JEFF MITCHELL
<Contributor>
Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They’re single-serving friends. – Fight Club (1999)
Why should our classroom experience be single-use? Why are many of us restricted from accessing course content? Why can’t we have the double-double and a tub of butter classroom experience?
The Audio Recording Policy (ARP) has been a heated issue at Osgoode long before our arrival at the law school. I’ll spare you the history of the policy because it doesn’t really matter – what does matter is how the ARP cheapens your academic experience today.
Simply put, for the purpose of the ARP, each student is either in or out. To be part of the in crowd you must pass Osgoode’s administrative system that vets the legitimacy of accommodation requests. Students with a requirement for accommodation seek to formalize their status under the ARP by demonstrating their needs under one of the enumerated grounds making out accommodated status. If you don’t fall within one of the accepted inclusions, you’re not going to get access to the video and audio recordings made through the class desktop recording system, or access to notes made by your peers under the Dean’s Scribe program.
Here is a list of some circumstances that will generally not permit students to access recordings:
- Absence of two days for serious medical or compassionate situation
- Attending trial for an approved OPIR activity
- Attending an industry-related conference
- Exchange students taking classes on pass/fail system
- Professional development activities
Some of the arguments I’ve heard from administrators and faculty over the past 2 years include: the system is too expensive; the recording hardware fails, or the software is too hard to use. Other arguments are based on concerns over intellectual property rights, opposition to recording because class attendance will decrease, or, my personal favorite: “we didn’t have it back in our day so why should you.”
Just this past academic year, a new argument emerged from the Office of the Associate Dean in a memo to Faculty Council in response to Student Caucus’ push to ensure the survival of the audio recording program:
“we are failing to provide [students] with the accommodation to which they are legally entitled about 35 percent of the time. Permitting this situation to persist would risk breaching our obligations under the Human Rights Code, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19.”
Certainly Osgoode wants to accommodate its students; it also wants to avoid being named in a lawsuit because a student wasn’t being meaningfully accommodated under the current ARP. The Associate Dean sent out the following as part of his email to the student body in early September:
“Although the Law School continues to make its best efforts to record lectures using its own equipment and to make those recordings available to accommodated students, the Law School does not warrant that it will be successful in making lecture recordings or that any recordings made will be of good quality. As a result, the main thrust of the policy is that – based on past experience – the Law School expressly cautions accommodated students against relying on its recordings and encourages accommodated students to make their own recordings using their own equipment.”
So, just how badly is the ARP failing accommodated students at Osgoode?
Together, cancellations and recordings with no sound account for 29% of all failures. This means that because a recorder battery ran out or the professor didn’t follow the desktop recording process, students were left without an adequate recording.
It is not overly challenging to cut back on the human and technological error. A wireless microphone system and battery can be purchased for under $25. Osgoode could use part of a Professional Development day to train professors on the desktop recording system.
With a few simple fixes the rate of failure could be substantially reduced, producing a higher rate of successful recordings for accommodated students.
This leads us to two major impediments for the rate of recording failures: professors failing to engage the system, and unavailability of required technology at the beginning of class. The tech issue is solved by ensuring Osgoode IT has the proper procedures in place to ensure that recording hardware is in the room and operational. The bigger issue is the unwillingness of a few professors to make a true effort to record their lecture. It only takes a few unwilling professors to drastically raise the number of failed class recordings. I believe that it only takes one willing administration to require that those professors who consistently fail to record classes improve their performance. To do so requires a clear message from Osgoode that the audio and visual recording system has a greater value than notes alone. If that were to happen, we would see the success of the ARP rise to a level where it couldn’t possibly be scrapped.
When Student Caucus learned of Osgoode’s concern with the rate of failure under the ARP, we thought students would see new technology in the classroom, and top-notch support for professors who struggle with the recording program and equipment. We were wrong.
The Associate Dean decided that the remedy was to scrap the audio/video recording and rely exclusively on the Dean’s Scribe program as a means to satisfy Osgoode’s legal duty to accommodate. I can’t help but notice the significant monetary and HR savings this strategy accomplishes by downloading the burden to students through the Dean’s Scribe program. Further still, this system doesn’t expand who Osgoode will permit to be accommodated. We should expect more from our administration and more for our educational dollar.
Student Caucus was faced with a tough choice: to advocate aggressively in the short-term or in the long-term. The majority of Caucus voted for the short-term position: save the audio/video recording today for those students who have accommodation status under the ARP because some successful recordings are more valuable than none. In my opinion, the short-term strategy came with a substantial cost to the vast majority of students who still don’t have access to their own course content for their own educational purposes. I believe that the better strategy would have been to shift the conversation away from accommodation and towards recordings as academic resources available for all, while the Dean’s Scribe program could remain the mechanism for Osgoode to shield itself from potential liability for not providing accommodation.
Let me be absolutely clear: accommodated students should have access to resources to assist them at law school. We should strive to offer more than just written notes, a resource that captures the classroom elements: the lecturer, the computer screens, and questions from students. Not only should this be a resource for accommodated students, it should be a resource for all students.
It isn’t asking too much to have access to the content our tuition pays for. I don’t believe in the notion that the ARP is a mechanism to “balance” the learning inequality between those who require accommodation and those who don’t. All Osgoode students should be able to listen to and watch their class again, and to relive the classroom experience. Some will say that students should record classes with their own device, or get notes from their friend. I hope that we don’t accept that obtaining academic resources should be a student’s responsibility. I should be able to access my course content just like I can repeatedly take out my professor’s book from our law library.
Osgoode is now at a turning point.
The Osgoode administration is currently pushing forward with a draft Digital Initiative – a review of what services and technologies the law school currently offers, and a sampling of what means other leading law schools are using to develop their research engines for better collaboration and scholarly activities. The Digital Initiative does, however, also include several mechanisms that would open up our classrooms to the world in the name of access (e.g. distance learning, collaboration, and increase availability of public legal education) and potential profit.
The Dean outlines questions in his draft report to be considered in the context of digital legal education, including:
Are there any additional opportunities to integrate technology into our curricular offerings? In what specific ways will the quality of legal education be enhanced through such integration?
I think we need to look past the glam and allure of new technology and a broader institutional reach – we need get back to basics. Let’s first tackle the problem of restricted course content to our current students before thinking about how to integrate additional opportunities into our curriculum.
Thankfully, I don’t think the Osgoode administration has shut out Student Caucus or concerns from the student body. In fact, the Dean attended the first meeting of Student Caucus this year to solicit feedback from elected members. The Dean has also made his report publically available at the MyOsgoode Page under a section dedicated to the Digital Initiative.
I leave you with one of the Dean’s questions for considering from his report:
Is it time to reassess our pedagogical mission statement to account for recent developments in digital legal education?
The answer is “yes.”
Until the Osgoode administration can assess, update and support its own mission of providing superior legal education to its own students, I can’t support an Initiative that focuses on expanding the reach of the law school or the monetization of our legal education. Osgoode needs to commit to improving the current ARP and expanding its coverage to include all students. Once that day comes, I’ll be the first to shift the conversation towards what Osgoode can do to provide greater access and opportunities for non-students.
In the meantime, it will be on members of your Student Caucus and all of us attending Osgoode to speak up about what our academic experience should include. Consider what resources you and your peers should have access to. What restrictions on your learning are acceptable?
Let’s work together to make Osgoode a place where the use of technology effectively accommodates – and enhances – the learning of all students.
Jeff Mitchell is the Chair of Student Caucus.