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Kristl, K --- "Learning law while walking the dog: the pedagogical potential of podcasting" [2012] LegEdDig 29; (2012) 20(2) Legal Education Digest 43


Learning law while walking the dog: the pedagogical potential of podcasting

K Kristl

Widener Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series No. 12-09, 2012, pp 1-14

The typical law school classroom for a doctrinal course utilises a learning structure that limits opportunities for students to learn directly from the professor. Time constraints inherent in the need for coverage and the desire to keep the class engaged encourages movement through the material. As a result, law professors expect students to have read and digested the assigned readings before class, participate (either as the student questioned or as an observer) in a quasi-Socratic dialogue about the materials, take notes about the class discussion and occasional professorial pearls of wisdom, and to ask questions (either during or after class) if they do not understand. Thus, unless the student comes to the professor outside of class, or a concept gets discussed over multiple classes via extended examination or review, the professor may have only one opportunity to tell the students in her or his own words what the professor wants them to know.

While teaching first year Property courses during the past seven years, I have often wondered whether such a time-limited approach maximises students’ ability to learn the material I expected them to learn. From the perspective of one who knows the material that I try to teach, it seems obvious that the system should work. Yet while the cohort of top students tends to function well in that environment, actual exam answers over the years have suggested that I should not presume such automatic comprehension and retention on the part of the entire class. I therefore began to look for ways to improve students’ chances to get and retain the key substantive law of Property I wanted them to learn – that is, to find a way that would allow more students in a class to ‘get it’.

When I explored further, I found the learning theory provides support for the notion that increasing opportunities for comprehension via repetition can work to achieve comprehension (as explained infra).

From this observation of students comprehending after hearing me explain a concept more than just in the classroom, I developed a program to make such multiple learning opportunities available for all students. I utilise podcasts – short audio recordings in which I summarise the important concepts I want the students to learn about a particular topic – as the means to make multiple learning opportunities possible.

In addition to benefitting students, I have found that podcasting provides three advantages to me in teaching my Property classes. First, I control the message. Students hear a concept described exactly the way I want them to learn it. That minimises the risks of mistranslation that occurs whenever students turn to each other (or even to a commercial ‘aid’ that describes it a different way or emphasises different aspects of an issue). Second, podcasting allows unlimited repetition. Students can listen to a podcast as many times as they want until they comprehend the subject matter. As discussed later in this article, data suggests that most students in fact listen to podcasts multiple times. This learning via repetition can help overcome the potential impediments to learning in the typical classroom suggested by learning theory. As a result, I can reasonably expect more students will have comprehended the key concepts I want them to learn. Third, podcasting expands the learning space beyond the classroom. Precisely because podcasts are separate from the classroom, students can listen to them at any time in any place – while studying, driving, working out, doing housework, or while walking the dog (all of which have been identified by students as times they listened to my podcasts). This means that I have more opportunities to reach and teach my students.

I have utilised podcasts in connection with teaching Property in ten different semesters from Fall 2006 through Spring 2012 (Property I eight times and Property II twice). The podcasts were digital audio recordings made on a handheld digital recorder then converted to MP3 or WMA digital files that were available to students on both a TWEN website for the class and on CDs burned (that is, the files were copied onto the CD) and placed on reserve in the Library.

The first set of my podcasts (in Fall 2006) consisted of summaries of the topics covered during the past week of class. Generally about 20-25 minutes in length, these podcasts took about 45 minutes each to make, using primarily my class notes to extemporise on the topics covered. Concerned about the effectiveness of this approach, the next time I taught Property (Spring 2007), I shifted to topic-specific podcasts – i.e., podcasts that covered a single topic (Found Property, Bailments, Gifts, etc.). For example, the podcast on Bailments does the following: defines what bailments are, identifies the four elements of a prima facie case for bailments discussed in class, what those elements mean or require in more detail (with reference to the cases and notes studied in class on bailments), and the legal consequences of proving the prima facie case (that is, the presumption of negligence by the bailee). Total listening time: six minutes, 24 seconds.

This topic-oriented format had several advantages. First, the podcasts became noticeably shorter – generally, 5 to 12 minutes in length (as the Bailments podcast shows), with preparation time of about 30 minutes each, from an outline of my notes. Second, topic-specific podcasts allow the student to focus on the particular topic for which he or she wants clarity and repetition. Third, it allows for re-use of podcasts from semester to semester (provided that I teach the topic the same way) – which has proven to be a time-saver for me as the instructor.

