Our joint session will focus on navigating the post-Covid era: what we have learned, and developing tools to meet continuing challenges. One group will lead discussion on teaching methods for remote and hybrid learning, focusing on strengthening community. The other group will review the data collected in the Spring 2024 Virtual Placement Survey.
In the post-pandemic era, building community within the legal education sector has become both essential and challenging. The shift towards remote and hybrid learning has increased our inherent need for connection. This interactive session aims to gather externship clinicians, both experienced and new, to exchange ideas on fostering community in educational environments. The session will begin with panelists sharing their experiences and strategies for community building, considering the diverse challenges posed by their unique teaching settings. It will then transition into an interactive brainstorming session to cultivate new teaching ideas among attendees. Participants will leave with fresh strategies for creating community and new connections within their professional network. Panelists will also share resources, enabling the replication of these strategies in various educational contexts, aiming to enrich the teaching and learning experience through strengthened community ties.
In Spring 2024, the CLEA Externship Committee agreed that the time was ripe, four years after the outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic, for a “snap shot” of what schools were thinking about and doing regarding virtual remote placements. Although hybrid offices/placements appear to have become the new norm, virtual remote placements in particular represent ongoing and unique challenges for students, schools, and field supervisors. Nonetheless, they afford students and placement opportunities that may have been unavailable pre-Covid. The externship faculty overseeing the survey will present the takeaways from that survey and lead discussion about them.