Most of us are experiencing the double whammy of reacting to an extremely contentious and never-ending presidential election, and at the same time, we were finishing our first full semester of distance teaching (and some like me, have even become elementary school teachers to our children, ugh!). Obviously, these stresses were considerable. Indeed, a host of articles provide us useful guidance on how best to cope with the election. Fewer articles explore the impact of Zoom on teachers and students, though some in fact have labelled the phenomena: Zoom fatigue. Not enough articles however have explored much needed self-assessment of the effectiveness of our Zoom teaching efforts. I suspect many reviews will have to wait for student evaluations. Despite that wise decision, I believe it would be useful to start to honestly ponder how much students learned, and whether they learned effectively.
For instance, I often teach 70-170 students per fall semester, often teaching two sections of torts. I perhaps was a bit lucky this semester because I previously asked for a break from teaching torts. Instead, this semester I taught upper-level courses--products liability and administrative law--where I could focus on teaching practical lawyering skills. Each class had roughly dozen students. In that environment, teaching via Zoom had many benefits. I could literally look into each student's eyes, albeit via a computer, and tell if they were understanding the materials, had questions, or simply disagreed with me. Zoom-teaching also allowed me to easily and seamlessly add extra-sessions with all or some students, based on my practicum-based class structure and grading system (in each class, the students were paired and had to litigate a case based on the theory taught in class coupled with a real-life fact pattern). While I look forward to the students reactions, last week I invited several of my colleagues to attend the final oral arguments in each class. I believe my fellow-professors and dean were extremely impressed with our students (no surprise in some respects because FIU Law students are consistently outstanding). Thus, it appears in these courses, Zoom-learning worked.
I nonetheless wonder, what if instead of teaching these soon-to-be lawyers, I had to teach from 70 to 170 first-year law students. Would I be able to effectively teach them negligence? Strict liability? Intentional torts? At first blush, it may sound fairly easy, but I would disagree. It is one thing to use Zoom for a dozen students, but it is an entirely different animal to teach 50 or more students via Zoom? Last spring for instance, I had the pleasure to teach at a neighboring law school. When we started the semester with in-person teaching, the students were a joy, and for me, it was teaching as usual. However, when the pandemic hit, it was a challenge to teach over 100 students with up to five separate Zoom pages in each class setting? I simply could not effectively tell who or how many were listening? How many were engaged? Then when the school changed the course's grading to pass/fail, that challenge only grew. As we tend to do, I adjusted. I taught the best I could under the circumstances--holding extra sessions, extra reviews, and even sharing my class notes for every class. But the question remained: was it enough?
While I look forward to your reactions, I believe Zoom works in some settings: small classes with upper-level students. I do not believe it works well with large classes, such as with our first-year curriculum. Perhaps the vaccine(s) will make the above moot? I nonetheless believe much more research and discussion is needed, especially if we are to stay apart for a longer period than we first expected.
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