In the fall of 2020, the CALT website is featuring updates from law professors about how their institutions are responding to the challenge of teaching during a pandemic.
Western Law has moved to a fully online 2L and 3L curriculum (with some exceptions for clinic courses) but is offering an in-person curriculum for 1L students. Thus, with the exception of one small group (~15 students) every 1L student will take their courses in person. They will have the option of “Zooming in” should they feel ill or be otherwise unable to attend class in person but the expectation is that if they can come to class in person they will do so.
Arranging the in-person component of the 1L curriculum has been very labour and time-consuming, and many faculty spent a good part of their summer transitioning their courses from in-person to online. The Faculty of Law was able to hire a dozen students over the summer to work with faculty to make this change and that seems to have been useful. So far things seem to be going well and there have been no technical issues with the online delivery of courses, nor have I heard any complaints from faculty members. That said, we have more or less punted on issues having to do with assessment and exams for the time being, although faculty were very clear that they had no interest in using third-party tools like Proctortrack to administer midterm or final exams.
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