Contents

• A. An experimental Course.
• B. My expectations.
• C. The goals of the course.
• D. Course Requirements.
• E. Grading.
• F. Textbooks.
• G. The website.

A. An experimental course

As you may know, this course is part of an experiment, funded by the Sloan Foundation. For the first time three of CUNY's graduate professional schools are jointly offering courses for credit, and these courses are being delivered almost entirely over the Internet. That allows students substantial control over the time and context in which they study the course material, as well as a good deal of flexibility in how they sequence the learning.

Because this is the first time these courses have been taught in this way, we are hoping to learn a good deal. We want to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Web-based instruction, to figure out how the asynchronous quality of the course -- the fact that you are neither in the same place nor interacting with the computer materials simultaneously -- will affect how well the material can be taught and learned. We want to get a sense of whether students who take a course in this rather depersonalized setting treat it with the same degree of seriousness and derive as much benefit as they would if it were offered live.

So, though, I've been teaching education law for roughly twenty years, I've never taught it this way before, and it's fresh and exciting and fun for me. I hope it has some of the same qualities for you. And, I'm already discovering ways in which not being able to see you regularly face to face, and not being able to answer questions synchronously render this a harder, or at least less familiar, way to teach.

I invite you to keep me posted about things that work, things that don't work, things you wish we had done or included. E-mail me, or post to my webpage, or discuss it on the students-only webpage (but bear in mind that I won't see what you are saying if the only place you post it is the students-only page.

B. My expectations.

My primary expectation is that you will take this course seriously, spend the time it takes, and generally accord it the amount of attention that you would any other 3-credit course. To me that means that you will spend an average of 7-10 hours per week on the course. Much of that will be spent on reading, a good deal on thinking, and at least an hour each week on writing related to the website (on average, another hour or two per week will wind up being spent on your class project.

The most important single thing, especially given the Internet aspect of the class, is that you share your questions and uncertainties. Ignorance is a lawyer's most precious commodity. Only by becoming conscious of a thing that we have learned almost instinctively to sweep under the rug -- an acknowledgment of the things we don't know or don't understand -- does a lawyer have any chance of coming know what he or she has to learn. Big lawyering mistakes follow from believing that one knows what one is doing. I have never met an attorney or seen a situation in which any lawyer has ever been hurt by assuming that a question presented was new, challenging, and worthy of study from scratch.

So, I hope that you will come to sensitize yourselves as you read the material to the parts of it that are confusing or new or alien. I hope that you will develop the instinct when something you read seems just plain wrong to you, to step back and say, "there must be more here than meets the eye, I wonder what I'm missing." Whatever strategies work well in other courses, in this course, I'm suggesting that the goal is not to convince me how well you've mastered the material. Rather, it is to convince me that you have a precise and detailed understanding of the ways in which you find it confusing or overwhelming or strange.

C. The objectives of the course.

Which brings me to the question of what do I believe are the course's central goals.

In essence, I am hoping to help you as educators become first rate consumers of legal services.

Most students come to introductory law courses with the assumption that the task involves learning the rules. My premise, to the contrary, is that there are no rules. The fact that there appear to be rules is just a sham, a scam, a shill, a ruse. It's a con game in which the con artist wins as soon as the patsy buys the line that all he or she need do is learn the rules and apply them diligently.

If the law is a game of Three Card Monte, my goal in this course is modest. I don't expect that by the end of the semester you will know all the tricks and be able to predict which of the cards is the red King. I will be satisfied if you simply switch allegiance, if at the end of the semester you view those who buy into the game as suckers, and see those who set up business on the sidewalk for what they are: adept manipulators of relatively mundane objects.

In short, I want you to feel empowered as consumers of the legal system, and I want that to take place, in part, as a result of the demystification of the law. By doing the work of this course you should get to a place where you can research basic legal questions on your own in a law library. You should be able to have meaningful conversations with your attorney about education-related matters. You should have enough self-confidence that if, after explaining once or twice what you don't understand, your lawyer's answers still sound like gibberish to you, you are comfortable simply firing him or her. I hope that you will be able to see how the law complicates and simplifies your life, that you will be able to articulate questions for your attorney in such a way that you convey the information the attorney needs, and in a fashion that makes it likely that the attorney's response will actually be of some use.

