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Vinson, K E --- "What's on your playlist? The power of podcasts as a pedagogical tool" [2009] LegEdDig 28; (2009) 17(2) Legal Education Digest 45


What’s on your playlist? The power of podcasts as a pedagogical tool

K E Vinson

Suffolk University Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Research Paper 09-09, 2009, pp 1–33

Law students have a diverse collection of music on their iPods – The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Kelly Clarkson, Rascal Flatts, Mary J. Blige and James Taylor, just to name a few – but they could also listen to podcasts related to their law school courses. After all, the use of iPods or MP3 players by today’s law school students is ubiquitous. Students can now download ‘The Greatest Hits’ of Legal Writing, Contracts, Torts, or other classes to ‘take their legal education on the road’.

While the basic curriculum of the first-year of law school that developed more than 100 years ago has remained mostly the same over the last century, the use of technology has increased in academia and law practice. Using podcasts is an example of this increased use of technology.

Law professors should consider using podcasts for a variety of reasons, but perhaps most importantly, because podcasts can be a powerful teaching tool that enhances their students’ legal education. Podcasts are exciting and the technology may appeal to this generation of students.

The word podcast is derived from a combination of the words iPod and broadcast; however, students do not need an iPod or MP3 player to listen to a podcast. A podcast is a digital media file that students can listen to on an iPod, other portable media player or a personal computer. The method by which a podcast is distributed is called podcasting.

Podcasts are simple to create, deliver, and access. The host or author of a podcast is often called the podcaster. Podcasts can be created by professional news and broadcast organisations or by anyone who can record an audio file. Podcasts can be created using a digital voice recorder or by using free software, such as Audacity, with a microphone and computer. Once created, podcasts are uploaded to a media server or podcasting hosting service.

The prevalence and quality of law-related podcasts has increased in the last few years. In February 2005, only a handful of legally related podcasts existed. Since then, podcasts have become mainstream, especially when in June 2005 Apple added podcasts to iTunes. Now a range of good quality podcasts on various topics are produced for and by lawyers.

Podcasts can appeal to students’ different learning styles as the increased use of technology has influenced the way students learn. A professor’s use of podcasts recognises and utilises the use of technology in academia and the legal field. Teaching through podcasts is consistent with the trend of increased use of technology in law practice and academia.

Teaching through the technology of podcasts is most effective if it serves a pedagogical goal, not just for the sake of using technology. The improper use or abuse of technology can hinder students’ learning. Depending on the particular use of podcasts, the pedagogical goals may be different; however, the general goal should relate to enhancing students’ law school experience.

Podcasts supplement students’ learning in numerous ways. The simplicity, portability, and convenience of podcasts provides a service for law students by increasing the accessibility of educational instruction on students’ own timetables and terms outside of the classroom and after professors’ office hours or student conferences. Students’ schedules are busy and different, resulting in students multitasking. Students can listen to podcasts anytime and anywhere in an environment and time that they choose, ie, while at the gym, walking a dog or commuting.

Podcasts appeal to different learning styles and can increase students’ ability to comprehend material and their satisfaction with the learning process. Podcasts promote student-centred learning and allow students to listen when they are ready to learn. Students who understood material discussed in class or from assigned reading can move forward while other students can spend additional time listening to podcasts. Students can fast-forward, rewind, or repeat a podcast as needed.

Students can actively engage and take ownership for their understanding of the content in the podcast in several ways. Through listening to the podcast, taking notes or writing important content from the podcast in a format or way that makes the most sense to them, and then reading their notes, students can confirm their understanding. This allows students to actively engage instead of just passively listening. Podcasts can provide more in-depth suggestions for students in a more conversational tone outside of class that is not overwhelming and does not take up class time. Thus, the material in podcasts is meant to supplement, not replace class or good teaching, so students will not stop going to class.

Students who learn best from listening may benefit from the use of podcasts. The tone, inflection, and emphasis in a professor’s voice may indicate importance of material a student may not get from a handout or reading text. Through a podcast a professor is able to give a student the reader’s perspective by placing the student in the audience’s role. A student may be able to comprehend material better when listening to a podcast without taking notes, compared to worrying about taking notes while also trying to listen to a professor during class.

Other practical reasons support using a podcast when providing a critique or feedback on a student’s memorandum. If a professor’s handwriting is not legible and a professor does not want to type comments because she does not want to be tied to a computer when giving feedback, a podcast is another option. Podcasts allow a professor to spend less time repeatedly answering questions to decipher their handwriting or explaining what a comment means. Finally, podcasts involve modest amounts of time and money.

