Abstract This teaching note presents an in‐class exercise for business law instructors to use as an introduction to administrative rulemaking processes and realistic interactions among businesses, workers, and administrative agencies. The exercise prompts students to draft public comments articulating different perspectives in response to the Federal Trade Commission's rule on noncompete agreements. After completing this exercise, students have a comprehensive understanding of how agency rulemaking impacts individual workers and businesses. This teaching note provides guidance for instructors to build out a similar exercise in their classrooms.
Education theorists have identified three pedagogical techniques that enhance student learning and retention of knowledge, namely, scaffolding, interleaving, and schema-building. These techniques help students transfer knowledge from short-term to long-term memory, where it is best retained for future use. Scaffolding involves part-task sequencing and whole-task sequencing. By interleaving tasks, professors present steps out of order or new material before the prior material is fully understood. Assisting students in developing schemas can help them store their knowledge in long-term memory. This article explains and explores these techniques as applied in an undergraduate business law course. The appendices provide detailed exercises that integrate these theoretical concepts with lessons.
This teaching note offers examples of kinesthetic learning—acting, drawing, and playing—to enhance all law-related courses. The note explains what these kinesthetic learning activities are, and how and why to use them. Torts is used as an example here, but the exercises can be used for any legal topic, from contracts to agency to securities. Students will increase their classroom engagement and their understanding in all content areas when kinesthetic learning is part of their instruction. The pedagogical benefits of kinesthetic learning are explained and demonstrated in the note and supporting materials.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a defining feature of the modern college experience, promising efficiency, connection, and academic advantage. Yet students often adopt AI without reflecting on how its use shapes the deeper aims of education and life. This essay contends that student flourishing is not achieved through the relentless pursuit of grades, credentials, or technological shortcuts, but through commitment to three enduring concepts: meaningful friendships, virtuous character, and authentic contentment. Using a narrative metaphor that distinguishes “real” from “fake” pursuits, the paper introduces the concept of the AI Trap—the tendency to rely on AI in ways that bypass the human effort, struggle, and relational presence required for flourishing. The essay examines AI's influence on student relationships, character formation, and contentment, drawing on empirical research on loneliness, Aristotelian virtue ethics, and psychological studies of wellbeing. It concludes by arguing that while AI is an indispensable tool in higher education, educators have a moral obligation to guide students toward forms of AI use that support—rather than displace—the human practices through which flourishing is ultimately achieved.
Most business students are not interested in becoming lawyers. Therefore, business law and legal environment instructors must convey why students should study business law. To assist instructors (especially first-time ones), this teaching note presents interrelated pedagogical questions to introduce the first week of class. Why must business students study business law? What is the role of business leaders with respect to legal issues? How can business leaders effectively make business decisions with respect to legal issues? Referencing leadership expert Simon Sinek's "golden circle," this note builds upon one simple principle: business law is ubiquitous, that is, it is ever-present and everywhere.
This teaching note explores using the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Ad Astra Per Aspera” to teach legal reasoning in a legal environment of business or business law course. The note provides an overview of the IRAC method and explains how the law school method translates well to an undergraduate legal studies course. It provides a synopsis of the episode and details how to use scenes from it in class to develop familiarity with IRAC analysis. The note additionally suggests the episode as a vehicle for addressing other legal topics, including religious freedom, asylum, and sedition.
This article provides a teaching guide on how to use Canadian sport-related issues to teach business or sports law concepts in university or college business law classes. Special pedagogical perspectives for the U.S. professor are provided throughout the article at relevant points. In sum, Canada is rich with material for a professor looking for an additional, neighboring perspective. It provides a wide domain of opportunities from the land where pines and maples grow and can add considerable value to the U.S. business law professor to enhance the overall educational experience.
This article compares the Trump Organization's 2022 tax fraud conviction with a 50-year-old Canadian film The Sloane Affair. The comparison yields timeless and timely insights into our tax system for business law students.
While textbooks may remain important tools for information delivery, how can educators find and present interesting and relevant content to eighteen to twenty-something-year-olds? If learning is to take place, capturing and maintaining student attention, interest, and active engagement is a primary challenge in the classroom. Given this reality, this teaching note presents a few cinema-based classroom strategies to improve student engagement.
