FOLLOW UP POSTING  --
(If you don't have a couple of minutes, hit the delete key.)
Last week I had my second, and last, telephone conference with a colleague
this semester.  The experience last week with Laura Pincus was quite
similar to the earlier experience with Ed Conry.  Both were intense and far
above the normal classroom session.  (That is my assessment, Laura and Ed
may be better judges.)
 
After class last week one of the top students stopped by my office - just
to share his elation over the experience.  (No matter how brilliant my
lecture or how great the class discussion, students don't normally drop by
my office with that type of elation.)
 
THOUGHTS:
Good as these experiences have been, I don't believe the telephone
conference has much future as a broadly used classroom tool.  At least not
with the traditional approach I've encountered with most undergraduate
business law courses.  For the telephone conference call to work well the
students need to invest significant time before the experience studying the
author's work and thinking about and discussing the issues among
themselves.  I had the latitude to do that in this honors law and ethics
inquiries course.
 
Most undergraduate law courses are so crammed with substantive issues, that
I create the pressure to cover a chapter a day and don't feel I have time
for leisurely inquiry.  Why not?  Isn't it important?  Possibly, I should
change the model.   For the educational benefit of the student -- I could
pursue the ideal that one concept per course should be pursued in a more
leisurely mode of academic inquiry.  As opposed to the typical survey
course approach of,  "if its Tuesday, it must be Paris ('offer &
acceptance')."  I will be hard pressed to pick the topics to skip or
abbreviate to make the classroom hours available.  But, I believe there
would be a net gain for the students.
 
I think the inquiry topic should be somewhat esoteric, not the kind of
thing which is treated in the normal text.  (As I mentioned in my earlier
post, we have many such articles in our journals which are little used and
excellent.)   We can energize students by having them explore an item and
develop a niche of more specialized knowledge outside what is being crammed
into 1,000,000 student heads every semester.  That is what I think I
observed with these two experiences this semester.
 
I guess I'm questioning my rigid devotion to the basic business law text
book, which comes in 27 flavors of vanilla and chocolate, and is
functionally a lot like survey  texts in 19 other disciplines.  Your
comments will be appreciated.  Send me a personal if you don't think others
will care to hear further discussion.
    --Hunter
 
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   Hunter L. Kennedy                                [log in to unmask]
   Hawaii Pacific University                     [log in to unmask]
   1188 Fort Street Mall                              (808) 544-1174
   Honolulu, Hawaii 96813                      FAX (808) 544-9306
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