D. Course Requirements.

The course requirements include:

• Weekly Reading Assignments. All materials other than the two library research reference books will be available on the website, clustered by the week for which they are assigned. Most of them are cases, and most of the cases include hotlinks to cases and other materials cited within the case. I would encourage you to read the case I've assigned fully first, then, if you wish to browse through related cases, go back through the case after you've read it all and explore any links that interest you. Remember that when TWEN or Westlaw ask for your username it is "farago" and when it asks for your password it is "37613761". Read and think. Many law students try to 'brief' all the cases they read. Briefing is a process of summarizing cases that forces you to be critically analytical as you do it. I recommend briefing cases for a while at least, until you feel that you are comfortable reading cases. I have a memo on case briefing that is part of this week's reading assignment and is available on the website. Some of the documents on the website will only be downloadable via Adobe Acrobat. If you don't have Acrobat Go to the Useful Links page and follow the link to get it and install it as a plug-in in your browser.
• Weekly posting on your own forum page. Each week I will post some thoughts occasioned by the readings and the questikons they raise for me. You can take any or all of my posting as a starting point, or you may write about something else that caught your attention in the readings for the week, but I expect that you'll post at least one thoughtful reaction to the week's readings on your own forum page. To get to your forum page, click on your name on the "forums" section of the main webpage. As I've suggested elsewhere already, you will probably want to compose this posting on a word processor (or by hand) and then copy it into the forum posting box. The box is just too small for me to be able to see enough of what I've written to keep my wits about me. Your posting for the week should be up by Wednesday.
• Weekly reaction to others' postings. Each week you should be keeping an eye on others' forum pages and react to their postings. These may be spontaneous and brief enough to make it reasonable to compose them within the teeny little box on the posting page, but even here you may want to use a word processor and cut and paste.
• The course project. The project is relatively straightforward. You ask your lawyer a question, then change roles and, acting as though you were your own lawyer, research the question and then answer it. Here are the descriptions of each phase from the syllabus:
  • The question: You are the person at your school responsible for contacting the schoolís attorney when legal issues arise or legal advice is needed. Taking either a problem that has actually arisen in your school in the past, or that you have reason to fear may well arise in the future, or that (if neither of the other alternative sources comports with your experience) is suggested by one of the topics in this syllabus, write a letter to your attorney asking for advice on that problem. Make sure that you include all relevant facts the attorney is likely to need in order to be able to answer your question, and make sure that your question is framed with enough precision that your attorney will understand your specific concerns eventhough she is not an educator, and so that the attorneyís response will be able to address your practical needs (that is, be sure the attorney knows what it is you need from her). You should expect to turn in a first draft, get feedback from me, and write a revision. The first draft is due no later than February 28. The second draft is due no later than the March 7th, a week later. We will post the revised version on the website. This part of the project might be as brief as 1-2 single-spaced typewritten pages.
  • Researching the question: Using materials from the course and the Law Library, gather the material you believe is relevant to the legal issues implicated by your Client's Letter and write a memo to the files that summarizes the substance of the research and provides an annotated bibliography of the relevant material you have found. There will be another Saturday at the law library announced for mid-March (Rosaria and I will be available on that day). You may use the library whenever it's open on other days, but we can't assure you that we will be available. You can use any other law library you can get access to. By April 8 you should be ready to turn in and post a bibliography of the materials you've found.
  • Answering the question: Now that you are more familiar with the legal backdrop of your question, rewrite the Client's Letter (if you wish) to make it easier for the lawyer to understand and address. Then draft a response from the attorney, taking into account the client's need for both an understanding of the law and for practical advice about the implications of the law and alternative possible courses of action. You should expect to turn in a first draft by April 18, and a revision by the 25th. We will post the revision. This might be anything from 5 to 50 pages, depending on the question and your approach to it. We'll try to keep it towards the briefer end of the range.

You can schedule a one-week break any time during the semester and I won't expect you to post to the website that week (you should keep up with the readings, and this doesn't affect the Class Project deadlines). E-mail me if you want to do this, and let me know which week you'll be doing it.

E. Grading.

Basically, you are graded on your written work. 60% is based on the three-part class project. 25% is based on your postings to your own forum page. And 15% is based on your postings to others' pages. I'm looking for thoughtfulness and appropriate use of the materials you've read or the ideas they contain. I don't care if you cite the readings. I care that you've gotten the ideas in them and can use those ideas in application to other questions. You'll have your grades on the last day of the class.

