To gain a sense of how professors have had to adapt to a new style of teaching, we sat down with Assistant Professor of Law Maureen “Molly” Brady, the recently selected Section 3 Leader and a recipient of the 2020 Student Government Teaching and Advising Awards.
Interview conducted and condensed by The Record President Robert Mahari.
Q. What is the most challenging aspect of teaching law online?
We all miss the human connection, immensely. There’s something about being in the classroom — being able to laugh, think seriously, receive visual feedback from your teacher — that’s really important. I pay a lot of attention to whether my students are bored or zoning out, and I miss the sense of shared enterprise in the classroom environment, which is difficult to replicate when you see just 25 faces on Zoom.
Unlike last semester, you won’t start the term sitting next to people. You will need to get to know one another and figure out who your “neighbors” are in a new context. Another major challenge is not a result of being online, but a function of the difficult circumstances presented by the pandemic: There’s an immense level of stress that ebbs and flows for all of us. I describe it as the “pandemic up and downs.” Some days you are just unexpectedly emotional about something. As students deal with this, it will impact their focus and, as an instructor, being compassionate is really essential right now. That’s a challenge for us — to have the high expectations that we should at HLS but also to maintain compassion.
Q. How has your teaching style adapted to this new format?
One of the most important things in the online classroom is transparency and structure. It is really hard to sit in a Zoom room when you have no sense of what is coming, so it is important to be more transparent and provide more structure to students and really have a concrete plan about how to use your time together most effectively.
Also, like I said, you will not be sitting next to someone as we start this semester, so you need opportunities to get to know each other. I have always been a fan of group work to give people a chance to bounce ideas around in a small group before engaging with the whole class. Zoom actually helps facilitate this, since I can mix people up in different ways, not limited by where they are physically sitting.
I similarly want my students to see the legal principles they’re learning about in class in action. When I taught property, I often used Cambridge as an example to invite students to think about property law. While we’re not necessarily sharing Cambridge right now, I want students to consider how the topics we learn about apply to wherever they are and to share these insights with the class.
I’ve also added more opportunities for written engagement or assignments and feedback prior to the final. I’ve always done online discussion threads, which help me get to know my students better and giving me a chance to get a sense of their interests. There will be more ways to showcase yourself early in this semester because teachers are craving that interaction.
I have been thinking about all of these things even before the pandemic, but the new environment is quickly forcing us instructors to innovate how we teach. I hope some of the changes we make will have a long-term impact on how law is taught.
Q. Do you have a sense of the type of changes you will be carrying over into the physical classroom?
Yes, all these things: group work, written assignments and feedback, lots of structure, more visuals. There’s also something that has the extremely attractive name of chunking: breaking up an 80-minute class into discrete segments of 5, 10, 15 minutes. This gives people the ability to switch between different learning mode. I really love switching it up, and I think that will stick.
I have also been thinking more about the moment after class. After a physical class you always have a line of students appearing at the front to ask questions, one by one. On Zoom, I could stay after the formal class and basically lead a mini seminar for people who are particularly interested. Some people don’t have a question but just stay to listen. I love that! It is fun and interesting and often in these discussions, I think, ‘You know what, maybe I should tell the whole class about this.’
Q. Have you noticed different types of students sticking around for those online sessions than in the physical classroom?
The interesting thing is, I have — students who aren’t question-askers but who enjoy listening. This experience has taught me new things about those students and their interests. I also think students who stay on Zoom tend to be more genuinely interested rather than asking questions in an attempt to impress. I noticed something similar in office hours. The types of students who are willing to schedule a zoom call are different from the type who will sit outside your office and wait. There’s nothing public about a Zoom call, and I think the stakes might feel lower, so students are more confident to reach out to myself and others, and I hope they do!
Q. So is the future of legal education digital?
We miss all of you terribly! We really, really do and I hope you miss us. The physical classroom is great for building community. My colleagues and I work very hard to build community in our classes and I can’t wait see my students and to feel like we’re all in a shared enterprise, to learn and laugh together. All this is teaching us something about digital skills, which I hadn’t considered before.
Increasingly, there are legal careers where digital models are important. Students will continue to need interpersonal skills, but there is a shift towards developing digital skills, which has been accelerated by this pandemic. For example, when I clerked on that First Circuit, which covers New England and Puerto Rico, I remember being bewildered that there were nine sittings in Boston and two in San Juan. Lawyers would fly from San Juan just to make a 10-minute argument in Boston. That always seemed like a massive waste of resources to me. Right now, judges are learning to hear all arguments online, and this could really save some money and time for clients and lawyers.
Q. What is your advice to students who are starting 1L during this online semester?
One of the most important things is to be kind. It’s much easier to just send a snarky tweet or to be cruel to someone when you don’t really have to face the person. If somebody has a great day in class, send them a note. If somebody helped you out by sending you notes, send them a thank-you message. Build a community in remote ways to the extent that you can and really, really encourage and support each other. The more you feel like a team, the more successful you are as a class.
In terms of the nuts and bolts of online learning, you should be forgiving and experimental with yourself. I would try everything; try taking notes by hand for a day, doing split-screen, having Zoom on one portion of your screen and notes on another, try different note-taking applications. Experiment and find the setup that makes you feel most comfortable.
Last, set boundaries around your work. Setting those boundaries is even more important in a remote environment because when you work from home you never get to pack up and go home to relax. You should make a schedule and protect your time by finding habits that let you transition from work time to relax time.
Q. You’ve been interviewed about teaching law remotely many times. Is there anything you would like to share but haven’t been asked about before?
Man, that’s really a million-dollar question. It’s such an incredible privilege to teach all of you. The faculty really care about all of you and that gets reflected in our pedagogical choices, but we are also human. We’re figuring things out and we’re experimenting. I hope you can have patience with us as we navigate these new situations.
Generally, I hope this is a moment for us to think about what works well. We can really learn from you and your feedback. The feedback I received last semester gave me great ideas for how I can do better. This is an exciting moment, and you should reflect on what works and what you like and then indicate that and encourage us to rethink teaching or to rethink pedagogy. Be willing to share the ideas you learn from one class with another if you think it seems particularly interesting or useful, because you all are the consumers of what will be a remarkable and unprecedented semester.
I seek student feedback relentlessly. As lawyers, the more feedback we seek and the less afraid we are to ask for feedback, the better. That’s my takeaway: I’m going to try and learn as much from my students as I can on how to build community and what pedagogically works well. And hopefully, those things will translate into the real classroom, too.