Of course, the topic-oriented format – which facilitates rule acquisition and understanding – is not the only way that podcasts can be used. One use could be podcasts discussing rule application – perhaps through posing and then solving hypotheticals – in order to encourage higher level learning. For example, I now use graded quizzes in my Property classes as an assessment tool. I provide an audio podcast that walks the student through the quiz question, identifying the rule at issue, and then showing how each answer is either incorrect or correct. Another use could be to explore more complex topics at greater length. For example, as part of a separate pilot program, in Fall 2010 I began requiring first semester first-year students in my Property class to view a series of 25-30 minute videos I have prepared that discuss class participation, case reading, outlining, legal analysis, and exam taking skills. In short, the idea of targeted, short recordings as a supplemental teaching tool is really only limited by the instructor’s imagination and learning goals.

Learning theory provides support for podcasting’s potential. This support comes from the recognition that typical law school classroom environment creates impediments to learning, and that podcasting can help to lessen or remove those impediments.

In a nutshell, cognitivist learning theory describes learning as a process of receiving, moving and ultimately encoding information in long-term memory. There are three steps in this process:

Sensory Memory (Perception) – In the first step, students sitting in a classroom receive numerous stimuli (sights, sounds, smells, etc) from their environment and store them involuntarily in sensory memory. Students must focus on the relevant stimuli (for example, what the professor or a student is saying) in order to move it from sensory memory into short-term, working memory.

Short-Term, Working Memory (Organisation) – In this second step, students move the information from sensory memory into what is known as short-term or working memory. In short-term memory, the student must pay attention to and think about the information in order to get it ready for long-term storage (i.e remembering). This step involves integrating the new stimuli with existing knowledge; making sense of the new information by analysing, organising, and integrating it into existing schemata (i.e structures that help organise information) or, if necessary, creating new schemata.

Long-Term Memory (Storage) – In this final step, students encode the organised and integrated information into long-term memory so that is will be available for retrieval (or ‘remembering’). The transition between these steps is time-limited; stimuli remain in sensory memory for only a half-second or so, while information remains in short-term working memory for only about 30 seconds unless the student continues to think about it.

This process view of learning suggests that learning is best achieved by facilitating a smooth flow of information from stimuli to short-term, working memory and ultimately into long-term memory.

The law school classroom, however, poses problems that can interfere with this goal of facilitating flow to long-term memory. Time constraints are inherent in the classroom. In addition, time pressure can arise when most (but not all) of the class understands the concept.

The process view of cognitivist learning theory, when placed within that inherently time-constrained classroom, suggests at least three potential impediments to law students’ learning in the classroom setting. The first is the potential for information to never make it all the way to long-term memory because of timing or lack of focus reasons. For example, the student who is thinking about something else – the next class, what’s for lunch, the squirrel outside the classroom window – might never even have the chance to get the relevant information from sensory memory to short term memory for processing necessary to get that information into long term memory. In a similar vein, a student who is not ready to learn because the learning environment is outside her or his control – ‘you will learn this concept at 9:00-10:15 on Tuesday morning (even if you are tired or that is not a good time of day for you) because that is when the class is scheduled’ – may likewise miss part or all of the critical first step in the cognitivist process flow to long-term memory.

The second potential impediment involves the cognitive load placed on the brain by the relative complexity and unfamiliarity of the concepts being learned. Cognitive load can be thought of as the amount of information active in a student’s working memory. When cognitive load is high because the student cannot quickly organise, analyse and integrate the information so that it can be moved to and encoded in long-term memory (and thereby free up short-term memory capacity for new information), students may find it difficult to learn information. Further, if the amount of information exceeds the maximum capacity of short term, working memory (thought to be about seven ‘bits’ (or pieces) of verbal data and four ‘bits’ of visual data), then students are unable to learn the information.

A third potential impediment that relates to cognitive load arises from the fact that students – especially first year students – initially lack schemata by which they can organise new information and thereby move it from short-term, working memory to long-term memory. For many students, the concepts of things like plaintiff and defendant, how civil litigation works, title to property, and the numerous other concepts they deal with in the first year are completely new to them. From the student’s perspective, this higher volume of concepts to organise necessarily suggests that cognitive load can be high, and therefore the ability to learn the important concepts is at risk of being lost because of the additional load created by the demand to understand the background concepts and to create the schemata that will help organise (and therefore learn) the concepts.

A student’s options for overcoming the time constraints of traditional law school classroom and these impediments to learning are basically three-fold: (1) learn it in the class itself (or record it in her/his notes to comprehend it later – assuming it is recorded in the notes correctly); (2) ask questions of the professor after class; or (3) rely on the notes or comments of other students or outside sources (be they hornbooks, commercial or private (i.e from other students) outlines). Of these latter two options, note that only the asking the professor questions option gives the professor the opportunity to make sure that the student understands the concept as the professor wants it understood. Relying on others is akin to an imperfect ‘echo’ derived from what the professor has said and is therefore subject to deviation from the professor’s way of stating or understanding a concept because other students or commercial sources emphasise different points or – especially in the case of student-based sources – simply get it wrong.

