On-line legal research workshops.

• Author: Jonassen, Frederick B.

ABSTRACT

Like riding a bicycle, playing tennis, or driving a car, legal research is a skill, and like any other skill, it is learned by doing, and not by listening to a lecture. However, lectures are indispensable for introducing the skill. The mental processes applied in electronic legal research may differ from those applied to book legal research. But because both electronic and book research are skills, a guided workshop in electronic legal research may be based on similar principles to those underlying a workshop in book legal research, with appropriate modifications.

The aspects of the electronic legal workshop proposed here are as follows: (1) scheduling as soon as possible after the introductory lecture and treasure hunt exercise; (2) (2) guided questions, which lead students through a process and which also give them freedom and independence to make choices; (3) (3) a realistic research problem that requires reflection about what has been found, as opposed to simply finding an answer, but which is not as complex as the research problem for a typical open memo; (4) (4) work in small groups or pairs; (5) (5) immediate discussion and feedback on the strategies employed in the research exercise. (6)

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION PART I: TEACHING LEGAL RESEARCH IS DIFFICULT PART II: THE BOOK LEGAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP A. The Levy Approach B. Moppett & Buckingham C. Three Issues 1. Not a Treasure Hunt 2. Group Work 3. Guidance PART III: THE ON-LINE LEGAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP A. Preliminaries B. The Research Problem C. The Guidance Questions D. The Class E. Results F. Questionnaire Responses CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

Professors and librarians who teach legal research have often observed that students learn how to research by actively researching rather than by listening to a lecture. (7) To drive this point home, commentators have employed a variety of comparisons. (8) They tell us that learning how to research is like learning how to ride a bicycle, play tennis, drive a car, or swim. (9) Lectures on these activities might teach a person a lot about them, but few have learned how to ride a bike, develop topspin, make a left-hand turn in two-way traffic, or do a backstroke from a lecture. (10) Exactly the same is true of legal research because performing such research, like all of these activities, is a skill, or more accurately, a set of skills. (11) Lectures may be effective for explaining substantive or doctrinal material, but a skill is typically acquired by hands-on experience. (12)

Articles by Levy and by Moppett & Buckingham have proposed that students can efficiently and effectively develop book legal research skills through workshops. (13) In such environments, students are able to solve research problems in groups, with guiding questions, and with immediate access to, and feedback from, the professor or a librarian. (14) The workshop approach and the suggestions of these commentators provide a vital means of initiating and developing a feel for doing legal research in books beyond the preliminary introduction encompassed by lectures and the so-called treasure hunt or bibliographic approach. (15) However, these articles only address the teaching of book research, not electronic or on-line research, which is likely to become the dominant type of research utilized by students. (16) The instant article builds on the work of Levy and Moppett & Buckingham and proposes that, despite the widely noted differences between book research and on-line research in regard to how they are most effectively done and taught, (17) both share a similarity that is crucial for teaching either: both types of research are skills, so that students for the most part learn how to perform both through doing and not through listening. (18) Therefore, just as students most efficiently and effectively begin to develop their book legal researching skills through the workshop method advanced by Levy and Moppett & Buckingham, so also do they most efficiently and effectively begin to develop their on-line legal research skills through a workshop method paralleling the workshop approach for book research advocated by these authors.

After the Introduction, Part I of this article will present my own experiences in arriving at the workshop method of teaching legal research. (19) Part II will present the workshop method for books as practiced by Levy, and Moppett & Buckingham, and its benefits and advantages over lectures. (20) Part III will then outline in detail the electronic workshop I am developing, emphasizing the similarities and differences from the book workshop approach, the student reactions to an experimental electronic research workshop, the beneficial results of the method, and changes I plan to make to the class based on student evaluations. (21)

PART I: TEACHING LEGAL RESEARCH IS DIFFICULT

When I began to teach legal writing, (22) I did not have to teach legal research, except to the extent that research instruction was incidental to my writing assignments. The law school provided a required first year course in legal bibliography taught by the school's librarians. They were responsible for research, and I did not envy that responsibility.

Later, I found myself in a school where the responsibility for teaching legal research was transferred, at least temporarily, to the legal writing staff. My colleagues and I then had the challenge of deciding how to teach legal research and integrate it into the legal writing curriculum. (23) I soon realized that Levy's statement, "Teaching legal research is difficult," is a perfect example of understatement. (24) Confronted with the prospect of teaching legal research, I first drew upon my recollection of how it was taught in classes I had observed when I was a student of legal writing. The approach I most often saw was to lecture students. During the lecture, the instructor would illustrate the research process by holding up a copy of a volume from a legal encyclopedia, or digest, or state code. The instructor would explain the information found therein, and then pass the volume around to the students, perhaps citing the pertinent pages they should look at. Sometimes the professor would make use of handouts containing photocopies of sample pages (25) so the students could follow the professor's discussion of what they would find in the index of a legal encyclopedia or in the annotation of a statute. Or the professor showed these sample pages with an overhead projector to point out the features under discussion more clearly.

Instruction in electronic legal research, though it concerned and made use of computers, screen projectors, data bases, and the internet, (26) did not really depart very much from the lecture approach. Until just a few years ago, these lectures would take place in a computer lab. (27) However, now that almost every law student takes a laptop to school every day, (28) these lectures may be given in regular classrooms with some technical, audio, or visual enhancements. (29) A librarian or representative of Westlaw or LexisNexis typically tells the students how to access the on-line research service, how to navigate within it, what databases they will find useful, how to do a Boolean search, (30) how many hits they should get in a sample search, and what results they should have. (31) A computer screen projector now makes clear what the students should be viewing on their laptops. Thus, the students follow the instructor's directions, keystroke per keystroke, occasionally looking up to check they are on the same page, so to speak, as the instructor. (32)

The librarians and representatives whom I observed demonstrated an impressive knowledge and command over the materials. They also exhibited great creativity in their selection of engaging issues and sample questions, which shed light on the research necessary for the required writing assignments. Furthermore, they often incorporated humor to whet the interests of the students for what was often very dry material. More importantly, these lectures presented information that was and still is basic and necessary to get the students started on electronic research. Therefore, lecturing has a place in the teaching and learning process of the electronic legal research skill.

Confronted with the task of teaching research, however, I tried to emulate what I thought were the best techniques of these instructors. In order to gain credibility with the students, I considered it crucial to develop the expertise I had witnessed, whether in devising the most efficient research strategies or knowing the latest developments in Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Loislaw. Although I adopted some of the very same methods I had observed, I thought I could improve on them in various ways. For example, I tried formulating research questions that could illustrate how several resources may complement one another or demonstrate how different approaches lead to the same results.

But I was dissatisfied. My overall impression was that the lectures did not motivate students. Instead, the students were remarkably passive. (33) They followed my instructions mechanically. They listened to what I said, tapped out the keystrokes I indicated, and perhaps, checked my projected computer screen to be sure they were in sync with me. They took few or no notes at all. Above all, I did not get the questions or observations from the students that I have always associated with successful classes in which the students are engaged and thinking. I doubt they retained very much. It did not seem to matter how well-informed, articulate or entertaining I was or thought I was. (34) But the truth of the matter is, these were also my observations regarding student reaction to the very best research lectures I had seen. I did not improve on anyone's ability to boost student interaction, or, I am afraid, student learning. (35)

PART II: THE BOOK LEGAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP

As a result of my...