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(13) Who & How > What & Why
maximizing learning
Kevin Colangelo
December 14, 2023
Welcome Back!
Today is all about Who and How, and why these matter so much more than What or Why
Few dispute that legal must up its training game, particularly for early- to mid-career professionals. My own experience is that this starts with a focus on who is doing the training and how they approach the learning process.
Think about it: no standardized program exists for these skills and few schools offer credit-based courses on these topics.
Underinvestment by schools is backfilled by a loose marketplace of non-profit and for-profit entities, each approaching this challenge differently.
Reactive, not proactive, is the name-of-the-game. Which is fine . . . until it isn’t.
To solve this challenge, we need to follow what higher education has done for decades: activate professional educators - actual teachers, professors and instructional designers - to develop & deliver an evidence-based program, with learning objectives and assessments that ensure the desired learning has occurred.
This is why Who and How matters most.
Are professional educators completely absent from existing solutions?
No. But, the overwhelming majority of relevant coursework outside of academia is delivered by:
Practicing lawyers,
Legal “luminaries” such as consultants, entrepreneurs and retired GC’s, or
Actors reading from scripts, usually prepared or edited by practicing lawyers or other luminaries
Look, the intent is not to criticize or shame any particular approach.
Rule #1: always assume good intent. An entity’s operating model is its own business. Heck! These entities wouldn’t be referenced if they weren’t successful!
So, we’ll explore the pros and cons of each approach in a future issue, in both the context of the specific business model and in comparison to the use of professional educators. [Spoiler alert: there is indeed merit in each of these depending on what’s being taught and who the target audience is]
For your consideration . . .
a selection of materials related to this issue’s core premise:
Inside Higher Ed: "Teaching Teachers to Teach Online"
Center for Teaching Excellence at Vanderbilt University
Quality Matters: a leading QA association for online and digital teaching and learning environments
Echo360: “What is Instructional Design and Why it Matters to eLearning?”(Echo360 is a leading interactive video learning management platform)
Next Ish:
Gif by boomunderground on Giphy
Craving a vocab lesson? No?
Well then let’s dive into the importance of pedagogy in the context of teaching business and operating skills needed in the modern legal practice. (Bet you wish you’d voted for the vocab lesson . . .).
Thanks so much! Your interest and engagement are rocket fuel!
