Have you designed a great assignment that your students loved? Or discovered new and exciting ways to teach legal research, even in the middle of a pandemic? Then consider sharing them with AALL by submitting them to the 29th Annual RIPS-SIS Legal Research Teach-In Kit!
Deadline for submissions: February 19, 2021
Where to send your submissions: Clare Willis, at Clare.willis@law.northwestern.edu
What can you submit?
All sorts of things! The Teach-in Kit will include hypos, presentations, assessments, and any other activities you may have designed. You can submit brand new materials or old favorites. If it helps us teach legal research better, we would love to see it!
Here are some examples from years past, with testimonials:
Local Government Law from the 22nd Teach-In Kit 2014. I have found this presentation and assignment invaluable for teaching municipal law. It is keyed to California law, but can be easily adapted to other jurisdictions. I especially like the assignment, researching plastic bag bans, because it requires students to use two different municipal code platforms and lets them experience searching a legal database that isn’t Lexis and Westlaw.
Wikipedia Project from the 28th Teach-In Kit 2019. I’ve found that this Wikipedia assignment makes for an awesome final project in Advanced Legal Research! Students have the opportunity to do a deep dive into a research topic that they feel passionately about while using the skills they learn throughout ALR. The rubric included with this assignment makes grading easier as well.
Database Review Assignment from the 28th Teach-In Kit 2019. This assignment was a great way to get students to apply the research strategies I taught in class to evaluate the usefulness of select databases on their own. Because students would typically give their presentations at the beginning of class, the database reviews also helped set the stage for what we would be talking about that day. Overall, a simple, low-stakes assessment that keeps students engaged, and allows them to gain exposure to lots of extra tools, resources, and databases!
Federal Legislative History. I love that this worksheet walks students through the cumbersome process of performing extensive legislative history research using both free and paid resources. While it requires updating to be used in conjunction with current government sites, I like that it can be used in whole or in part to demonstrate to students just how expansive – and interesting – legislative history research is!
What if it’s not perfect?
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good! Send whatever you have, in whatever form you have it, and the committee will work with you to get it into a format that works for everyone.
We Can’t Wait To See Your Ideas!
Your materials are what make the Teach-In Kit so valuable, and we are grateful for everything you provide every year. In this especially trying year, we could use your help more than ever! If you want to submit something, or have any questions, that email again is: Clare Willis, at Clare.willis@law.northwestern.edu.
With apologies for duplication, I wanted to highlight today’s announcement that the AALL Annual Meeting will be held virtually this year. If you received the announcement directly from AALL, please note that there is a very brief, three-question survey linked in that email. I would encourage you to complete the survey to assist AALL in its planning for the virtual conference.
WestPac typically holds a Chapter meeting at the AALL conference when the schedule permits. We do not yet know how scheduling of Chapter meetings will be handled for this year’s virtual AALL conference, but we will be sure to provide an update once we have more information.
In order to provide professional development opportunities in lieu of the postponed 2020 WestPac Annual Meeting, the WestPac Education Committee is sponsoring periodic virtual roundtable discussions. Here are details of the next roundtable discussion:
What: Technical Services During Turbulent Times Roundtable Discussion (via Zoom)
Facilitators:
Lauren Seney, Associate Director and Head of Technical Services, University of Colorado’s William A. Wise Law Library
Karen Selden, Metadata Services Librarian, University of Colorado’s William A. Wise Law Library
This is a FREE informal discussion opportunity to ask questions and share tips, tricks, comments, concerns, success stories, or lessons learned about any aspect of technical services work, and especially during these stressful, uncertain, and turbulent times. WestPac has generously opened this opportunity up to anyone interested in these topics, not just WestPac members. Please bring your questions, comments, or concerns to the discussion, note them on the registration form, or email them in advance to Lauren (Lauren.Seney@colorado.edu) or Karen (Karen.Selden@colorado.edu).
In order to provide professional development opportunities in lieu of the postponed 2020 WestPac Annual Meeting, the WestPac Education Committee is sponsoring periodic virtual roundtable discussions.
Here are the details of the first roundtable discussion, coming up next Monday, October 26th at 1pm PST:
What: Teaching & Student Engagement During COVID
Facilitator: Mari Cheney, Assistant Director, Research and Instruction, Boley Law Library, Lewis & Clark Law School
Please bring your questions, comments, or concerns to the discussion, note them on the registration form, or email them in advance to me at maricheney@lclark.edu
In the quick transition from in-person to online teaching, did you develop materials for your classes that you feel worked particularly well? Did you design processes or draft procedures for moving content online that streamlined things for you or your students? Did you assist the faculty at your institution in moving their materials online, or provide content for them to use in their classes? We want to hear from you!
The RIPS/SIS Teach-In Kit Committee is putting together a Teach-In Kit: Pandemic Edition; a resource for all of us to utilize in advance of (what is sure to be) a transitional spring semester with both online and in-person content shaping legal education. We would love to hear from you, to hear about what works and what doesn’t in “these times,” and for all of us to learn from each other so we can move from emergency teaching to solid online instruction and be leaders in our institutions.
We’re on the hunt for the following materials:
Instructions/processes for putting things online;
Tips and tricks for online teaching; and
Asynchronous materials and supplemental materials prepared for other professors’ courses.