Cultivating more inclusive classrooms and practice‐ready graduates with voice and video assignments

Abstract

Voice and video learning tools can efficiently and effectively strengthen the traditional law school classroom to meet the evolving needs of our students and the profession. These tools respond to transitions in legal education as faculty cultivate more inclusive classrooms, adapt to changing bar exam methodologies, and add professional identity formation to their teaching objectives. These reforms also weigh on institutions at a moment of jolting and deepening wellness concerns affecting students, staff, and faculty alike, necessitating scalable tools that build community. Voice and video learning tools, such as VoiceThread and Flipgrid, offer sustainable supplements to traditional courses and materials that are well-suited for the family law classroom. These tools engage students in advocacy, client counseling, and policy debates that are more inclusive, interactive, and self-efficacious than Socratic dialogue and traditional casebook practice problems alone. These tools empower students to argue motions, deliver legislative testimony, advise clients, explain rules, and interpret statutes. Students apply rules in practice-based settings while cultivating their voices as lawyers and engaging with peer colleagues collaboratively. The professor pivots critically and symbolically from a “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.” These more intentional and equitable approaches to classroom management better meet the needs of modern students and align with intersecting curricular reform goals. Voice and video assignments thus offer both symbolic and substantive pedagogical improvements, dynamically promoting professional identity formation, practice readiness, inclusion, and wellness.