The decision to pursue a legal education can be life-changing, but students often receive outdated advice from legal studies faculty. This article seeks to educate legal studies faculty advising potential law school students. We review the Law School Admission Test and consider how predictive that measurement may be of various forms of success. We then discuss the law school market by reviewing the historical evolution of law school ranking systems, as well as long-term application and enrollment patterns. By updating faculty understanding of law school admissions, advisees will receive useful and actionable advice before making this serious decision.
Businesses use facial recognition software, fingerprint scanning, and other biometric tools in the workplace and/or commercial establishments. Concerned with the collection, use, retention, and security of biometric data, and the impact of these practices, Illinois enacted the Biometric Information Privacy Act in 2008. We designed a project that requires student teams to read and compare several biometric privacy statutes, identify "best practices" from these laws, examine the desirability of enacting such a statute, and apply the Texas Capture and Use of Biometric Information to a now-settled lawsuit against Facebook/Meta.
Business law can be a daunting course for today's college students, as they confront what feels like a new language in each content area. This article introduces a semester-long activity that provides faculty with a tool to integrate real-world activities into the business law curriculum to help students connect theory with real-world application. Students work in teams to create businesses that interest them, connecting the law they are learning to the context of their simulated business. The sample assignments provide a framework for faculty to adopt and adapt this approach to their individual courses.
Making business law topics relevant to students' lived experiences can be challenging, but there is one business issue that all students share: the need for housing. One aspect of the present housing crisis is the continuing patterns of residential segregation. To address the legacy costs of past practices of residential segregation, students should understand the underlying role of business law in residential housing and how business law can be used to solve these challenges. To aid business law and real estate instructors wishing to address these issues, this teaching note provides exercises using Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law.
Experiential learning plays an important role in teaching business law. This paper builds upon prior research regarding the use of experiential learning activities to teach contract law, by adding the use of generative artificial intelligence to a contract simulation activity. As part of a multi-week, in-class simulation, students used generative artificial intelligence to generate contract language and applied the principles learned in an undergraduate business law course to critically evaluate and revise contract terms with instructor guidance. Students perceived that this experiential learning exercise effectively promoted student engagement, critical thinking skills, and learning about contract law and generative artificial intelligence.
This article describes an in-class exercise that can be used when teaching zoning law to a Real Estate Law or Legal Environment of Business undergraduate course. The exercise requires students to utilize Salt Lake City's zoning code to locate the best site for a restaurant chain given certain locational and operational requirements, and to research the likelihood of a variance request. The exercise is an effective means for instructors to connect an increasingly relevant area of the law to a practical business objective.
This teaching note presents an active learning exercise using a clip from the television show The Office. The exercise centers on a promise to pay for the college education of a group of third graders, raising questions about capacity, consideration, offer, acceptance, statute of frauds, revocations, promissory estoppel, and other key contract elements. This resource is designed to be adaptable for various teaching styles and class modalities and can be implemented at any point in the semester, even before contracts have been covered. The note explores the pedagogical benefits of implementing pop culture videos and active learning techniques to enhance student engagement and understanding. It provides detailed guidance on conducting the activity, including discussion points, sample exam questions, and an analogous, real-life circumstance.
Today's college students increasingly rely on technology in their daily activities, and a basic awareness of data privacy is becoming essential from both a personal and professional standpoint. This article describes the design of an interdisciplinary undergraduate course focused on data privacy law. It outlines the key content areas that encompass the foundational principles of this emerging field and includes descriptions of hands-on exercises that illustrate the technical and managerial elements of a comprehensive privacy compliance program. The course framework and sample assignments can serve as a model for other faculty seeking to teach data privacy law to undergraduate students.
Journal of Legal Studies EducationVolume 41, Issue 1 p. 5-5 EDITOR'S CORNER Editor-in-Chief's Introduction Dale B. Thompson, Corresponding Author Dale B. Thompson [email protected] Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Legal Studies Education Correspondence: Dale B. Thompson Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Legal Studies Education Email [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Dale B. Thompson, Corresponding Author Dale B. Thompson [email protected] Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Legal Studies Education Correspondence: Dale B. Thompson Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Legal Studies Education Email [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 23 January 2024 https://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12144Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume41, Issue1Winter 2024Pages 5-5 RelatedInformation
