If You Build It, They Will Learn: Using Self-Paced Modules to Integrate Academic and Professional Skills Across the Curriculum

Law professors face a great challenge when building substantive courses: There is a demanding crunch for time to cover valuable substantive material that tends to outweigh a very real need to give students the opportunity to build professional skills they will need in practice. Too often, these skills wind up being taught and practiced exclusively in skills courses, in a vacuum separated from substantive material.

This program will present a project in its early stages of development (planning to deploy in Fall 2012) to use self-paced modules, occasionally in concert with live, course-independent workshops, combining levels of skill training and practice which can be customized for particular courses in order to integrate professional skills across substantive courses to supplement the training received in traditional skills courses. Additionally, this program will feature an expanded model to integrate academic skills as well as professional skills, and a sample path for building the program across a 3-year curriculum.