Summer Session Recap: Experts Chat about Chat GPT
Recorded on Jun 12 2023. Enregistré le 12 juin 2023
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Links and Suggestions re other resources + biographies of Chat Experts (en)
Notes from the Roundtable [These notes were produced by CALT, using the transcript of this Roundtable and liberally deleting and editing]
Experts Chat about ChatGPT Mon Jun 12, 2PM EST via zoom
This session is part of ACPD-CALT Summer Sessions 2023.
Experts Chat about ChatGPT: Curriculum and Context
Monday June 12 2PM EST via ZOOM
Your expert colleagues talk teaching, evaluation and tech, helping law profs revise, augment and improve law teaching & (content and evaluation) in a world with easily accessible AI.
Registration required, here.
With
Prof Alexandra Mogoryos, Toronto Metropolitan University, Lincoln Alexander Faculty of Law
Audrey Fried Director, Faculty & Curriculum Development, Osgoode OPD, York University
Prof. Katie Szilagyi, University of Manitoba Faculty of Law
Prof. Kristen Thomasen Allard Faculty of Law, UBC
Prof. Jon Penny, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Prof Valerio de Stefano, Canada Research Chair in Innovation, Law and Society, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Prof. Wolfgang Alschner, Hyman Soloway Chair in Business and Trade Law, Ottawa Faculty of Law
Links and Suggestions re other resources + biographies of Chat Experts
The Open Access Revolution: Workshop Recap
At CALT's July 6 web session on Open Access publishing we heard from practitioners, law teachers, and publishers about options for Open Access with CanLII. I thought I knew what could be done with “online”, “open access” text books – but I think I’d fallen a bit behind and what I saw made me even more keen to join up. There are lots of reasons to think about this, normative reasons (low price, public access) and functional/pedagogical reasons (customization, easy access, downloads possible, printing possible, and additional features such as embeds, links, etc).
Scroll down for more on Open Access resources and more on CanLII's platform.
Samuel Beswick is Assistant Professor at Allard where he’s teaching Torts. You can see his Open Access, Torts casebook on CanLII: Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries (2021 CanLIIDocs 1859). He put together two brief slides easily accessed here, to highlight important points, and he’s also done a short explainer at SLAW, here. Those are really useful, but I think that taking a look at his casebook is perhaps the best way to see what’s possible (the artist who did the cover illustration is a student – you can see her work here).
Sam was particularly interested in highlighting two things in his casebook. First, a bit of comparative law from around the common law world in terms of tort doctrine. Second, the question of how Tort law should work when the alleged tortfeasor is a public entity. Doing his own casebook allowed him to bring those things to the fore.
Beswick's Tort Law is relatively purely a casebook – there is some commentary but it’s not from him. But what a casebook! In particular:
- The cross referencing means that students can easily follow a case which might appear in a case book multiple times (for instance, in terms of the duty of care, the standard of care, and the remedy).
- The “additional reading” or “resources” linked can include video, news articles.
- The links mean that students can easily move from the excerpts he’s providing to the full text if they want to.
The work is hosted on CanLII and available completely open access. Students can download it, access it via the web, or print it. Sam, in fact, has it printed and requires that students buy it (at cost of printing/binding) so that they have it in print form (there were some interesting side conversations about comprehension and concentration when reading online/in print). Sam said too that because CanLII SEO game is strong, he’s getting views from people who are probably just looking for general tort information but his book comes first when they search!
Sam has also enhanced his book with teaching tools including quizzes and help “structuring the answer on an exam” – these tools are hosted elsewhere but also available open access. (I did not do very well on the defences quiz, 26 years post-Torts with Prof. Weinrib, scraping a pretty bare pass).
Reminder that CALT membership is open for online purchase (here). Please consider becoming a member if you find this kind of workshop and resource useful.
John Fiddick and Cameron Wardell are civil litigators in B.C., and the lead editors of The CanLII Manual to British Columbia Civil Litigation - open access on CanLII here (cover art for this Manual is by….Cameron Wardell!). This is a different kind of project but it also highlights the incredible possibilities of OA as supported by CanLII, as a tool for access to justice and a space of collaboration not just sole authorship.
Initiated out of a concern that self-represented litigants (and new professionals) had limited places to go for a comprehensive guide to the civil litigation systems in BC. It is deliberately written a format and language that will be accessible to the ordinary citizen. Each of the 9 “pathfinders” (for instance, in personal injury law, residential tenancy law, and worker’s compensation law) in Administrative Law, Criminal Law Employment Law was written by a volunteer author, and a huge team of volunteer checkers and editors helped bring this project to fruition. CanLII provided some coordination and formatting support, but the content is all volunteer-expert supplied.
