Document Type
Article
Publication
North Dakota Law Review
Year
2024
Citation Information
Sloan G. Speck, Zoom as an In-Person Learning Platform, 99 North Dakota L. Rev. 627 (2024), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/1666.
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented shift to remote learning spurred many legal educators to reassess their pedagogical norms and practices. These reassessments were enabled, in part, by the widespread adoption and acceptance of videoconferencing software, most notably Zoom, that accelerated from March of 2020. Zoom’s catalytic effect on pedagogy belies the fact that no single aspect of Zoom, by itself, is particularly pathbreaking. What is revolutionary, however, is how Zoom bundles diverse functionalities into a coherent package.
By recasting Zoom as a bundle of classroom functionalities--as an in-person learning platform--this Article presents a novel use case for Zoom in legal education, distinct from the software's role in remote synchronous instruction. This proposed use case unsettles the conventional pandemic-era evaluative frames for Zoom and other videoconferencing applications. Instead of focusing on whether Zoom's virtual environment adequately substitutes for in-person class sessions, this Article argues that faculty can deploy Zoom directly into physical classrooms to enhance in-person teaching. And, instead of translating Zoom-enabled pedagogical practices to in-person instruction on a one-off basis, this Article focuses on Zoom's delivery of an integrated suite of teaching enhancements that instructors can deploy dynamically in physical space. In these ways, Zoom and other videoconferencing software provide leverage to shape our in-person interactions, as well as our virtual ones.
This Article situates Zoom, as an exemplar of videoconferencing software, within the conventional categories of software platforms used in education. Then, this Article discusses eight concrete implementations of Zoom's features that can enhance law school teaching outside of virtual space. Finally, this Article explores the advantages and disadvantages of using Zoom in physical classrooms, with an emphasis on the ways in which Zoom, as an in-person learning platform, refigures conventional modes of instruction.
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