Catherine J. Wasson, Elon’s Director of Legal Method & Communication (LMC), and professors Robert Parrish, Tom Noble, Patricia Perkins, John Flynn and Jackie Connors traveled to California to participate in the 15th Biennial Conference of the Legal Writing Institute, held May 29 through June 1.
Their collaborative presentation – Students, You May Start Your Engines! Techniques for Engaging the Disengaged – was built around a mock class, with the large number of attendees playing the role of students. During the 75-minute presentation, the Elon team used a variety of active learning techniques and teaching methods to demonstrate some of the ways in which they engage their students and encourage students to become independent learners.
The presentation space was pre-arranged to facilitate group work. Professor Flynn greeted attendees at the door, shaking hands and introducing himself to each person to establish a professional environment for the “class,” and Professor Perkins discussed the use of music to set the tone. Professor Wasson then explained how room arrangement can influence class dynamics, and led participants in a team-building exercise and group “readiness” quiz.
The stage being set, Professor Noble used a PowerPoint with embedded videos to share the “Jedi Mind Tricks” that he uses to engage and motivate students throughout the year, and Professor Parrish demonstrated the “Writing by Numbers” approach that he developed to help students move beyond “IRAC” and learn to describe and apply the law more thoughtfully, and in more depth (IRAC is an acronym for a legal analysis methodology that stands for: Issue, Relevant law, Application to facts, and Conclusion).
During the second half of the presentation, professors modeled techniques that can be effective during the second semester. Professor Flynn showed several YouTube videos that can be used to motivate students or teach key principles of oral argument. Professor Connors then engaged participants in an exercise designed to develop self-efficacy, during which members of the “class” took turns answering questions that had been submitted to the professor.
The presentation ended with Professor Perkins’s explanation of a semester-long series of student presentations that requires students to both teach and evaluate one another as they take turns presenting weekly lessons on oral argument to their class.
The LMC team presented a shorter version of this program in Durham in 2011, at the biennial North & South Carolina Legal Research & Writing Colloquium. Elon Law hosted the Colloquium conference in 2009. The Legal Writing Institute, with a membership of more than 2,100, is the second-largest organization of law professors in the nation.