Why do I ask?
Prof. Ann Althouse of Wisconsin Law has posted some questions about my classroom clicker post.
After quoting this part of my post:
The typical post-modern student wants to be passive, to be fed information, and to regurgitate it. That's been the educational experience of most of these students. (Too) many of the teachers that these students have encountered, eager for high rankings on student evaluations, prefer to play to the crowd, placate the desires of students weaned on television, and refrain from pushing students to become active participants in their own education. …She writes:
If indeed post-modern culture prevents a return to the days of holding students responsible by putting them on the spot, de-valuing their baseless complaints on student evaluations about work load and academic expectations, and failing those who fail, then perhaps getting them involved by "making the work fun" is worth the effort. The clickers are toy-like, they are almost identical to the TV remote with which the student is deeply familiar, they are snazzy and exciting, and they equalize the participation level at something other than zero. Faculty using the clickers claim that the students are enthusiastic about them. That's not a surprise. So surely it's worth a try.
Hmmm.... which side is he really on? When did we cave to "post-modernism"? Do young people today really see themselves in these terms or are they tired of being characterized as the MTV generation and so forth? Aren't we post-9/11 now, so that it's not too late to talk about a serious world of real values and consequences?
I've never seen a personal statement in an admissions file that was all about how the applicant has been spending his life so far playing video games and is hoping to find some snazzy, exciting, familiar devices to play with in the classroom. Nearly every file portrays an individual who is serious about taking on the challenges of learning how to be a lawyer and who has a strong record of independent, responsible academic achievement. No one writes, I'm looking for a place where the teachers will hover over me and feed me information and expect to see me glazed and numb unless they excite me the way TV excites me! On paper, every applicant is hot for a big challenge. I want to hold them to their own representations, not shrug and view these idealized self-portraits as a post-modern joke. Let the joke run the other way: we take these things seriously, we believe you are adults, we think the practice of law is challenging and serious and important, and we are going to treat you like the person you claimed to be when you applied to this school and made us believe you deserved to sit in that seat you are slumping back in right now!
I think some of us (Prof. Althouse, and I, and others, excluded) have indeed caved to the student desire to be fed information. I've seen it. I don't intend to yield, but I seek the carrot that will re-ignite the enthusiasm that brings the applicant to the law school and that too many of them lose by the time they reach my class.
There is something very fascinating about the disconnect between the admissions applications and the passivity evident in too many law school classrooms. For decades, every law school applicant has expressed a desire to acquire a legal education for use in doing good in the world or for changing the world for the better, and yet for at least the past 20 years many of us have observed a shift from classrooms in which the students carried their principles into open discussion to classrooms in which students feverishly take notes, play games, or otherwise withdraw from active participation. I do think most (though not all) law school applicants mean what they say; I've met too many money-hungry power-seeking law students to think that all of them mean what they say. Perhaps there's a connection between these attitudes and the existence of a higher value on taking and absorption than on giving and sharing? I may be a cynic, but there's no question in my mind that the very intelligent pool of individuals self-selecting themselves for application to law schools know how to write admissions essays, and so I don't think the admissions process helps at all in separating applicants on the basis of their genuine goals.
I'm completely in favor of encouraging, compelling, cajoling, and even shoving students into accepting responsibility, not only for their education and for their budding legal careers, but also in their lives generally. There is a disconnect between "the person [the student] claimed to be when [he or she] applied to [law] school" and the disregard of responsibility that some law students manifest. By second year, at least, some students put more energy into finding shortcuts than in immersing themselves into the law.
This isn't to paint all law students with a broad brush. Many of them arrive mature, responsible, eager, diligent, honest, and driven. They hold to those traits, and they do well. They bring honor to the school. But even some of these folks, who blossom in clinics and take the lead in pro bono activities, crawl into shells when they're in the classroom. They're doing the work, but they're living in the cone of silence. Perhaps it's appropriate to say, "You are an adult. You can choose to speak or be silent." Yet there are those who would say that the student has a responsibility to participate both in the classroom and in their out-of-class preparation and assimilation. How can we, the faculty, make that happen?
