Partnering to Create Effective Online Legal Instruction

Speaker(s):

When developing online legal education programs that meet new American Bar Association (ABA) standards, it becomes necessary to challenge the traditional model of legal instruction. The McKinney Law School at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) partnered with IU teaching and learning professionals to redesign face-to-face courses for inclusion in a fully-online certificate program. Using the backwards design model, faculty were able to rethink the standard content-led model and focus on authentic student learning outcomes and active learning strategies to make online courses more effective and engaging. This resulted in consistent and high quality online course development across the significant components of the Law School Curriculum.

Online course design offers unique promise in curricular improvement in one important way: Current legal reform initiatives, including changes to the ABA’s Standards for Legal Education, focus on practice-driven experiential learning. Traditional law school case-method pedagogical techniques are only partially effective at achieving outcomes that speak to those initiatives. Integrating new types of instructional experiences into online course design promises opportunity to advance a broader variety of new institution-level educational objectives and course-level learning outcomes.

Session Outcomes:

Recognize the advantage of partnering with Teaching and Learning Professionals in Developing Online Legal Instruction;
Identify partners, for example Campus Teaching and Learning Centers, at home institutions that will assist in online Course Development;
Describe how partnerships can create innovative learning experiences in legal instruction using backward design.