Target Audience: Librarians interested in performing legal research instruction Learning Outcomes: 1. Participants will be able to successfully introduce a proposal to their institution for a new legal research course. 2. Participants will design a syllabus and assignments that will measure students' success at achieving learning goals.
The 2007 Carnegie Report on Legal Education calls for significant changes in legal education, including greater emphasis on practical skills development. This could potentially result in greater teaching opportunities for law librarians. The speakers, three librarians who teach upper-level legal research courses, will discuss how they bring "real life" into their classrooms through their lectures, exercises, classroom discussions, and assessment tools. Using a foreign and international legal research class as a case study, the first speaker will guide participants through the necessary steps to design, obtain law school approval of, and implement a course. The second speaker will prepare participants to design a syllabus, including learning goals, and assignments that will measure students' success at achieving those learning goals. The speaker will also address the need to consider students' various learning styles when creating assignments. The final speaker will identify the skills and practices necessary for building one's credibility as a professor, thereby creating an effective classroom presence. This program will help other librarians develop their own legal research course.
