We often miss opportunities to generate and share knowledge about actual practice from student competitions and CLE programs. This post in the mini-course suggests some ways to get more benefit from these activities. When I have judged student skills competitions at my school, typically one or both of the other judges in my “panel” were … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Getting the Most Out of Competitions and CLEs
Faculty have multiple options for fulfilling the fundamental goal of the Stone Soup Project to produce and use valuable qualitative data in their courses about actual dispute resolution practice, including: Assigning students to conduct interviews and write reports about entire cases. Assigning students to conduct interviews and write reports about smaller aspects of cases instead … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Designing Course Assignments
In this mini-course so far, we have noted that qualitative research can be cool and insightful, learning can be more fun, and there are tons of things that you might want to know and you want your students to know. Today, we will consider how to frame questions to get the most valid possible information … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Good Questions
Do you remember when you were a kid, bursting with curiosity about how and why things worked they way they do? If you’re a parent, grandparent, or other person in close contact with young children, you don’t have to go that far back to remember their intense wonderment. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about this, … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-course: What Do You Want To Know?
In a recent post in this mini-course, I highlighted several impressive studies relying on qualitative data. This post follows up the one describing how you and your students can get great joy from doing Stone Soup interviews and focus groups. This post uses my research to demonstrate that qualitative studies are readily do-able by you … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: My Students and I Can Do This!
We want to let you know that we have created a Stone Soup website and listserv. The website collects materials in one place for easy access. The listserv’s goal is to promote communication between people interested in the Stone Soup Project. We have been in touch with a lot of faculty who said that they … Continue reading Stone Soup Website and Listserv
Have you ever felt really excited when you had an “aha” moment of insight? I bet that virtually all readers of this blog have had that experience numbers of times. Sometimes this can come from doing a simulation as part of a training, when you “get” the potential of something you had never considered before, … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: The Joy of Learning
You have certainly heard many lawyer jokes, some of which are pretty funny. But have you ever thought of them as data for a scientific study? Marc Galanter did. He’s a Wisconsin law professor and giant in our DR field. In a recent post in this Stone Soup mini-course, I summarized some cool qualitative studies. … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Galanter’s Use of Lawyer Jokes as Data
In the last post in this Stone Soup mini-course, I summarized Stewart Macaulay’s classic article using qualitative methods, Noncontractual Relations in Business. This post elaborates. When I was a sociology grad student at Wisconsin, I got a chance to meet Stewart Macaulay, a really charming guy who was on the law school faculty. I remember … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: More About Macaulay’s Noncontractual Relations in Business Article
The last lesson in the Stone Soup mini-course cautioned about having exaggerated confidence in quantitative research about dispute resolution. This lesson is intended as an antidote to unwarranted skepticism about qualitative research by describing some examples of great qualitative research. Both types of methods are valuable, especially when used in combination. I focus particularly on … Continue reading Stone Soup Mini-Course: Cool Qualitative Research