Law faculty use all sorts of "techniques" to hear their students' voices: calling on students randomly, publishing in advance lists of students on whom they will call on a given day, meeting with students outside of the classroom before class, offering grade bumps for volunteering, and more. My experience and the experiences shared by my colleagues are very similar. Maybe Paul Caron is right: students fear saying something in front of their peers that would cause them embarrassment or ridicule. But isn't the practice of law filled with opportunities for lawyers to speak in front of peers, at the risk of being embarrassed or ridiculed? Interestingly, students in my courses aren't "shy" about communicating through email. I'm flooded with messages, and I encourage it. I prefer that they post to the digital classroom discussion board, and I tell them that, but they rarely do, mostly, as they tell me, because it's not anonymous.
As for the students who "give up" and prefer to distract themselves during class, my conjecture is that something happens to them between admission to law school and their arrival in my courses. I think they are disillusioned. I think they are disappointed to learn, though it is no surprise, that only 10 percent of them are in the top 10 percent (a place many of them inhabited while in college), and they're not in that group. They discover that law and the practice of law aren't as television portrays them. They decide that the law can crush idealism faster than the blink of an eye.
Though, as I've noted, many of them, far more than the top 10 percent, keep plugging, having heard the stories of students whose grades zoomed up in the second year, it's a sizeable group that "gives up." They shop for the outline from the student who took the course the previous year, surrendering the opportunity to learn through creating one's own outline. A few go so far as to cheat. Others complain on student evaluations and sometimes in direct conversation, "Just tell us what the law is," "Don't ask us questions that you don't answer," "There's too much to read," (that in response to a reading load of approximately 25 pages per class), "Don't make quiz results turn on the difference between two words... that's ridiculous," and "Doesn't this guy know that there's a lot more we have to do in our lives than prepare for his course?" (These are some sample quotes, and there are many others that say the same thing in different words.) I've addressed many of these complaints in a series of law school newsletter columns:
Money for Nothing and Work for Free?, Crumbling Myths & Dashed Expectations, Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn, and Time CAN Be on Your Side: Or at Least by It.
Perhaps the students are different at Wisconsin than they are here at Villanova, but I doubt it. Prof. Althouse and I share the same goal, that is, to persuade students to bring their full slate of academic skills into the classroom through preparation, participation and assimilation. We disagree on how to get there. We're not alone in our concerns and our advocacy of one or another approach, for surely the Journal of Legal Education is loaded with articles addressing one or another of the issues enveloped in the "class participation" discussion. I'm not ready to confer "the answer" on classroom clickers, but I really do want to try. Most of the techniques I have used and that I have observed others using have generated disappointing poor results; for me, only the "during semester" in-class and out-of-class exercises and quizzes have had a noticeable impact.
Almost ten years ago, a student came up to me after class and said, "We notice that you are frustrated with our inability to follow your reasoning past three steps." "You are observant," I replied. The student, who was a few years older than most of his classmates said, "Understand that we are the MTV generation. We aren't accustomed to concentrating on any one thing very long. We struggle to visualize words and what they mean." Shortly thereafter I created my first "moving" Powerpoint slide set. Was I "giving in"? Yes and no. Though I won't relent in demanding that students contribute to their own education, I'm willing to operate in an environment with which they are familiar. They need pictures? Fine, I'll make pictures. They want remote control? Fine, they can have clickers. Especially if it counteracts their desire to be quiet and passive in the classroom.
If all that the classroom clicker does is to entice students into a "getting into it" mindset and to keep them there, even in the face of less-than-desired class rankings, the disillusionment of discovering law isn't what they thought it would be, and the frustrations of learning to think in a new way, then it will be a worthwhile approach. If it helps them feel "involved" in the material, great. If it compels them to think, marvelous. And if it means I can double or triple the number of in-class quizzes throughout the semester and to quadruple the number of times I learn whether the students are "getting it," stupendous.
Perhaps giving students some classroom anonymity at the expense of some of their autonomy is a necessary trade-off. It's not ideal, but law faculties have yet to invent the ideal. Prof. Althouse, and I, and others, will keep searching. And we'll keep discussing and debating and writing about it. And from time to time we will share our thoughts and our plans. I surely hope I'll have an opportunity to share classroom clicker experiences. So write to my Dean and tell him to buy me some clickers. Thanks.