Alisa Lazear, Manager of Community and Content at CanLII, was closely involved in the development and production of the BC Manual and Sam’s Torts casebook. While the casebook was largely a sole author production (Sam wrote it in word, and then it was uploaded to the CanLII platform), the Manual required more development and coordination. CanLII is fielding a number of proposals for similar Manuals across the provinces. The BC Manual is being well used (first citation, here). As Cameron pointed out there are (Cameron’s emphasis!) “very serious lawyers” who use no database other than CanLII now. Those of us (like me) who entered legal research just as analog methods were giving way to full text, fully commercialised databases, might not realize this – I’m not sure I did.
If you want to read more about Open Access Resources in legal education, you can read the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources and/or watch a series of topic specific recorded webinars about Fair Use for Open Educational Resources here (h/t to Osgoode’s Carys Craig, the only scholar from a Canadian Law School involved here I think). The materials are “…intended to support authors, teachers, professors, librarians, and all open educators in evaluating when and how they can incorporate third party copyright materials into Open Educational Resources to meet their pedagogical goals”. The clear concern here is that understandings of IP and copyright might be stifling educational use beyond what the law actually requires.
If you want to know more about CanLII platform and policies around hosting Open Access resources, you can try here (Author guidelines), here (Lexbox, free to sign up, which will show you what your materials will look like on CanLII) and here (Reflex, which automatically finds and hyperlinks an references in your materials which connect to CanLII resources – other hyperlinks need to be manually added). Despite CanLII's small number of staff, it is developing into a significant player in Canada as a supplier of Open Access Resources in legal practice and legal education. Alisa Lazear also recommended this guide to publishing Open Access educational resources put together by a not-for-profit: The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Text which details the kinds of things you have to think about, and the process from beginning to Open Access (well, and beyond, since with legal material you always have to think about updates/being up-to-date).
Apologies for any errors or misunderstandings in this post, entirely my own. Huge thanks again to Alisa, Sam, John and Cameron, and Sarah Sutherland of CanLII.
Workshop Wednesdays: July 6 2022 12PM Eastern
The Open Casebook Revolution
Please register in advance for this meeting by clicking here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. |
The open access law book “revolution” (as named by The Faculty Lounge), is gaining momentum. Open access law books are materials compiled and edited for law students, practitioners and/or the public that are freely hosted on websites and as downloadable, searchable, printable, mark-up-able PDFs. In the United States, dozens of open access law casebooks are popping up on platforms such as SSRN, Open Textbook Library, eLangdell and H2O.
In Canada, CanLII hosts Professor Beswick’s casebook, Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries, and Messrs
Fiddick and Wardell’s handbook, The CanLII Manual to British Columbia Civil Litigation. These materials are freely available alternatives to commercial cas
ebooks and handbooks, which are typically expensive, heavy, and have a short shelf-life.
Open access law books have clear practical, pedagogical and societal advantages. On the practical side, compared to commercial alternatives, open access books are simpler to edit, faster to publish, easier to update, and free. On the pedagogical side, they empower flexibility and innovation. They can be more readily structured to suit the editor’s teaching aims. They can link to podcasts 🎧, videos 📺, blogs, news, articles, books, and judgments. Readers can keyword search and highlight text. Students don’t break their backs carrying them. They can also be integrated with quizzes and exam exercises. On the social side, open access legal materials advance access to justice. Commercial materials are often beyond the reach of the public and, in some cases, students.
Open access legal publications help to keep the law accessible.
This roundtable will appraise and praise the practical, pedagogical and societal benefits of open access law books for law teachers, students and lawyers. We will begin by taking 10 minutes each to highlight the design innovations of our respective books and the impact we see them having.
We will then discuss among ourselves and with attendees the tricks and challenges for making such materials. We hope to encourage others to venture into creating open access casebooks, handbooks and other resources for students and curious members of the public.
Sarah Sutherland (session chair), President and CEO, Canadian Legal Information Institute
- Samuel Beswick, Assistant Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia (presentation slides)
- John Fiddick, Director, Whitelaw Twining.
- Cameron Wardell, Partner, Mathews, Dinsdale & Clark LLP
The Ethics of Student Engagement Technologies: Using Clickers & Smartphones to Learn the Law
The Challenge
Digital natives now comprise a major sector of law school entrants. Don’t be surprised if they appear in your Contracts 101 class this September expecting to use their Apple Watches or Google Glass in learning the law. Such a scenario raises a troubling discrepancy in legal education methodologies: while most students are quite adept with student engagement technologies (SETs) from undergraduate classes, the majority of their law school professors prefer the passive environment of lectures, podiums, and PowerPoint. There might be a variety of reasons for avoiding SETs: apprehension of the technology, the time required for set-up, or fears that techno-wizardry will bog down content-intensive curricula. Some might also hold deep ideological commitment to the timeworn Socratic method.
As the inventory of SETs increases to include both more functional clicker remotes and web-based mobile phones, as well as videos used in the flipped classroom, there is mounting empirical evidence that active learning can address alarmingly short attention spans, improve grades, and close gender and socio-economic gaps. Such benefits raise the ethical question for us all: are we not obligated as law teachers to employ active learning, including SETs, in the best interests of our learners?
Read more