Welcome to the first of a series of blog posts on CALI Spotlight that focuses on pedagogy, instructional theory, educational technology and other related topics.
Some background: Prior to coming to CALI last year, I taught semester-long legal research courses as well as numerous one-shot bibliographic instruction sessions in American law schools for about five years. My formal training to do this consisted of a three hour course on Bibliographic Instruction that I took during my MLS course work. With regards to that course….well, without going into too much detail, let me just say this: A major component to the course was teaching us to properly use an overhead projector.
p.s. This was in 2005
So let’s just say I didn’t really have any formal training on how to be a professor in a higher educational setting.
I picked up what I could from more experienced co-workers, my own trial and error and the occasional relevant conference presentation, but I never really knew if what I was doing was RIGHT. Was there a better way for students to learn the material I had for them? Was I wasting my time creating hours of homework assignment that neither assessed nor reinforced what I was trying to teach? I had no idea, but I also never really had the time to figure it out.
Jump ahead to the present day and my current position at CALI. Once I left the confines of academia, I began to see more and more that there are dozens of educational theories and processes out there, most of which are new to me. And now in addition to my previous worries about educational theory and technology, I wonder if what we’re producing at CALI is useful. Are there areas that we should be branching into?
Since the idea of going back to school or even taking a class right now fills me with unspeakable dread, I’ve decided to embark on a self-teaching mission to learn about whatever I can with regards to higher education theory and practice. Since I suspect that many of CALI’s membership are in a similar position, I thought I’d post about it on Spotlight. Think of these as concentrating on the I in our name – The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction. They’ll all be tagged with “Instruction Spotlight” so you can find them. This will likely be an irregular regular series, depending on what catches my attention and how much time I have to read books. I also hope that we can generate some discussion and I welcome guest posts.
So here we go…
Photo credit: Adapted from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caliorg/6141366214/ , one of CALI’s many CC licensed images on Flickr. And note, not only can you use them, but you can edit them like I did here.