Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Teaching
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: If You “See” Your Students, They Will Learn
It is quite clear, as one of my other postings this week explains, that connected teacher-student relationships enhance learning. In this article published by Harvard Business Impact, the author, focusing on college students, argues that “Great Teachers Make Students Feel noticed.” Relationship is actually more important to learning than any particular teaching technique or curriculum initiative. That principle applies with…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Small Groups—Beyond Think-Pair Share
In last week’s post, I shared some best practices for making your small group learning experiences as productive as possible. In this post I share five well-established small group structures. We know that variety in teaching methods enhances learning, and, like me, you may be looking for something more than think-pair-share. Write-Pair-Share. This technique starts by…
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Edutopia: Using the 5 Whys Approach to Deepen Student Thinking
Andrew Paull, Using the 5 Whys Approach to Deepen Student Thinking: Teachers can use a questioning strategy originally from the business world to guide students to confidently develop and defend their thinking (January 20, 2026). This very recent Edutopia article details the benefits of using peer-to-peer questioning, specifically peers asking each other to deepen their…
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Bringing Brain Science to Our Teaching
Youki Terrada, Edutopia, 15 Tips to Align Your Teaching With Brain Science: A comprehensive guide to applying the latest insight from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to improve your instruction In this very short and wonderful article, Mr. Terrada explains 15 insights from modern brain science and details how to integrate those insights into our…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Keys to Effective Small Group Exercises
Of the many things that have been studied in higher education, cooperative learning may be the most studied, and it may be the teaching technique most strongly associated with gains in learning. It promotes greater effort by students to achieve, increased time on task, better learning and higher-level reasoning, better relationships, and even better psychological…
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Edutopia: Getting Early and Valuable Student Feedback
Crystal Frommert, Edutopia, The Value of Soliciting Student Feedback (August 17, 2023) The article begins by addressing the limitations on student evaluations, of which there are many, including personal attacks and feedback that is not actionable. The article then argues that professors can benefit by seeking their own feedback, noting that feedback can increase student…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Formative Feedback on Teaching via Peer Dyads and Triads
Most of us experience a significant number of high-stakes peer visits pre-tenure and then never again have a colleague visit our classes. While a pre-tenure criticism may inspire change, the choice to change is more instrumental than a process of collaborative reflection. Moreover, the high stakes of a summative evaluation of our teaching likely has…
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Kent Syverud’s Legacy
Kent Syverud, currently chancellor and president of Syracuse University and previously law dean at Vanderbilt (1997 to 2005) and Washington University (2005 to 2012), has been named president of the University of Michigan. Congratulations to him and to Michigan. I write to share a note about his legacy. More below the jump.
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Instructional Design for Law Professors
In “On Grading Oral Exams with AI,” I asked: Should the teaching profession re-consider the long-standing assumption that faculty autonomy in the classroom defaults also to faculty responsibility for pedagogy-plus-subject-matter-expertise-plus-sociotechnical design? I have co-taught courses with other full-time faculty. I have never co-taught a course with a sociotechnical expert. I don’t know what that might…
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UC Irvine: Part Time Law Lecturer for LLM/Grad Tax 2026-2027
UC Irvine, Part Time Law Lecturer for LLM/Grad Tax 2026-2027: The University of California, Irvine School of Law Master of Laws Program is inviting qualified lecturers to teach courses. The Master of Laws Program includes both the American Law LL.M. Program and the Graduate Tax Program. General Duties: In addition to teaching responsibilities, general duties…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Starting Class Sessions with Reviews and Warmups
This week’s teaching suggestions are simple ones, but both have worked to great effect for me and both are grounded in educational research. Reviews We know that human beings learn by making connections between what they already know and what they are learning, and the stronger and deeper those connections are, the better we learn.…
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Teaching Tidbit: Teach Better by Being a Better Version of Yourself
Last week. I shared 26 New Year’s Resolutions for Law Teachers. This week, I offer a single and simple suggestion from one of the faculty featured in What the Best Law Teachers Do, Larry Krieger of Florida State. When we asked Professor Krieger what he does to improve himself as a law teacher, he said…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: New Year’s Resolutions for Law Teachers
