Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching: A Primer for New (And Not So New) Professors by Kevin Francis O'Neill Howard E. Katz

Author:Kevin Francis O'Neill Howard E. Katz [Howard E. Katz, Kevin Francis O'Neill]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Education, Law, Reference, General
ISBN: 9780735588332
Publisher: Aspen Publishers
Published: 2009-03-14T21:00:00+00:00

3. The goodyear Blimp overview: Taking students on a doctrinal “fly-over” Before covering the same ground on foot

Students find it very helpful to survey the broad outlines of a course from an “aerial” perspective before commencing a detailed study. We call this a Goodyear Blimp Overview, and it is meant to accomplish three objectives. First, it lays before your students the full range of topics that you will be covering — not necessarily in the same sequence that you will follow, but organized in a manner that best conveys their interrelation. Second, the overview provides a doctrinal introduction to each topic, laying out some of the basic black-letter law in each area.134 Third, the overview touches briefly on the purpose or function of each topic. The overview is presented in a lecture format and typically consumes an entire class session.

If you are teaching a first-year subject, the students will find it particularly helpful if your overview lecture is accompanied by a one-page chart that displays all of the topics to be covered in your course, arrayed in a format that shows how they fit together. If you go to the trouble of creating such a chart, you can refer to it each time your overview lecture shifts to a new topic — and, as the semester progresses, you can refer back to it whenever you make a transition from one topic to another. In combination with such a chart, the Goodyear Blimp Overview inspires the gratitude of many students by helping them to maintain a big-picture perspective of the topics that comprise your course.135

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