EXPERT LEARNING FOR LAW
STUDENTS
ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES
OUTLINING COURSES
OBJECTIVES
• Create a structured portrayal of the course
material
• Avoid the risk of failing to see the relationships
among the course concepts
• Ability to focus on the materials you actually
need to know for your examinations
• Identify areas of confusion and resolve them
• Identify need for clarification and get the
assistance you need
UTILITY OF COURSE OUTLINES
Expert law students create course outlines to:
– Ensure they understand what they have
learned;
– Ensure what they understand is correct and
complete;
– Free up examination preparation time to
• memorizing what they need to know; and
• practise the skills on which they will be
tested.
GOALS FOR COURSE OUTLINES
EXPERT LEARNERS
SET
THREE (3) GOALS
FOR COURSE OUTLINES
1. STRUCTURING COURSE MATERIALS
– Human beings store new learning in
organized structures called schema;
– Recognize that outlining courses offer them
an opportunity to create structures that will
increase the likelihood that they will be able
to recall and use what they have learned in
their courses;
– The hierarchy they create allows their
brains to more readily store the learning.
2. RECORDING THE COURSE MATERIALS
The most significant use of course outlines
• The first task in memorizing anything is
deciding what one needs to memorize.
• Course outlines are excellent tools for
helping students make sure they know
what it is that they need to know.
• Accordingly, expert law students use their
course outlines to record everything they
need to know for their examinations.
3. CHECKING FOR COMPREHENSION
• Creating a course outline causes expert
learners to assess their comprehension.
• Each time expert law students add to
their outlines, they assess whether they
understand what they are adding.
• This is the self-monitoring that is part of
all self-regulated learning (independent
learners)
3. CHECKING FOR COMPREHENSION
• Expert law students make sure they not
only understand the words of the rules
and the holdings of the cases but also:
Develop examples and non-
examples for the concepts
those words describe.
3. CHECKING FOR COMPREHENSION
This effort causes expert law
students to
Do further reading and
research; or
Stop and obtain help
when they realise that the have
a comprehension issue.
HOW TO CREATE EXCELLENT COURSE
OUTLINES
Three keys to excellent outlines
1) Highly structured - follow proper outline
format.
2) Exhaustive - Include everything you
need to know to do well on your
examinations but no irrelevant material.
3) Accurate - Check outlines for accuracy
START EARLY- WORK CONTINUOUSLY
Give yourself time:
1. To think through the organization of the material;
2. To see the relationship between concepts;
3. To identify areas of confusion or to access
resources to resolve confusion identified;
4. To eliminate the risk of omission of key information;
5. To eliminate the risk of erroneous information and
irrelevant materials;
This increases the time you have to memorize and
practice.
CREATE STRUCTURE NOT LISTS OF
INFORMATION
• The absence of structure makes the outline
less valuable as a tool for organizing
understanding and for memorization if
information;
• The struggle to identify the hierarchies is a
type of deep mental processing that creates
the strong memory traces that make
recollection during the stress of examination
much more likely.
IMPORTANCE OF STRUCTURE
• Structure is a tool for organizing and
memorizing the material
• Structure identifies hierarchies as a type of
deep mental processing that creates strong
memory traces and makes recollection during
the stress of examination much more likely.
CREATING HIERARCHIES
• Create as many levels and sub-levels as possible (have a
(II) for every (I), at least a (B) for every (A), and at least
a (b) for every (a)
• Consider multiple ways of organizing the material and
know why you have selected one method over another.
• Use multiple sources – lecture/class notes, handouts,
textbooks, Q & A, commercial outlines, discussions
with peers – to help you identify and develop your
understanding of the relationships among the concepts
you are learning.
Create your own understanding – the effort is
crucial to learning
OUTLINING PRINCIPLES
• BUT create your own understandings (the
effort to do so is itself crucial to your mastery).
• Thinking through all of the subcategories so
that you know how all the material fits
together (doing so causes the mind to create
mental structures needed to memorize
learning)
WHAT TO INCLUDE IN OUTLINES
You may want to create two outlines for
each topic. But if you even do one it must
include:
– Doctrinal materials
• Divided by doctrinal categories
– Skills and insights
• Divided by skills topics and insight
topics
What to include
• Determine the objectives of the topic
• Case reading
• Case synthesis
• Legal analysis
• Facts Analysis
• Issue spotting
• Doctrine
WHAT TO INCLUDE IN OUTLINES
• What the lecturer says is important (their point of view)
• All the rules of law stated in cases, by the lecturer and any
assigned readings - the doctrine and the case holdings;
• Instructions about performing skills to navigate the concept
(narration, critical analysis, problem solving, evaluation)
• Policy and other rationale for the doctrine and holdings (the
whys of the rules);
• Examples and non-examples of each concept to remember
not only the words of the rules but how to use the rules to
analyze problems.
CHECKING FOR COMPREHENSION AND
ACCURACY
Make sure you
1) Understand the words of the rules and
holdings;
2) Can paraphrase the rules and holdings in your
own words;
3) Know and can state the reasons for the rules;
4) Can give both an example that satisfies what
the rule requires and a non-example that
does not satisfy the rule.
CHECKING FOR COMPREHENSION AND
ACCURACY
• Perfect recollection of an inaccurate rule or holding is useless.
• Compare your work with your peers and discuss differences,
the statements in the court opinions, and your class notes.
• If you have doubts clarify with your tutor or lecturer. Making
sure you understand all the words, concepts and ideas that
are included
• Develop a list of questions for the lecturer or study group
about any rule or holding about which you have doubt and
getting those questions answered
Checks for Comprehension and Accuracy
• Outlines is a mechanism for making sure you understand
what you have learned and that your information is
accurate and complete.
• Self-monitoring:
• -Understand the words of the rules and holdings
• -Ensure you can paraphrase the rules and holdings in your
own words
• -Understanding the reasons for the rules
• -Generate both an example that satisfies what the rule
requires and an example that, although similar, does not
satisfy the rule (non-example)
Deconstruction of Rules
• Deconstructing a rule involves translating the
rule into a list of parts so that you will be able
to
– Create an organised structure for remembering
the rule;
– Ensure that nothing is left out or overlooked;
– Demonstrate clear knowledge of the rule; and
– Apply each part of the rule to a fact pattern.
Deconstruction of Rules
Deconstructing rules is crucial to your success in
law studies. It is not easy or superficial, but
involves recognising crucial distinctions and
nuances and strict adherence to structure.
Deconstruction of Rules
Deconstructing rules involves -
(1) Pattern Recognition; and
(2) Language Interpretation
Deconstruction of Rules – Pattern
Recognition
• Most rules fall within one of the five forms or
patterns that rules take or a combination of
two or more of those patterns.
• Therefore, you can deconstruct rules by
classifying the rule you have before you within
a prototype rule based on its characteristics.
The Five Patterns of Rules
• Five common types of rules may be discerned, but
it is also common for a particular concept to
involve a combination of different patterns of
rules.
• Discerning the pattern is crucial to accurate
– Analysis;
– Application;
– Evaluation;
– Judgment/conclusion;
and to Comprehensive/Exhaustive treatment.
ANSWERING QUESTIONS
• Choose an essay question and a problem question related
to what was stressed in your lecture
• OUTLINE the question as follows:
• 1-Commentary – what the answer should include and
exclude. In other words, your interpretation of the question
and the boundaries.
• 2- Conclusion – what is your conclusion?
• 3- Answer Plan – in bulleted form
• 4 –Suggested Answer – numbered paragraphs in short
sentences as to what precisely will be discussed, cases and
statutory references
