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Does lawschool in Canada teach using the Socratic method?


Van

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I know that in the US most of the 1L classes are taught using the socratic method, but I was wondering if it is the same for Canada. Specifically UBC or U of A.

Are you cold called and asked a lot of questions?

Thanks.

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15 hours ago, Jay said:

I know that in the US most of the 1L classes are taught using the socratic method, but I was wondering if it is the same for Canada. Specifically UBC or U of A.

Are you cold called and asked a lot of questions?

Thanks.

I don't go to UBC or UofA, so I'm not sure if they are different in this respect. At Western, mostly no. Some profs (a minority) will cold call and use a Socratic style of teaching (I'd hesitate to say they use exactly the Socratic method), but generally speaking it's more of a lecture style. Students are encouraged to participate and discuss but questions don't form the majority of the content of a class and usually you don't need to be prepared for cold calling. For the profs who do cold calling, they will normally tell you in the syllabus and on the first day of class. I also had one professor who assigned every student two days in the year when they would be potentially cold called if they were not participating themselves - that way you only had two days when you really had to be familiar with the readings for class.

Should also mention - the only profs I ever had who cold called were in 1L. My 2L year was remote, so I'm not sure how much of a difference that might have made, and (so far) in 3L I don't have any professors cold calling.

Edited by goosie
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At U of A I've never had a class where the professor randomly calls on people. When they ask questions to the class they usually will let someone volunteer to answer. 

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Whist
  • Law Student

Ditto what Toad said. I'm at UofA and although they pose questions to the class, they don't single out students to do it, you volunteer if you want to.

Edited by Whist
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LMP
  • Law Student

I've never had it happen, though I've only been here a month or so.

Having said that sometimes profs will ask you to justify, defend or elaborate on a concept you expressed. Or they may ask follow-up questions of their own to your points, putting you on the spot a little.

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spacecadet
  • NCA Candidate
12 hours ago, CleanHands said:

Not really a thing at UBC.

I can second that based on my conversations with someone who attended UBC 8-9 years back.

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Eatable Bran
  • Law Student

Pretty common at U of T. Many 1L profs cold-call, some “soft-call” (which means they let students know in advance which day they’ll be on-call), and some don’t call on students at all.

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GreyDude
  • Law Student
On 9/22/2021 at 2:12 AM, LMP said:

Having said that sometimes profs will ask you to justify, defend or elaborate on a concept you expressed. Or they may ask follow-up questions of their own to your points, putting you on the spot a little.

This is so good. It forces you to think about what you're saying and teaches a self-critical attitude of mind. 

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GGrievous
  • Law Student
On 9/23/2021 at 7:22 AM, Apple said:

I had one prof as Osgoode who did it and I think everyone who goes there knows who it is...

I have the same 

Edited by Barry
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  • 1 year later...
SNAILS
  • Law Student
21 hours ago, atg95 said:

Wondering what the experiences are like nowadays? Has it changed the past few years?

Not at Osgoode. If you are a student who never puts their hand up, you are a student who never gets called upon. 

Keep in mind that 50-75% of students are not even coming to class regularity but are (probably) just watching the recordings afterwards.

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Dnian
  • Law Student

At Osgoode, I am aware of at least a few 1L Professors who will do a "lighter" version of the socratic method - they will ask a general question to the class and sit there, awkwardly, until someone caves and answers the question. So, not forcing any individual specifically, but rather forcing the class, to respond to the question.

In addition to those few, there is one more "old fashioned" Professor in particular who is known to do something more closely resembling the socratic method. They will ask followups and challenge students on their answers (probably the same one referred to by Barry and Apple above). However, even that professor will only cold call with a followup if that student has raised their hand in class before, having already indicated a willingness to participate. That professor does not cold call students who do make a practice of never saying anything whatsoever in class.

I believe I recall the Osgoode Deans clarifying at the outset during orientation, that it is in fact the law school's policy for the socratic method in its purest form to never be practiced in any of our classes. The above is about as close as it will get.

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I did have a couple of profs who cold-called. I just said "I don't know", when I didn't feel like playing or didn't know, and they moved on to someone else.

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Lawstudents20202020
  • Lawyer
16 hours ago, realpseudonym said:

I did have a couple of profs who cold-called. I just said "I don't know", when I didn't feel like playing or didn't know, and they moved on to someone else.

I had that backfire on me once, although it was in undergrad. After I said I didn't know the prof said the class was going to wait until I did know. Apperently my response of "well we are going to be waiting awhile" was inappropriate. 

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Eatable Bran
  • Law Student
On 6/24/2023 at 8:57 AM, atg95 said:

Wondering what the experiences are like nowadays? Has it changed the past few years?

At U of T Socratic method is fairly common in 1L classes, and it does appear in some upper-year classes too. There are soft-call profs (who give you a warning ahead of time that you will be on call for a certain class day) and cold-call profs. The profs will run through a list and make sure they have cold-called everyone a few times through the course of the semester.

There are often follow-ups to your responses that either challenge or ask you to elaborate, or, worst case, tell you that you are way off-base. 

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GreyDude
  • Law Student

This is more a kibitz than an actual contribution to the topic, but here goes anyway.

It’s too bad that cold-calling gets called « Socratic, » because the Socratic method properly so-called is intended to draw the learner’s knowledge from them and build upon it, rather than to show that the learner has memorized something or to check on whether the learner has done the required reading. Based on my own experience teaching, I would say that cold-calling is not a particularly effective pedagogical tool. What is more effective is promoting both questions and questioning in the sense of challenging the prof, so that the prof can then encourage a class dialogue during the which the student can put the material to use. This has to be done respectfully, and the prof must approach it from the point of view of acknowledging that students might also have something to teach. Responses to the student must not be dismissive or mere corrections—so for example, the prof should often ask the student to defend their statements, rather than merely correcting them. The approach mentioned by @Dnian is closer to this, and is quite effective. It also has the secondary effect of making the class more enjoyable for everyone, which promotes learning through greater student engagement. A couple of downsides are that a class can get side-tracked if the prof doesn’t stay on top of the conversation, and that it will generally take more time (note: not waste time if done well) than a standard lecture format, meaning the prof has to be sure to plan for the « extra » time they will need to cover all the material. Profs using this approach also have to really know their stuff, because it can get out of their control (see waste of time, above). 

In the end, a « Socratic » approach, in the sense of cold-calling, is mainly useful if you want your students to memorize concepts or remember recently read material—or, I suppose, if you want to create a competitive, « hothouse » sort of environment. If you have a participation mark in your class, it also might be useful for determining what grade each student should receive because you can track questions/responses in the kind of way @Eatable Bran raised. I always cared more that students had understood the material than that they could memorize it. And I consistently found that to create an interesting class characterized by student engagement (which itself promotes learning), a true Socratic method that has the teacher start from a place of humility to encourage questioning by (or challenges from) the learner, leading to dialogue that can be used to more firmly anchor the learner’s understanding, is better in my opinion. 

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