Teaching Methods
Learning in law school is essentially self-directed. Most of your learning will happen outside of the classroom and independently of myself or any other professor. In fact, many professors, (myself included) will test you on significantly more than can ever be covered in class. My role is to structure my course in such a way as to facilitate your self-directed learning. I do that through the following: detailed syllabus, assignments and cooperative learning.
The syllabus for this course consist of this webpage and connected webpages. The syllabus is an important study tool. It provides you with specific guidelines as to my expectations regarding what you should learn, what skills and understanding I value and how I organize the content of the course. However, the syllabus is not a contract and I retain the right to modify it at my discretion.
B. Assignments
Assignments consist of both readings and videos. The assigned reading provides you with the opportunity not only to obtain rule and process information. The assigned readings serve as a basis for discussion. It is my expectation that you will be thoroughly familiar with the assignment and completely prepared for class participation.
C. Classroom Instruction
Using Cooperative Learning The primary teaching technique in this class is cooperative problem-solving. In this class, cooperative learning will be used to: 
teach specific content, ensure active cognitive processing during class and provide long-term support and assistance for academic progress. During the past 90 years over 600 research studies have been conducted comparing the effectiveness of cooperative, competitive and individualistic efforts. These studies have been conducted by a wide variety of researchers in different decades with different age subjects, in different subject areas and in different settings. More is known about the efficacy of cooperative learning than about the so- called "Socratic method" or lecturing.
From this research you may expect that the more you work in cooperative learning groups the more you will learn, the better you will understand what you are learning, the easier it will be to remember what you learn, and the better you will feel about yourself, the class, and your classmates.
