The Faculty Lounge

Distance Education: Losing the Thread

I blogged a while back about an online course I have been taking which is purely via distance education (ie no residence requirements, weekends, seminars etc).  There is also no webcasting or videoconferencing so it relies completely on electronic discussion boards, online assessments and .pdf teaching materials.  I mentioned previously that one of the advantages of the course is its anonymity.  As it is not a professional training course, anonymity actually seems to be a good thing and people are not abusing the privilege of working with pseudonyms by writing inflammatory or inappropriate items.  However, one serious downside of this method of teaching (particularly with no instantaneous form of communication with classmates) is that we are completely reliant on discussion threads to communicate with each other.  As such, sometimes one can lose the thread (literally) of an interesting discussion.  It is very hard to keep track of all the discussions threads one may have contributed to, and sometimes a promising conversation gets lost in the shuffle.  I wondered if anyone has experienced better ways of teaching/learning online than use of discussion threads?  Or better ways of organizing discussion threads than merely query by query?  Because the course is international, the discussion thread modality deals really well with the time differences between classmates, but doesn't deal well with organizing discussions.

Malware as Social Network

Several times in recent months I have received emails (often relegated to my spam folders) that appear to be from people I actually know, but which, on further examination, are spam sent from malware on a friend's computer that sends junk emails to everyone in that person's email contact list.  I'm sure many of us have experienced this.  But recently one of the spam emails I received was from a close family friend that I had lost contact with many years ago.  In all due diligence, I emailed him to let him know that he might want to check his computer for malware and, in so doing, I also realized I should send him the news from our family and ask about his.  He apologized for the spam, said he'd check out his computer and continued the personal correspondence.

So now I'm wondering if these malware/spam programs can be considered a new form of "social networking" in the sense that they bring people in touch who would not otherwise have been in touch with each other.  Is malware the new Facebook?

Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements

John Marshall law prof Colin Miller (a friend of the blog and an Oscar trivia master) has updated and posted his Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements on SSRN.  Here is the link.

Facebook and Ex Parte Communications

Might a witness's post on a judge's Facebook page, wishing the judge a happy birthday, constitute an ex parte communication?  The South Dakota Supreme Court addressed that issue in an opinion handed down this week.  You'll find the opinion here.

(Hat tip:  South Dakota law prof Roger Baron.)

Listservs and New Law Profs

It's that time of year when new law profs are making book selections, pondering recitation and attendance policies, looking forward (with a range of emotions) to the first day of class in August, etc.  We posted some friendly advice for new colleagues last summer.  Here's the link.  And we've touted a primer on law school teaching, which might be quite useful to recent hires.

One of my new entry-level Campbell colleagues asks this question (I'm paraphrasing):  what lawprof listservs are available for the subjects that I'll be teaching?

If you've got suggestions, please drop them in the comments!  Thanks!

Pre-Loaded Audio and Video Players

OK - so I realize I absolutely must spend less time on Amazon and less time trying to find more time to read more books.  But I did find something new on Amazon earlier today and did a little digging.  Apparently, there's a new way of enjoying books and movies via "pre-loaded" digital book and video players.  In other words, you don't buy content and download it to an MP3 device, but rather you buy hardware (a player) pre-loaded with the content you want.  There's a company that sells a whole catalog of audio and video products this way.  But I don't understand the marketing/pricing.  A popular novel costs around $50 to $60 in this format and it's not clear to me whether the device can ever be re-used to play other content or whether you have to buy a new hard copy device for each book (or movie).  If so, this is a pretty expensive pricing model.  Even a hardcover new release book only costs $20 to $30.  So I'm not 100% sure who the market is for these products and whether the manufacturers are pricing themselves out of the market anyway.  With so many models available for listening to and viewing content relatively cheaply and flexibly, it's hard to understand where this one will fit in.

