Introductions are in order

Hey everyone, my name is Aaron Dewald, and I’ll be the poster for Dec/Jan.

I thought I’d take a minute to introduce myself and let you know what I’ll be writing about over the next month or so.

About Me
I work at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.  I’m the Associate Director for our brand new Center for Innovation in Legal Education. We’re trying to find ways to introduce a little learning science into the classroom. Combine that with some technology and hopefully it’s a recipe for success for faculty and students.

Anyway, I’ve attended the CALI conference over the past few years or so… and I try to give back by presenting at each one I attend. I’m a lurker on Teknoids (should probably respond more often), but I enjoy reading the dialogue back and forth on the forum.

The blog schedule 
I have a few specific things that I’d like to share with you over the next 4-5 weeks, I’m specifically going to write about:

  • Running simulations.  We run a Counter-terrorism simulation each year here. I’d like to share with you a story about technology and how it drove us to reconsider how we ran the simulation.  I’ll probably do this in two or four parts. It’s a fun little story. Likely going to present about it with our IT Director Mark Beekhuizen at CALI next year.
  • Blended classrooms and first-year courses We’re just wrapping up a project in which our two Contracts professors created multimedia modules based on the Restatement of Contracts. These were given to students a few days before class to get them up to speed about the restatements. The time saved in the classroom was then used for dialogue about the modules. The multimedia modules were uploaded to YouTube if you’d like to see them. I’ll write about the results of our survey, some interesting YouTube statistics, implementation, as well as report on what the overall findings were.  If there’s an appetite, I’ll propose a CALI session where we can learn how to make the modules for your own use.
  • Learning science I’m a PhD student in learning sciences, so sometimes there’s cool research that comes through that’s worth sharing with others. Most of it will have a technology spin, so it won’t be the academically dry stuff that’s out there. But I’d like to introduce a few things and write about its implications on technology in the legal classroom.
I’ll try to keep everything short and to the point.
I’m excited to write for you, share my knowledge with you, and learn from you. Drop me a line, if you’d like!

 

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