In addition to the pedagogical and practical benefits, podcasts have great marketing potential for the law school, law professor, and legal writing course. The public relations factor should not be the only reason to use podcasts, but it may be an ancillary benefit.

Unlike other marketing efforts, podcasting services, such as iTunes, provide tracking statistics of how many people downloaded or listened to the podcasts. In addition, if the professor’s podcasts are available on the iTunes store, they may be featured as the most downloaded or a new and noteworthy podcast. This spotlight highlighting a professor’s podcasts may appeal to listeners that a law school may not have reached through traditional marketing efforts.

Although many benefits result from using podcasts, challenges may also occur. Some students may be sceptical of podcasts or perceive it as more work for them or too high tech.

Creating and using podcasts involves a small learning curve for the professor and student. Professors and/or students may need technical support at their institution. With any use of technology, technological glitches can also occur. Also, some content used within podcasts may be subject to copyright law. Professors might also want to include copyright/use restrictions to bar a student from selling the class podcasts via the internet.

Using a podcast may not be quicker or more convenient that conveying the same information in a traditional way. Recording a podcast requires the professor to be in a quiet location to record instead of grading papers in a public location with noise, such as a Starbucks or on a train or in an airport. Also, unlike typing comments, a professor cannot use a template when podcasting a critique of a memorandum. Depending on the type of podcast, professors may need to make a script before recording.

Issues or challenges specific to audio files may need to be considered. Professors should be careful of their tone. If they are tired or frustrated, the student will hear this inflection in her professor’s voice.

Overall, the numerous benefits and the potential to use podcasts as a teaching tool outweigh the challenges. Podcasts have the power to benefit students, professors, and the law school because it enhances teaching, learning, and marketing. The possible uses of podcasts and the times they are used are only limited by the professor’s imagination and innovation.

This section of the Article will provide different ideas of effective uses of podcasts in legal writing courses and discuss when they are used.

Professors can model reading strategies in a ‘think aloud’ in class where the professor spends part of class showing the students how the professor would read a case by stating her thought process as she reads. This technique can be helpful, but it takes class time and only benefits students sitting in class, paying attention, and understanding the concept and how to apply it in the future.

Instead of, or in addition to, a ‘think aloud’ demonstrated in the classroom, creating a ‘think aloud’ podcast can model effective reading strategies outside of class during the first few weeks of the semester. To show students how to critically read a case or statute, a professor records her thought process and reactions as she reads a case or statute, to demonstrate for students how to employ critical reading skills.

In the ‘think aloud’ podcast, a professor can model numerous critical reading skills. A professor could connect the case with a purpose, giving the reader a focus, both at the outset of reading the case and throughout reading the opinion. Another reading strategy that professors can demonstrate in the think aloud podcast is how to use context to understand how and why the case is important. For example, the professor could record the following thoughts as she read the case: what court decided the case, was the case was binding or persuasive, when was the case decided, was there a dissent, who wrote the opinion, and what is the overview of the subject matter or main issues involved in the case.

A second example of an effective use of podcasts in legal research, reasoning, and writing is to create a podcast that reviews material discussed in class, as well as assignment instructions for an upcoming memorandum assignment. In the first few weeks of classes, a professor can record a podcast, reviewing the organisation and presentation of the objective analysis of the legal issues in the closed memorandum assignment. During the review podcast, the professor could review the organisation of the analysis she recommends to follow, such as identifying the relevant issue or stating the conclusion regarding how the law applies to the client’s facts, stating the relevant rules by synthesising the law, and providing illustrations of how previous courts applied the law in different factual scenarios and why.

The podcast can further emphasise how students must show instead of merely tell the reader how they reached their prediction, by discussing what should be included in case illustrations to fully explain the law, including the relevant facts, holding, and explicit and implicit reasoning of the courts.

After explaining the objective analysis of the law relevant to the client’s issue, a professor could review how students should apply that law to their client’s facts, showing the reader how their client’s case is like or unlike the precedent. The podcast can guide the reader through the steps necessary to make a thorough application of the law to their client’s facts. The professor can explain how to state the point of the case comparisons, make fact to fact analogies between the client’s case and the precedent, and apply the reasoning of the courts. In the podcast, the professor can remind students to discuss possible counterarguments or counter-analysis.

In addition to a podcast reviewing the presentation of the relevant law and how it applies to the client’s case in the discussion section of a closed memorandum, another podcast could review the format of an objective interoffice memorandum, review and explain the additional parts of the memorandum, such as the heading, question presented, brief answer, facts section, and conclusion. In the podcast, the professor can review what content should be included in each section, the order of the sections, the tone of the memorandum, as well as any convention or organisation of each section they should follow.

