But the key to success is how you do it, said Professor Andrew Guzman, associate dean of Berkeley Law’s advanced degree program. Some of the early MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) gave the field a bad reputation.
“Our courses will be high-touch and interactive,” Guzman said. “Many will have been taught successfully in bricks-and-mortar classrooms and then re-built from the ground up for online delivery. For students, it’ll be like a small, engaged community, with an instructor leading the way.”
Most importantly, the course will broaden access to legal education across borders.
“Online courses have the fantastic ability to reach thousands of people that we can’t reach in classrooms alone,” Guzman said, particularly professionals seeking to study a niche area of the law. It essentially expands the law school’s reach into untapped global audiences, as the school’s international executive education program has been doing for years.
Skeptical at first, Guzman now embraces online teaching, if it maintains the quality and integrity of a live class. He isn’t the only convert.
Enriched online discussions
Bill Fernholz stares into a video camera a few feet away as an assistant dabs powder on his face to blunt the harsh light. It wasn’t how he’d imagined himself teaching when he joined the law faculty 14 years ago, but it’s become second nature to him now.
“I never thought an online course could be as good as the real thing,” Fernholz said, after the day’s videotaping wrapped. “But I soon realized that online experiences could be just as intense and important as those in the classroom.”
In Fernholz’s traditional LL.M. course on U.S. law, students introduce themselves online and start building relationships—even before school begins. They form a global community that enriches class discussions, a fact not lost on Alan Roper, the lead online instructional designer who sat in on the course.
“The class discussion was incredible. So many students were eager to comment on their own country’s constitution and how it determined foreign policy.” Online, the potential was even greater, he thought. “Hundreds more would have the chance to comment in real time—the equivalent of seven or eight classes. That’s how rich an online discussion can be,” Roper said.
Roper worked closely with Fernholz to custom-design the course. The online elements engage students with interactive forums, videotaped lectures, narrated screencasts, and more. Quizzes, team projects, and high-profile guest interviews can help make a difference between a poor online course and a great one.
“The designers are absolutely crucial,” Fernholz said. They “open vistas” about teaching, not just online, but in person, too.
Roper explained the role matter of factly: “Our job is to get into the engine room of the course—the nuts and bolts of it.” He focused on key learning objectives: what students ought to know—and be able to do—by the end of the course.
Instructor plays key role
Despite the hi-tech wizardry, the instructor plays a crucial role. It all comes down to the interaction, Fernholz said.
“Students want to interact with a human, not with a machine,” said Fernholz, who’s also the director of the law school’s appellate and competitions programs. “’High-touch’ means feedback and motivation. Students need to learn new skills, and we need to keep them motivated.”
Feedback is essential, agrees Roper. For the lead designer, these courses represent “a new frontier” for the law school, and its first official class is a “flagship” that ranks among the most innovative.
Registration for Fundamentals of U.S. Law is now open, and instruction runs from May 12—June 27. For more details, go to Berkeley Law Online.
