Podcasting Law School Courses: The Classcaster Experiment
Debra Cohen, Southern New England School of Law
Gregory Lee Ogden, Pepperdine University School of Law
Andrea L. Johnson, California Western School of Law

All of the speakers in this session participated in CALI's Classcaster podcasting project. The session was designed for them to report on their experiences and the feedback they received from students.

Speaking first was Professor Cohen. She used podcasts of class lectures in some classes and summaries in others. According to survey responses, her students loved it. Most importantly, they reported that they didn't worry about catching every detail because they always knew they could listen again later, therefore they could pay closer attention in class without worrying about taking precise notes at the same time.

Prof. Cohen said that creating an audio recording of in-class lectures was easy enough to do technically, but that dialogues were difficult to pick up in larger classes. This was problematic because these dialogues were essential in Socratic method classes. Because of this, her podcast for larger classes only featured audio summaries, not the actual class lectures.

For future classes, Prof. Cohen plans to produce required podcasts episodes that students must listen to BEFORE class. These episodes will cover basic information, while class time will be devoted to more advanced discussion. These episodes will also include answers to assigned questions from previous classes so that in-class time doesn't need to be devoted to them.

Next up was Professor Ogden. He said his podcast really helped students who had to miss classes for legitimate reasons (e.g., mudslides, moot court trips). It also assisted in student understanding of complex areas of laws. Auditory learners really benefited from the feed, but he believes it strongly reinforced ideas for ALL types of learners. At the very least, a podcast of a lecture provided a huge advantage over simply borrowing another student's notes.

Many question why students would still come to class if the lecture is available on the web. According to Prof. Ogden, the podcast is not a substitute for class, and he still requires classroom attendance. He makes it a point to emphasize to students the professionalism inherent in showing up for class regularly.

Prof. Ogden said many of his students wanted to know when their other professors would start podcasting, too.

Prof. Johnson spoke last. She had never blogged or podcasted before and originally planned to use the course podcast only for class summaries. That all changed soon enough.

Teaching Administrative Law, a stereotypically dry subject, Prof. Johnson likes to spice up her class by focusing on the application of legal concepts in the real world. For this particular semester, the class incorporated the Katrina disaster into an ongoing course project. As controversy surrounding the governmental response to the storm swelled, however, it became difficult to keep up with widening scope of issue with the limited amount of available class time.

To keep up, she began using the podcast to expand and reflect on in-class discussion. She also included additional factual background information, including phone interviews with Katrina evacuees and government officials.