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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Structuring Faculty Workshops
A prawf writes:
We (i.e. “I”) are (am) thinking about starting a workshop here at ___ (not to bring in speakers, but for internal presentation). What ground rules do you set for participation in your workshop? Do you require any kind of commitment from faculty, or is it open to whoever wants to come that week? Any ideas on “best practices” would be helpful, especially since we're concerned about cultivating a committed group of regulars while minimizing free-riding.
Some thoughts and an invitation for you all to hop in, after the jump.
What do you all think about the best way to structure workshops?
Posted by Administrators on September 27, 2011 at 03:12 PM in Blogging, Life of Law Schools | Permalink
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Comments
Here at the University of Iowa, we have three formats: (1) the traditional job-talk format, in which a 20-minute presentation is followed by 40 minutes of questioning, with faculty members varying in the degree to which they have read the full paper in advance; (2) a highly informal format, with no advance reading required, in which a prospective author gets early help in conceptualizing a future writing project; and (3) a format modeled on the Iowa Writers Workshop, in which reading the paper in advance is a requirement for participation, and in which the author is not allowed to speak--instead, the hour is filled by readers talking amongst themselves (in the presence of the author) about the paper's strengths and weaknesses and about alternative angles the author might want to pursue. We do all three of these formats year-round.
Posted by: Todd Pettys | Sep 28, 2011 4:34:40 PM
Just following up on Professor Cohen's description of his workshop at Harvard, I think it might be even better if participants were required to "shake both hands all about" when they want to refer to their own scholarship in the question, and that they should do a small dance (no longer than 10 seconds) if they want to do that thing where they make a long speech and then add, at the end, annoyingly, "question mark?"
Posted by: Jay Wexler | Sep 28, 2011 10:15:08 AM
It may depend on what the purpose of the workshop is. For internal speakers it seems it should either be to help the speaker improve the paper or it might be to expose the faculty to the work. If it is the former, there should be an assumption that everyone has read the paper, and little to no presentation should be required, and I also think those who have not read the paper should refrain from interacting. (I like the format where someone else presents/critiques a paper but this would not work well for junior scholars.) If it is just to expose people to work and have some social time, then the person might present the paper and the speaker should not expect much helpful feedback. Presenting a paper to people who have not read it can lead to some useful comments but my experience suggests that is not common.
Posted by: MS | Sep 28, 2011 9:08:20 AM
I think it would be interesting to experiment with a seminar-like format, in which all participants have read the paper; the discussion is led by a moderator/facilitator; and the participants discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the paper -- talking to one another, rather than only to the author (who is, of course, present). The Q&A format can sometimes put the author in the position of defending his or her work in response to each question, rather than engaging with the audience in a constructive way to explore the paper's potential.
Posted by: Laura Heymann | Sep 28, 2011 12:15:57 AM
Something I've recently tried in the Health Law Policy & Bioethics workshop I run at Harvard with Einer Elhauge, http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/petrie-flom/workshop/index.html, is to have people raise one hand for a new question and both hands if they want to follow-up on the last question, with the idea being that it allows more of a flow to develop on a subject. We've only done two sessions thus far this year with this new rule in place, but thus far it seems to have worked quite well.
Posted by: I. Glenn Cohen | Sep 27, 2011 11:05:36 PM
My recollection is that Duke allowed both the traditional format (20 min presentation and 40 min Q&A) and the 10/10 (10 min of presentation, no more than 10 pages circulated). The presenter could choose which format suited the paper better.
Posted by: Scott Dodson | Sep 27, 2011 3:19:28 PM
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