How American Law Students Experienced Virtual Classroom Instruction During The COVID-19 Pandemic
Open AccessThe COVID-19 pandemic affected both how instructors taught their courses and how students learned in those courses. The delivery of law school instruction online in America at this scale had never occurred. This study sought to understand how American law students experienced this pivot by analyzing how those students experienced the Socratic Method (the signature pedagogical tool of law faculty in the United States) in fully online classrooms. The study took place at an institution in a densely-populated city which responded significantly to COVID-19’s health challenges as to encapsulate the effect of the pandemic in the most extreme scenario. This qualitative study used a basic interpretive design. Data was collected by interviewing upper-level law students who experienced their instruction exclusively in the online modality during their first-year of law school. Data analysis included topic coding on Atlas.ti software. Five themes emerged which answered the research question. Garrison et al.’s (1999) Community of Inquiry was used as the interpretive lens to make meaning of the data. The three key findings included a discovery of the resilience of the law students who participated in the study; the impact that self-consciousness had on the participants’ academic experience; and success in using the Community of Inquiry Model as an interpretive lens for a study conducted at an American law school. This study was significant in that it further explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this investigation, knowledge was discovered about how law students responded to and experienced Socratic Method during the 2020-2021 academic year’s virtual instruction.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.