Browsing, Not Buying

Several friends have remarked to me lately about how sad it is to see so many bricks and mortar bookstores going out of business.  It appears that one obvious reason behind this has been the exponential growth of e-publishing businesses.  E-books can be significantly cheaper (although not always) than paper copies, delivery is instant anywhere anytime, books can be read anywhere anytime without having to lug them around in a backpack.  So much for the reading side of the equation.  But what about CHOOSING books to read?  Are e-devices better than physical bookstores for browsing?  I to tend to gravitate towards completely different books depending on whether I'm browsing online or in a bookstore.  I'm often attracted to items in a store that may never show up on a 'recommendations' list on, say, Amazon.  However, like many of us I suspect, if I find something I like in the store I'm probably tempted to just download it to my Kindle rather than purchasing a hard copy.  So is there any economical model under which we could maintain the advantages of bricks and mortar book browsing while retaining the benefits of e-books?  Does it have to be either/or?  Will libraries overtake bookstores as places to browse shelves for new inspiration on what to buy? 

Law Review Articles on Amazon

One of my colleagues recently noticed that a number of law review articles are available for sale (or rather digital download) at amazon.com  An example is here.  She asked me if there were any legal problems with this and I replied that I didn't think so because presumably law reviews will not license the articles to amazon unless they have authority to do so under their publication agreements with the individual authors.  We continued going back and forth on the issue because my colleague was uneasy that someone might be making money commercially from her work in a manner she had not contemplated.  The pricepoint for these downloads from amazon is around $10 per article (or really $9.95 because that sounds so much cheaper).  My assumption was that if individual law review articles are priced that way, it's probably due to the request of the publisher and amazon is probably getting a relatively small cut.  In other words if this is like other electronic downloads that amazon does, amazon can release kindle books much more cheaply when the paper version publisher does not set a particularly high price (or when there is no paper version publisher and the author is engaging in e-publishing direct through amazon).

So, aside from the fact that very few people are probably buying articles from amazon that they could access from other sources more cheaply (or free), if less conveniently, I would assume that it wouldn't be amazon making huge profits from this.  Are the law reviews actually making any money out of it then?  And, if so, how does the pricing of an individual article compare to the pricing of an entire volume of the relevant law review?  And how are journals deciding whether to release material on amazon and, when they do, are they releasing all of their published articles or just select articles that the editors think may appeal to a more general audience?

 

Law Firm Hiring: There's an App for That!

The Benesch law firm has just released an app for iPhones and iPads to notify recent law grads and lawyers potentially interested in lateraling to the firm of upcoming job opportunities.  It will be interesting to see if this mode of recruitment takes off.  And, if it does, will recent grads be downloading multiple apps from multiple firms or will some entrepreneurial aggregator come along and offer a service of aggregating all available law firm jobs and making them available in an app format that notifies potentially interested applicants of job availability?  Is this the future of legal recruiting?

PDAs on Parade...

A colleague asked me if I had any thoughts about the distracting use of PDAs (eg iPhones, iPads, Droids etc) during scholarly presentations.  I must admit I hadn't given it a lot of thought myself, but she had a recent experience in a small group presentation of her work where the entire front row appeared to be tweeting, checking email, blogging, gaming or whatever and she found it distracting and disrespectful to the speaker.  She wondered if it would be appropriate to ask participants at such presentations to avoid using these devices so obviously during a talk.

This is related to our discussions about uses of computers in classes, but it's somewhat different because audience members at talks are obviously a different group of people to students in class and are there for different reasons.  For example, it may be that someone going to a CLE presentation doesn't really want to be there so is happy to be distracted by other matters during the presentation.  However, if the attempt at being distracted is distracting to others (including the speaker), that could be a problem.

Has anyone ever asked people in this setting to put away their PDAs or to avoid conspicuously texting, emailing etc during a presentation?  [And I must admit just last week I was guilty of fidgeting with my Droid during a small committee  meeting much to the chagrin of the committee chair.  I was in fact trying to pull up the committee agenda on my handheld device because I had forgotten to bring a hard copy - but it looked to the chair like I was just rudely ignoring her and checking email or something.  I apologized later, but she still found it as distracting as if I had been texting or checking out my recent baby photos - which, of course, I offered to show her by way of apology at the end of the meeting!]

What's in Your Email Signature?