Other format reminders such as font, page numbering, margins and page limits can be reviewed. This podcast will help students to understand the big picture and context for their analysis as well as help when they are at the final editing, proofreading stage. This type of podcast can supplement a format handout or sample memorandum.

Students often want samples to use as a guide when they are writing their own memorandum assignments, but distributing or posting a sample memorandum for students may not be as effective as a podcast because often students try to mechanically emulate the sample because they do not understand why the sample is good. A podcast discussing a sample good memorandum can aid the student’s comprehension of the reasons the sample is good. Students could use this podcast as a guide as they draft their memorandum assignment. Also, students can listen to the podcast several times or at different times in their writing process.

In the podcast, the professor could discuss the good characteristics of the memorandum, such as how the sample followed a logical organisation, and then discuss each section, then each paragraph, down to highlighting particularly effective and concise sentences. The depth of the analysis can be examined, including whether the explanation of the law was thorough and accurate and whether the application of the law to the client’s facts was fully developed and logical. The format of the memorandum can also be reviewed to show the correct order of sections as well as the correct font, page numbering, margins, page limit, and even correct placement and form of the citations. As students listen to the podcast, they can follow along by viewing the sample.

A professor could also create a podcast discussing the common pitfalls or problems in a poorly written memorandum. In the podcast, the professor could point out examples of what needs improvement, explaining deficiencies in the analysis, logic, organisation, grammar, citation, or syntax. Students could listen to this podcast to avoid making these same types of common mistakes when they are writing or editing their memoranda.

The podcast could also be posted after students receive their memoranda back from their professor. Sometimes professors may distribute a common problems handout and discuss common problems in class when returning student papers to supplement students’ individual critiques regarding the memorandum, provided by the professor. Discussing it in class results in several drawbacks. It can take up valuable class time. Also, students may not listen or fully comprehend the content because they have not received their papers back yet until the end of class. If they have received their memoranda back, they may not have thoroughly reviewed their individual critique they received, or they could have already moved on to focusing on the next assignment.

Instead of giving written or typed comments, faculty can record ‘personal podcasts,’ providing each student with an individual oral critique of her memorandum. A personal podcast consists of a series of audio files containing the professor’s feedback on the student’s memorandum.

When creating a personal podcast critiquing a student’s memorandum, the professor first receives a copy of a student’s memorandum. Then, as the professor reads the memorandum, she should write a number in the margin of the student’s memorandum and record a corresponding audio comment. The corresponding numbered audio files can then be posted on a website, e-mailed, put on a flash drive or transferred to a student via a third party, where access is limited to the student who wrote the memorandum.

Students will receive a hard copy of the memorandum back, with the numbered comments in the margins. Students then listen to the audio file or personal podcast, reviewing the memorandum and listening to the corresponding oral comments, allowing the professor to have a conversation with each student, via this type of personal podcast, regarding the student’s writing.

Instead of being a passive experience for students when they receive comments, students take ownership of the comments and their areas of writing weaknesses because they listen to the comments in their personal podcast several times and summarise them in their own words. Students actively engage with the comments at least three times. First, student should listen to the last comment, which summarises the professor’s overall impression of the student’s memorandum, including the strengths in the memorandum and the global suggestions for the rewrite or improvement on the next assignment. Second, students should listen to each comment consecutively, without stopping the podcast. Third, students should listen to each comment, stop the podcast, and take notes that make sense to them of what they need to revise.

Professors can also create podcast series on discrete topics. For example, in January of 2008, the Legal Practice Skills faculty at Suffolk University Law School created a weekly legal writing tips podcast series, publicly available for free on iTunes U. It allows anyone to subscribe to the podcast and automatically receive new content each week. Each week, a different professor records the podcast, ranging from about four to ten minutes in length. The topic for the writing tips corresponds to the topics covered in the legal practice skills course that week.

Numerous other ways podcasts can be effectively used include: answering frequently asked questions; discussing pet peeves regarding writing, providing a grammar refresher; reviewing citations, or even podcasting classes. Also, professors should consider the efficiency factor. A lot of these podcasts can be created once and re-used by the professor. Also, professors could record a review class at the end of every semester for each class. The session is not part of the scheduled classes so to be fair to students who are unable to attend the review class, the review class is available via a podcast.

Podcasts offer professors an innovative teaching tool and provides a service to law students. It helps professors meet the challenge of communicating with students, getting them excited about the content of the course, and ensuring they are listening and learning. It also recognises that students may have learned differently then a professor learned when she went to law school. While podcasts should not replace class, skilled teaching, or access to professors, it can supplement students’ in-class learning.


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