Podcasting can overcome these impediments by altering the learning dynamic by expanding the chances to catch the concept being taught. It does this in at least three ways:

First, a podcast allows a student to listen multiple times – i.e there is no single chance to catch the concept. Thus, if the student misses a concept, he/she need only replay the podcast to hear it. The concept is available for when the student is ready to learn it because repetition allows the student to control both the timing and the environment for learning. This removes the time pressure of the classroom itself and better assures that the concept will be in sensory memory and can move to short-term, working memory.

Second, because the student listens outside the classroom and can control the number of times she/he hears it, a podcast allows a student to control the pace by which he/she hears and absorbs the concept. In such a context, the time-limits on moving the concept from sensory memory to short-term, working memory and finally to long-term memory are removed because the process (and the timing of the process) by which the concepts enter the student’s mind can be slowed down (or repeated) until the conceptual movement is completed. This ability to control the speed by which the concepts enter memory also allows the student to regulate cognitive load and prevent overload. Such control increases the odds that students will learn the concept that is the subject of the podcast.

Third, podcasts allow the student to learn directly from the professor. This eliminates the need to rely on ‘echoes’ because the student hears what the professor wants him/her to hear directly from the professor.

From the professor’s perspective, podcasting gives additional elements of involvement in and control over the student’s learning process. These include: (1) a podcast allows the professor to control the content of what the student hears. To the extent that the student needs additional assistance to learn a concept, he/she learns it in the professor’s own words stated exactly the way that the professor wants it said – thereby reducing the potential for deviation from the professor’s message; (2) Podcasting can allow the professor to expand content – by using more or different examples in the podcast to help drive a point home; (3) Podcasting allows the professor multiple opportunities to reach students and teach what the professor wants to teach in the words the professor wants to teach it. Given the unavoidable pressure for coverage in doctrinal courses, podcasting allows further emphasis on important concepts without taking up additional classroom time – or coverage of additional topics that can enrich the learning experience; (4) By creating multiple opportunities for listening and learning, podcasts can allow the professor the opportunity to reach students in different ways in order to teach to different learning styles; and (5) As noted before, podcasting expands the learning space beyond the classroom and class time, teaching the student whenever and wherever the student chooses to listen to the podcast.

While learning theory provides a solid theoretical explanation of how podcasting could improve a student’s legal education, it is also necessary to see if reality matches theory. Based on my own experience, students believe podcasting works and highly value its contribution to their legal education.

From the very beginning, I wanted to accumulate data on podcasting efficacy, and so each semester I have conducted an informal poll late in each semester but before finals to gauge student use and responsiveness to the podcasts.

The response data shows that, before the push of finals, 81.41 per cent of students surveyed had already listened to one or more podcasts.

In an effort to test whether or not students really would use a combination of topic podcasts and recordings of entire classes, in Fall 2011 I recorded each entire class on Possessory Estates and Future Interests, and thereby made the ‘Both’ option actually available. I polled to determine actual use, and found that, at the time of the poll (approximately two weeks after finishing that section of the class), only three students (5.45 per cent) had actually used the full class recordings, but that 38 (69.09 per cent) said they had not yet listened but intended to use the full class recordings.

In addition to the survey data, anecdotal evidence from my own conversations with students suggests that students believed the podcasts to be valuable. This evidence includes: comments from students after the semester was over about how valuable they found the podcasts, requests from students to other professors to do podcasts in their classes, sharing of podcasts with students in other Property I sections, and requests from former students for podcasts to use while studying for Property II being taught by other professors and, in one case, to use while studying for the bar exam.

While data exists to show that students find podcasts valuable and assist them in understanding the material in class, a legal educator might also ask whether student performance in fact improves as a result of podcasts. Unfortunately, there is no hard data. I could not in good conscience deny some students what I believe is an effective educational tool (and thereby potentially adversely impact their grades) simply for the sake of generating data. Thus, solid, quantitative data on this topic is difficult to generate and at present does not exist.

With those quantitative limits in mind, I can say on a qualitative level I have seen overall improvement of students’ performance on exams in the sense that I get better and more complete rule statements in essay questions.

By giving students control over the time and speed of acquiring relevant concepts, podcasts allow students to commence and control the process of moving information from sensory memory to storage in long-term memory via the regulation of cognitive load. Data from actual use of podcasting in my own class suggests that students are drawn to it, use it, and find it makes a valuable contribution to their legal education.


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