Transforming the Legal Studies Classroom: Clickers and Engagement

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12022
Date01 January 2015
Published date01 January 2015
Journal of Legal Studies Education
Volume 32, Issue 1, 47–90, Winter 2015
Transforming the Legal Studies
Classroom: Clickers and Engagement
Susan Parkand Denise Farag∗∗
Teaching is not just delivering lectures but anything we
might do that helps and encourages students to learn.1
I. Introduction
Envision your typical business law or legal environment of business classroom,
filled with students. As class begins, most students are alert and attentive to
the instructor. However, after class is under way, some students have diverted
their attention elsewhere. A few are looking intently at their laptop screens,
which contain material that may (or may not) be related to business law.
Others are looking at their phones. While many are still listening to the
instructor, a few might be whispering to neighbors, and one or two students
even appear to be napping. Does this scene sound familiar? Now consider
a different classroom, one in which every student in the class is looking at
the screen at the front of the room, reading the same question, and thinking
intently about the answer. The room is quiet. Imagine further that you, the
instructor, can gather the students’ answers to the question immediately and,
with one click, present those results back to the class, in vivid graphics. When
the results are displayed, the room is filled with a buzz as some students
congratulate themselves on their correct answer, while others express dismay
that they chose incorrectly. Their attention is on the question presented,
Assistant Professor, Boise State University. This work was generously supported through a
summer research grant from the Boise State University College of Business and Economics. The
author thanks Boise State MBA Graduate Assistant Molly Haberl for her valuable research and
analysis.
∗∗Assistant Professor of Business Law, Linfield College.
1Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do 173 (2004).
C2015 The Authors
Journal of Legal Studies Education C2015 Academy of Legal Studies in Business
47
48 Vol. 32 / The Jour nal of Legal Studies Education
which relates directly to the content of your course. In which classroom are
students more engaged?
If you teach college students, chances are you would prefer the second
classroom far more than the first. As professors of legal studies in business
courses, we certainly do. Our desire to develop our teaching skills and in-
crease student engagement in the classroom led us to conclude that our
courses would improve by the introduction of a method of active learning,
a personal response system (“clickers”), as an alternative to the traditional
lecture. We quickly learned, however, as we began revising our courses to
facilitate clicker use, that little literature specific to the legal studies disci-
pline was available for help and suggestions. Much of the current literature
regarding the use of clickers in the classroom consists of either general advice
on implementing the technology or writing proper questions, not specific to
a particular discipline, or it relates to the use of clickers in science-oriented
classrooms, such as math, biology, and physics.2Literature regarding the use
of clickers in social science and humanities classrooms is less available; only
a small number of articles relate to the use of active learning techniques in
law or legal studies classrooms.3A few articles address the use of clickers in
law school classrooms,4but only one practical article pertains specifically to
legal studies courses designed for undergraduate students.5The content in
undergraduate legal studies courses may be relatively the same as that in law
school courses, but the structure of the class and needs of the students are
quite different. Lampe argues quite convincingly why legal studies courses
2See Catherine Easton, An Examination of Clicker Technology Use in Legal Education, 3 J. Info. Law
&Tech.1, 2–3 (2009) (noting that the number of articles relating to teaching law with clickers is
minimal compared to those relating to physics and other science topics); Kumar Laxman, A Study
on the Adoption of Clickers in Higher Education, 27 Australasian J. Educ. Tech. 1291–1303 (2011);
Kelley Burton, Interactive PowerPoints: Is There Any Point in Giving Power to Students?, 11 Murdoch
U. Electronic J.L. (2004), http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v11n4/burton114.html.
3See Easton, supra note 2.
4See, e.g.,Easton,supranote 2; Paul L. Caron & Rafael Gely, Taking Back the Law School Classroom:
Using Technology to Foster Active Student Learning, 54 J. Legal Educ. 551 (2004); Roger C. Park,
Reflections on Teaching Evidence with an Audience Response System, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 1315 (2010);
Samantha A. Moppett, Control-Alt-Incomplete? Using Technology to Assess “Digital Natives,” Suffolk
U. L. Sch. Legal Stud. Research Paper Series, Research Paper 12–12, at 29–30 (Feb. 20,
2013).
5See Brian R. Levey, In-Class Polling: Less Teaching, More Learning?, in Teaching with
Technology: The Stories Continue (Learning Technology Consortium, Mar. 16, 2011),
http://ltcessays.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/01-levey.pdf.
2015 / Transforming the Legal Studies Classroom 49
should be taught differently than legal subjects taught in law schools.6He
observes that students in legal studies courses are future business practition-
ers and should learn about the law in such a way as to make better business
decisions, not to be become minilawyers.7
This article fills the gap in the literature by addressing clicker use in legal
studies courses. Our experience bears out the common finding that clickers
are an excellent engagement tool. Although we use clickers in our classrooms
in different ways, we have both found that they transformed our classrooms—
we and our students are more engaged in the material and in the process of
teaching and learning. Building off the work of others, we have developed
a framework for using clickers in undergraduate legal studies courses that
identifies three general focus areas for clicker use: content focused, student
focused, and instructor focused. Our intent is to add to the body of knowledge
regarding clickers by giving legal studies faculty specific, practical suggestions
for how they can transform their classrooms through the use of clickers.8
Although directed primarily toward business law faculty, we believe this article
will also be useful for a more general teaching audience.
Part II begins with a brief description of personal response systems and
how they are used. It also reviews the literature on student engagement and
explains why it is an important element of learning. Part II concludes by
addressing the link between clickers and engagement, particularly regarding
the use of clickers in large-enrollment courses and in law school classes. Part
III introduces a three-part framework of clicker use that can be applied to
legal studies courses. This framework includes descriptions of the methods
6See Marc Lampe, A New Paradigm for the Teaching of Business Law and Legal Environment Classes,
23 J Leg Stud. Educ. 1 (2006).
7Id. at 2. See also Paul L. Frantz & Alex H. Wilson, Student Performance in the Legal Environment
Course: Determinants and Comparisons, 21 J Leg Stud. Educ. 225, 226 n. 5 (2004) (Although the
skills required of undergraduate business students and graduate law students might be similar,
significant differences between the two programs makes comparisons of the two “of limited
value.”); John R. Allison, The Role of Law in the Business School Curriculum,9J Leg Stud. Educ.
239, 240 (1991) (noting that undergraduate legal studies courses “serve unique and valuable
purposes in the business school curriculum. They are, and should be, quite different from
courses taught in law schools.”).
8See Ian D. Beatty, Transforming Student Learning with Classroom Communications System, Educause
Center for Applied Research (ICAR) 1, 7 (Feb. 3, 2004) (“The best way to help instructors
adjust to their new roles is to provide mentoring and support by [clicker]-experienced teachers.
Alittlescaffoldingcangoalongway....Sharingquestionsbetween instructors, or even providing
a library or model curriculum of predesigned question sets, can make a big difference to a new
instructor trying to climb the steep [clicker] learning curve.”).

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