F. Textbooks.

There are two required texts: Legal Research Illustrated, 7th Ed, by Jacobsteim, et al, published by Foundation Press; and A Uniform System of Citation, aka the Bluebook. These are reference tools that will assist your research. I strongly encourage you to purchase them even though there are no assignments directly from either book. I will expect you to be able to write your Bibliography in Bluebook citation form. Both will be available at the Hunter and Baruch bookstores shortly. I'll post an announcement when they arrive.

G. The Website.

The website is operational. To log on you will need your Web Course in a Box Name and Password. Your name is generally the first letter of your first name tacked onto your entire last name, all lower case (e.g. 'jfarago'). Your password is your last name, all lower case, until you change it, which you should have done already. Once you are in the website, remember that some of the documents under 'Materials' are coming from a different system TWEN or Westlaw), which requires its own, separate Name and Password. The name for these purposes is Farago, and the Password is 37613761. Here is how the website is structured.

The Home Page is essentially a navigation tool. From here you can go anywhere you want to go in the website. In general, the Home Page always remains open; other pages open in new windows. I've checked it in AOL, Netscape, and Explorer versions 4.0 and higher. If you have problems with your browser because it is a lower version number, I'd suggest upgrading to 4.0 or higher (not just for these purposes; they're faster and more fully featured). You will certainly want to bookmark the Home Page. The URL is: carver.law.cuny.edu/ed/PAF9312.htm. From the Home Page you can go to:

Course Materials, a list, by week of assignment, of all the readings for the course. On the left side of the Home Page. Click on a reading and a window with that document opens for you. In general you can, if you wish, download any of these documents. Sometimes doing so will require Adobe Acrobat.

Student Forums. You can go to any student's Forum Page by clicking on their name in the 'forums' list in the middle of the Home Page. A new window will open with the requested page. You may want to bookmark your own forum page.

Faculty Forum Pages. You can go to the forum page that I will monitor to respond to student questions on any aspects of the course. To do so, click on my picture on the Home Page you may have to scroll down the center part of the Home Page window to find me). To go to Rosaria's or Melissa's pages, click on their names in the 'admin' section of the Home Page. They will be monitoring their own pages and try to be helpful about library reference questions and technical questions, respectively.

The Student-Only Forum (aka the John-Free Zone). To go here click on the picture of me with the red X running through it on the Home Page (you may have to scroll down the center part of the Home Page window to find me).

Assignments. Click, not surprisingly on the 'Assignments' button on the 'Admin' section of the Home Page. The Assignments window will open, with the most recent Assignment at the top, and prior ones below it. You can also click on the Assignments link under Materials.

Announcements. Click on the 'Announcements' line at the very top left corner of the Home Page. If there is something urgent, and if you use Netscape, the link will be flashing when you log on. Unfortunately, flashing is not supported by other browsers, so you'll need to check the Announcements page regularly. I will try to keep the date of the most recent announcement listed as part of the link, but I'm fallible and you shoulkd check as often as you can.

Syllabus. Click on the 'Syllabus' button in the 'Admin' section to view the Syllabus for the course. The course has three 4-5 week units, and the Syllabus will come up one unit at a time. The readings appear on the Syllabus as hotlinks.

Various utilities associated with Web Course in a Box (the authoring software for parts of the website) can be found by clicking the 'Help Links' button on the 'Admin' section of the Home Page. There is a student manual there as well, that can explain aspects of the software, though most of these will not be directly relevant to your use (because I've implemented the software a bit idiosyncratically). You may find the utility that will allow you to set up your own homepage to be of particular interest.

Other Useful Links (the button between the two pictures of me; you may have to scroll down the center part of the Home Page window to find it) takes you to a window where I will post annotated links to Adobe Acrobat, to other useful CUNY sites, and to outside websites that might have some interest to students of education law. Nominations are encouraged and welcomed.

Of your browser supports e-mail,. you can send E-Mail to each other by clicking on the 'Students' button in the Admin section, which will open a page with links for everyone in the course. Or you can e-mail them directly, again if your browser supports e-mail, by clicking on a person's name in the 'E-Mail' section of the Home Page. Finally, you can send e-mail to the entire class at once by clicking the 'Mail All' button in the 'Admin' section of the Home Page.

That's as much as I can think of as of now. If you have questions, post them to my forum page or e-mail me; I'll modify this document as well as respond to your postings.

Best,

John

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