Deep Down, Law Students Learn Like Cavemen, New Article Says
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Millennials in law school are really just cavemen with smart phones.
Or, more precisely, humans’ brain function and style of learning haven’t changed much over the last 50,000 years, not even for those so-called “digital natives” who have never known a world without computers and the Internet.
This seems to be the prevailing theme of law professor James B. Levy’s new paper, “Teaching the Digital Caveman: Rethinking the Use of Classroom Technology in Law School,” published online May 8 and due for release in the upcoming fall 2015 edition of the Chapman Law Review.
Law schools, like other types of schools, have been eager to incorporate Internet use, laptops and Powerpoint presentations into the classroom under the assumption that these tools are somehow required for keeping young people engaged in learning.
But if their use isn’t managed carefully to promote quality education, they can create major distractions that prevent law students from practicing the key skills of thinking critically and focusing attention on a single task at hand, Levy writes.
“The history of classroom technology shows that pressure to innovate combined with intuition and assumptions about students is often a toxic mixture,” writes Levy, an associate professor at the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University. “Unlike classroom experiments of the past, there is substantial evidence that digital technologies can make things worse by lowering learning outcomes.”
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