CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

After discussing the value of outlines with several people recently and reading the student comments about them on this blog, a thought occurred to me — would it be useful to have interactive on-line outlining? Interactive outlining means that students could post outlines they were composing for a class on a Web platform (such as Blackboard) and the teacher of that class and other students could provide comments on the outline posts. This type of mutual access might allow information to flow in different directions — to the student who posted, to the prof, and to other students who read the posts. This helps visual students, gives profs an understanding of what is being communicated and allows for mid-course corrections and fill-ins.

Along similar lines, is there any downside to an on-line outline bank for any and all course outlines, provided there is a disclaimer about the accuracy of their content? Outlines could be supplied by both teachers and students, and anyone reading the outlines could “review” and rate them, just like on Amazon, Netflix and Ebay. The bank could be accessed by students as a learning supplement and by faculty as a tool to see how students are organizing their courses.

–Steve Friedland