Editor's Corner

• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Author: Robert J. Landry
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12006
• Date: 01 March 2014

Editor’s Corner

This issue marks beginning of the Journal of Legal Studies Education’s (JLSE)

thirty-first year of publication. For three decades the JLSE has published

high-quality, peer-reviewed pedagogical research in the legal studies disci-

pline. Not only is it our discipline’s leading outlet for publishing pedagogical

research, the JLSE provides opportunities for service and professional de-

velopment for members of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB).

The JLSE has been an invaluable resource for a generation of legal studies

scholars.

Continuing in the JLSE’s standard of excellence, this issue includes

four exceptional articles, the winner of the ALSB 2013 Best International

Case Competition and a “Perspectives on Teaching” article. The first two

pieces present innovative ways for professors to enhance their classroom

teaching and ensure credible learning objectives in the online environment.

The Socratic method has long been a tool employed by many professors in

law and legal studies. Professor Matt Hlinak offers an innovative approach

to incorporating the Socratic method in the online classroom. Professors

Lucas Loafman and Barbara Altman explore concrete techniques to ensure

quality in the online learning environment. Both pieces provide ways to

help maintain the integrity of the classroom experience even though we are

increasingly moving away from brick-and-mortar classrooms.

In the next piece Professor Patricia Pattison offers panoply of advice

for professors to connect with students through the use of storytelling. She

employs the story behind the landmark case of Kelo v. New London. The article

is a useful resource for professors to draw upon to incorporate storytelling in

their classrooms.

A common challenge all professors face is finding the best classroom

practices to enhance learning. A common debate in the literature is whether

the traditional lecture pedagogical style or active learning tools are better at

enhancing learning outcomes. Professors LeVon Wilson and Stephanie Sipe

tackle this issue head on in their article. Interestingly, the empirical findings

do not indicate that active learning is any more effective in learning out-

comes than traditional lecture pedagogical style. This result is contrary to

C2014 The Author

Journal of Legal Studies Education C2014 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

v