For a while, I've had colleagues suggest to me that I add a link to my university webpage and/or SSRN page at the bottom of my email signature.  I know many people now do this and some also include links to YouTube videos and other audio-visual materials highlighting their professional work.  I generally haven't included anything in my email signature other than my contact details because I figure anyone who is really that interested in me can easily Google me.  I guess this is because the only thing I ever seem to use other people's email signatures for is if I need their snail mail address to post something to them or their telephone number to call them.  I haven't really felt compelled to click on html links to SSRN pages or personal webpages myself.  So I wondered if others have thoughts on this.  I've been told it's a good advertisement for your school to include an SSRN page link in an email signature, but pretty much everyone has an SSRN page now so unless people are actually clicking on those links to find out what you've written (and where it has been placed and how often you publish etc), does it really serve any significant marketing function?  I mean, it's obviously not a big deal just to include it, but I do get rather annoyed at how long email signatures are getting these days particularly if you are having an email "back and forth" with someone and they haven't defaulted their email settings to not include the signature in a "reply" or "forwarded" message.

And obviously I know you can have more than one email signature and you can attach an appropriate signature for an appropriate audience ie one could use an email signature with a link to published works etc only when sending emails to people who might not otherwise know about SSRN (eg some practitioners who may not themselves post on SSRN) and use a different more streamlined email signature for other purposes.  But who really has the time to change signatures back and forth on a regular basis?

The End of LexOpus

I noticed today that LexOpus (the online submission system that was a little more international and gave a little more flexibility to authors and journals than Expresso) is ceasing operations at the end of May.  Announcement here.  I don't know the background to the decision to stop the service, but would be interested in any info others may have.

Laptop Use in Class: An "Arresting" Development

If you thought a student was using a laptop for other than a class-related purpose, might you be tempted to take action?

A few days ago, one professor did.  His story here.

Facebook Replacing Friends?

I just received an email from a friend of mine (let's call her Sue) who works at the same law school as another friend of mine (let's call her Angie).  I had asked Sue how Angie was doing, and she replied that she never sees much of Angie around the office but Angie is a prolific poster on Facebook and she catches up with her that way.  Now, I understand the allure of Facebook and particularly its ability to keep people connected despite geographical differences and otherwise busy lives, but I wondered whether in the absence of Facebook, people like Sue and Angie might have taken more trouble to physically see each other every now and then.  In other words, is it possible that Facebook is now replacing physical contact in relationships where people would otherwise have organized to meet face-to-face for lunch or coffee?  And, if so, is this a good or a bad thing? 

Turning Your Handheld Device into a Credit Card Reader

Most of us use a credit card now and then when buying goods or services from a merchant. 

But what about a consumer-to-consumer transaction?  I'm guessing that most of us have yet to purchase or lease a credit card reader, prompting payment by cash, check, PayPal (if available), etc.

The current issue of Fortune magazine has an article on Jack Dorsey (of Twitter fame), who has developed a small rectangular card swiper that will plug into the audio jack of a mobile device.  You'll find the article here, with additional reading here and here, and a video story here.

I think the world is passing me by.  Thank goodness I have young, tech-savvy, children who can help me survive.

Distracted by Devices?

For those of you whose new year's resolutions had something to do with being less distracted by technology (PDAs, cellphones, Facebook etc), Chris Brogan gives some useful tips here.

Obama: Model of a Modern U.S. President

With thanks to one of my Aussie colleagues for sending this to me, I thought some of our readers might enjoy this Gilbert & Sullivan parody for a Christmas chuckle...

 

Wikileaks: House Judiciary Committee Hearings

 

Hearings held this morning on "Wikileaks, the Espionage Act and the Constitution."

Just 10 minutes in, but so far the "voice of reason award" goes to . . . . 

 

Assange Granted Bail

News just in!

Hyperlinking and Defamation in Canada

(Cross-posted from Madisonian.net)

With thanks to one of my Canadian students for forwarding this to me, it appears that the the Supreme Court of Canada will soon be deciding a case which will determine whether hyperlinks may constitute publication for the purposes of defamation law, such that a person who publishes a hyperlink would be potentially liable in defamation for defamatory content on the site to which she has linked.  Story here.

One interesting thing about the news report (that I hyper-linked to!) is that it notes that in the United States "hyperlinking is not considered publication".  I'm actually not aware that any American case has expressly decided this yet, although I'm not a defamation expert.  I know in cases like Perfect 10 v Google, courts have held that hyperlinking does not amount to copying content for the purposes of copyright law.  But does this answer the publication question in the defamation context?  It may be that the question is moot in the United States because many of those who hyperlink could be potentially covered by section 230 of the CDA if they are not regarded as being the "content provider" of the relevant information, although this analysis may have its limits depending on the facts.

Looking forward the Canadian decision on this one.