For Professor Mary-Jo Maur, engaging students to learn about law using technology is second nature. Since the undergraduate Introduction to Canadian Law went online in the summer of 2015, she’s been adapting various tools for JD students to absorb and apply legal concepts. 

Over the past year, she assigned various types of e-learning projects in three classes giving students the opportunity to present their work creatively. 

“My students were excited about presenting their work in different ways,” says Maur. “I was most impressed by their ability to synthesize what we had learned in class in a creative format,” she says. “Their work is passionate, exciting and hopeful.” 

So, what were those ways? 

Family law students prepared and assembled course work in e-portfolios, aka private websites. “e-portfolios are a cross between a reflective journal and a scrapbook – but all online,” she explains. “Students were expected to write short reflective pieces on the material we covered, but also include ‘artifacts’ (links to websites, videos, journals and any other material they find that is relevant to the course). They were expected to comment briefly on each artifact.” 

A good e-portfolio also includes visual elements. “The visual elements are meant to explain what students want to say in a way other than words,” she adds. “In Family Law, students often include personal details about their own families, and how they view their families after taking the course.”

That’s not the only use Maur sees for this tech tool. “I am working on helping students create their e-portfolios to assist in their job searches,” she says. “There is no reason they couldn’t include a link to an e-portfolio as part of their resumes. The portfolios demonstrate their engagement and creativity in an easily absorbed and creative way.”

Students in Maur’s Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) class completed what she calls an “unessay” assignment. “An ‘unessay’ is a creative piece, in which students focus on one topic, and present it in a creative electronic form,” she explains. “It can be a video, a podcast, an e-journal, a scrapbook – anything they want!” 

This past term’s Legal Ethics students demonstrated their knowledge through the production of e-posters. While Maur’s original plan was to display printed posters at a mini-conference with guest speakers in late March, she switched the submission method to electronic in response to the COVID crisis. “I was particularly struck by submissions that not only presented first-rate content but are also visually engaging,” she says. 

Before becoming Director of the introductory LAW 201 course in the undergraduate Certificate Law Program in 2015, Maur used to teach JD classes in what she calls “a very traditional way, with two-hour lectures and 100 per cent final exams.” But she dove right in to discover effective e-learning strategies. 

Over the years, Maur has used many e-learning tools, including recorded Camtasia lectures, online tutorials; online Jeopardy games as an exam preparation tool, Echo360 and Lecture Capture. That’s because she began noticing a few interesting things about student engagement during online lectures. 

First, she learned that she needed to have a tight PowerPoint prepared, with her main points clearly delineated. “No one has the attention span to sit through a meandering online lecture,” she notes. 

Second, she found that students who don’t normally put their hands up in class are happy to participate using the chat function in platforms like Zoom or Skype. “I find this so encouraging,” she says. “I can support them for participating, and they seem to perceive the risk of texting in an answer to be lower than the risk of putting up their hands and giving an oral answer in class. 

“I also find I am able to learn their names faster if I see their names and faces together online,” she adds. “The ability to record lectures and comments is also critical. Students have overwhelmingly told me that they appreciate being able to review recorded lectures later.” 

With LAW 201 students telling Maur they loved developing questions to test course material and then answering those posed of classmates in their online Jeopardy teams, she began employing it in her first-year Torts classes as an end-of-term review tool. “Even though it was just for review, everyone showed up, and there was much hooting and hollering!” she exclaims. “The online Jeopardy game program is an excellent review tool for basic concepts.”

Acknowledging that instructors couldn’t use e-learning in every course or as the sole assessment method, she notes that when it is suitable to assign a project for students to offer their thinking in a different format, they seem to enjoy it. 

“While good writing is essential to good lawyering, creativity is important, too,” says Maur. “The best lawyers are able to draw on metaphors from other disciplines. It makes them more persuasive as advocates for their clients and allows them to move the law forward in unexpected ways.” 

Maur is also very proud of the work her students produce. “They come from diverse backgrounds, and it is so exciting to see them synthesizing their previous academic work and their interests with their legal education,” she says. “To me, that’s how we build great lawyers!”