pedagogy, the case dialogue method is the preferred and most often used teaching method in law schools today.CARNEGIE REPORTLegal pedagogy is remarkably uniform across variations in schools and student bodies. Additionally, the first-year curriculum is similarly standardized, as is the system of competitive learning.LEARNING SCIENCES ANALYSIS OF LEGAL EDUCATIONSusan M. Williams, formerly of The Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University:Research on legal education through modern empirical research comparing types of legal education is sparse, and publications discussing legal education are for the most part polemic. Nevertheless, this comprehensive study of legal education provides clear insights in the drawbacks of the case dialogue method.

FAULTY DOCTRINAL INSTRUCTION

Students are presented with no overview, no placing of a case within an area of law, no definition of terms. Williams call this a sink or swim approach with no preliminary substantive knowledge of law. Students must go to a source outside of the casebook, in order to fully clarify knowledge of basic doctrine.

ANALOGICAL REASONING PROBLEMSAnalogical Inference May Be False. Not Enough Variations to Make Deep Distinctions between Cases.Student May Make Too Many Inferences.No Checking of Analogical References.Learning is Vicarious through Professor / Student Dyad.Many Students Zone Out and Surf Internet Aimlessly.It is Difficult to Transfer the Learning to Other Areas.FAILURES OF CASEBOOK METHOD*Doctrine Is Not first Fully Established.*Analogical Reasoning Can be Faulty.*Appeals Mostly to Students Who Learn Through the Written Word or Through Auditory Means.*Cases are Truncated Versions of Actual Cases.*Focus on One Student at a Time Means That Other Students Must Learn in a Vicarious Fashion.*Does Not Give Sufficient Overview of Each Area of Law.*Does Not Focus on Problems.*Little or No Feedback or Understanding of Doctrine.FAILURES OF CASEBOOK METHOD, CONTINUED*It Confuses Students by Hiding the Ball, or Mystifying the Law. *Does Not Allow for Active Participation of Students.*Does Not Provide Flow-Charts, Graphics or Other Alternative Ways to Conceptualize the Material. *Large Classes, No Opportunity to Work in Small Groups.*No Opportunity to Work Outside of the Classroom. *Presents Smaller Areas of Law Which Are Not Contextualized Within a Larger Framework.*It Is a Very Slow Process Where Only One Doctrine or One Sub-Doctrine of Law Are Considered at a Time Which Bores Excellent Students Who Then Surf the Internet.CASE DIALOGUE: RESULT Susan M. Williams:A frequent complaint about the case method is a sense of confusion, aimlessness, and inconclusiveness. Students feel that they are involved in a kind of game-playing similar to hide-and-seek in that the professor knows what to do but will not tell the student.

TACIT UNDERSTANDING Excellent Law Students are Said to Have Tacit Understanding of the Material in a Way that Cannot Elaborate About.TACIT UNDERSTANDINGTACIT UNDERSTANDING RATIONAL UNDERSTANDINGNATURAL TALENT VISION SPECIAL VISION MYSTERIOUS UNDERSTANDING LEGAL IMAGINATION NATURAL APTITUDE THE ENIGMA TALENT FOR NUANCE THE HIDDEN ELEMENT

PRACTICAL JUDGMENT INHERENT TALENT ENIGMATIC STUFF TACIT KNOWLEDGE INHERENT KNOW-HOW,ESOTERIC SKILL FAR TRANSER NEAR TRANSFERINHERENT UNDERSTANDINGMYSTERIOUS TALENT INTUITIVE SKILL

ANDRAGOGY V. PEDAGOGYAndragogy assumes that adults need to know up front why they should learn something, adults need to learn through experience including their mistakes, adults learn through problem-solving, and adults learn more effectively if the topic is of immediate value to them.COGNITIVISMFLOW CHARTS DIAGRAMS REPETITION REPRESENTATIONS OF MATERIALCONSTRUCTIVISM*Learning is an Active Process. *Learners continually construct new knowledge based on their former knowledge. *Each learners cognitive structure allows them to give meaning and organization to new information, and thus integrate the new information through an active learning process. *Learners continually re-visit, and thus build upon, old knowledge, in order to manifest new cognitive structures.

*The instruction should be designed to engage the learner, but within a format that the learner can understand.

LAW TEXTSShould provide concise, precise doctrinal legal authority. Should provide an integrated and coherent written text. Full, coherent, contextual, comprehensive information. For use outside of the classroom. LEARNING STYLESJoanne Ingham, New York Law School:*A learning style refers to the various ways that an individual student attends to, conceptualizes, understands, and assimilates new information. *Case dialogue classrooms rely heavily on auditory learning.*However, only about twenty-five percent of the students in the study learned effectively through auditory modalities. *The data indicates the desirability of using multi-sensory, active learning approaches, which cover a variety of learning styles.LEARNING STYLES AND COMPUTER-BASED LEARNINGJoanne Ingham, New York Law School:Because such a small percentage of students retain information auditorally or visually, an active learning environment is necessary to facilitate learning. With the introduction of computer technology in our lives and in our educational experience, law students are used to and may well learn best by receiving information in ways that are more multi-sensory, stimulating, creative, and interactive.UNIQUE CULTURAL CHANGESRichard A. Matasar, Dean of New York Law School:

Students no longer learn to write; they learn word processing. The transparency is a tool of the past; it is now replaced by an overhead projector attached to a computer. Books no longer are mere words with the occasional graphs; they are interactive with sound and links to other materials. Students brought up with this technology will need technology to learn. Thus, law school not only will be pulled to change by the emerging technological changes within legal practice, they will be pushed to the same place by their students.

COMPUTER-BASED LEARNINGAllan Collins, Professor Emeritus, Learning Sciences, Northwestern University:I believe the thrust toward computer-aided learning is an important development in education. Computers make it possible to give more personal attention to individual students, without which new developments in learning may be impossible to implement.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCESKaren Gross, Professor of Law, New York Law School:Current law students, some of whom are clearly influenced by technological advances, are, in terms of their educative experiences, vastly different from many of the people teaching them. They have grown up with computers, are proficient with the Internet, and are accustomed to hand-held devices of all sorts. Thus, educational offerings have to be responsive to the students of today and tomorrow.

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