For those of you who celebrate Christmas today, Merry Christmas! As we head into 2026, I decided to share 26 New Year’s Resolutions for Law Teachers. I offer this list as a menu of things each of us might do to improve our students’ experiences in our classes. Don’t try to do all of them!! I addressed…
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Edutopia: The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025
Youki Terada & Stephen Merrill, The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025 (December 4, 2025). I have a new love: Edutopia’s (linked above) annual summary of important educational studies. Some explicitly address higher education teaching issues. Some only apply to k-12 education. And some purport to only apply to k-12 education, but their lessons…
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WaPo: Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams
Joanna Slater, Washington Post (December 12, 2025): Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams This article reports on a trend towards using oral examinations to prevent student AI use from all over the world and for a wide variety of educational disciplines, including religious studies, business (in classes with…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Making Grading More Tolerable
Most of you are now knee deep in your least favorite part of the job: grading final exams and papers. For three reasons, I have never disliked the grading experience as much as many of my colleagues do. First, I always grade with a faculty friend at a local coffeehouse. Spending time with a friend…
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To AI or Not to AI
In his recent article, Solving Professors’ Dilemmas about Prohibiting or Promoting Student AI Use, John Lande, Isidor Loeb Professor of Law, Emeritus at the University of Missouri has tackled a topic on the minds of many of us teaching students for whom AI will play a large role in their careers. Should we slow them…
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How to Think About Homework
Suffolk Law School Professor Jennifer Ciarimboli offers some thought-provoking ideas about whether law faculty are thinking properly about how much homework to assign. Obviously, there are pros and cons to different approaches. But there can’t be any debate that this is a topic worthy of our attention. You can find her work here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5533701&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_legal%3Aeducation%3Aejournal_abstractlink I…
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Short: Professional Identity Formation Courses Can Combat the Negative Effects of the Hidden Curriculum
Arik K. Short (Texas A & M University School of Law), Curative Identity Formation Themes to Counteract Law School’s Curative Identity Formation Themes to Counteract Law School’s Hidden Curriculum, 2 Journal of Law Teaching and Learning 123 (2025): Introduction . . . In important ways, the traditional U.S. law school experience—including curricular, as well as…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Writing Good and Fair Final Exams
Often, the teaching and writing parts of our jobs are joyous, challenging, and inspiring. Grading, however, is never joyous, and it can be painful if our students do not perform as well as we had hoped. So, this week’s tidbit offers seven suggestions for creating good and fair final exams. My next post will suggest…
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Ask Gen Z Students to Read More
“Professors Montcalm and Milburn-Knizner offer this sound, if counterintuitive, advice. TLP;DR: The Truth About Gen Z Law Students & Why They Need More, Not Less” Publication forthcoming in The Albany Law Review MEGAN MONTCALM, Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne UniversityEmail: montcalmm@duq.eduAPRIL MILBURN-KNIZNER, Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne UniversityEmail: milburnkniznera@duq.edu https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5492386&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_legal%3Aeducation%3Aejournal_abstractlink “They can’t read!” “They can’t write!” …
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Beyond Socratic Method
Professors Rory Bahadur and Kris Franklin offer exciting new insights on how to augment student learning through structured, sequenced inquiry Designing Directed Questions: A Conceptual Blueprint 57 Pages Posted: 17 Sep 2025 Last revised: 15 Oct 2025 Rory D. Bahadur – Washburn University – School of Law Kris Franklin – New York Law School Abstract This article…
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Berman and Schreiner: Building Belonging and Creating Community
Sara Berman and Barrett Schreiner (USC Gould School of Law): Teaching Strategies For Building Belonging and Creating Community in Online and In-Person Legal Education Introduction Definitions of “community” abound, but according to one, “Sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the…
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Washington Post on Memory Retention
Annabell Timset: Why the brain hangs on to some memories but lets others fade Leo Chenyang Lin was on a trip to New Hampshire two years ago when he stopped to watch a group of squirrels darting through the trees. That “playful moment” stuck with him. By the end of that day, he realized he…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Improving Your Teaching Every Time You Re-Teach a Course
Today’s teaching tidbit focuses on my favorite, easy-to-implement tool for improving my teaching of a course each time I teach it—keeping a teaching journal. After each class session I teach, I force myself to write about the class session that just ended. Calling these post-class notes to myself a “teaching journal” probably makes too much…