Project Summary This project examined how undergraduates learn about law in an upper division free speech class. It sought to understand what deep understanding of free speech looked like for students, comparing how they made meaning of free speech in comparison to instructor expectations. The study also examined the role of student's prior knowledge about law, and whether small seminars, embedded within a larger class, facilitated the development of students' deep understanding. Students prepared for and reflected on seminar discussions through public weblogs, or blogs, that chronoicled their learning process through the semester, providing important evidence of their learning process.

Tentative Results Seminars: The degree of students' prior experience and knowledge with legal issues, interpersonal communication dynamics within the group, and vocal student leadership led to different kinds of understandings of free speech in each seminar. Without faculty facilitation of the seminars, students deep understanding about free speech was limited. Periodic power-point presentations, an applied research project completed by each seminar, and large class wrap up discussions at the end of each class, produced more complex understandings of free speech. Nevertheless, seminars were critical spaces for students to propose unformed ideas, ask questions, and generate meaning collaboratively about complex and technical course content. Weblogs (Blogs): Students used blogs to record reading notes, pose questions, and organize their ideas before and after seminar discussion, though student engagement with blogs changed during the semester. Each seminar's blog served different needs, highlighting how blogs complimented face-to-face discussions. While most students found blogs very useful as an organizing tool, a few students found blogging in preparation for class repetitive while others reported feeling alienated in comparison to face-to-face discussions. Quieter students frequently blogged more. However, several students liked how blogs created a public record of their learning process. For most students blog swere a safe space to pose questions for seminar. Questions posted on blogs frequently sparked further face-to-face discussion. Making Meaning About Free Speech Students made more sense of complex legal issues when they could envision those issues in a concrete case, story or hypothetical. Students prior knowledge about free speech was limited, and students reported enormous surprise that the meaning of free speech had changed in U.S. history; some students even expressed shock, surprise and anger at gaps in their learning. Other students, whose prior knowledge about free speech was more significant, expressed less surprise, but provided more textured analysis by the end of the semester. Student work suggests that examples of restrictions on speech (such as censorship, structural inequality in access to the means for speech/expression, and personal experience with feeling censored) provided a useful way for them to consider what free in free speech might mean. Students could understand free speech better when they considered examples of unfree speech. Students drew most of their early examples illustrating free speech from popular culture and/or personal experience, shying away from examples drawn from course materials. In their Threshold Essays, many students used the dictionary or personal impressions to define free speech at the beginning of the course. By mid-term, most students reported a more expansive definition of free speech after they had consider the complex history of free speech law. By the end of the semester, students became more comfortable drawing on abstract arguments about law or rights, actual cases, or the first amendment itself to bolster their analysis, even if such uses were limited and not entirely formed. As students became more familiar with legal discourse, they spoke more freely about law.

Background of this Project As the pre-law coordinator for the Department of Philosophy, Pre-Law and Peace Studies in the Division of Humanities and Communication, I offer numerous law related courses throughout the curriculum. In this integrated humanities program, students achieve numerous learning outcomes and declare an area of concentration. As such, students take "Free Speech and Responsibility" for numerous reasons: the major learning outcome "Relational Communication," concentrations in Pre-Law, Practical and Professional Ethics, or Journalism, Communication and Media Studies and for personal interest. Given that most students taking HCOM 310 do not intend to attend law school, I wondered about how students made meaning about what can be a rather technical subject like free speech. And, because this course meets our Relational Communication major learning outcome, I wondered if students were able to make meaning about law more collaboratively in a seminar format, despite the rather large size of the course (35-40 students). My interest in this project also reflects my deep committment to understand how to foster civic engagement among college students. I wanted to test my assumption that students who can develop basic literacy in terms of the law will gain valuable skills necessary for becoming more engaged members of their communities. This project represents a first attempt to understand these processes by using scholarly research methods. I will be continuing to analyze the data I collected during the spring 2004 semester. In the process, I hope to understand better ways for faculty to facilitate student learning about often complex subject matter, what degree of knowledge about law is desireable for undergradutes, and what processes students go through in making meaning about law. HCOM 310: Free Speech and Responsibility This is the website for the class I examined in this research project. Link to Blogs for HCOM 310: Free Speech and Responsibility These are blogs generated by students in HCOM 310 during the spring 2004 semester. They proved to be important sources of evidence for my research.

Evidence Collected Demographic data Student writing Threshold Essay: students defined "free speech and responsibility" in their own words at beginning of the semester Jury Deliberation Essay: letter written to peers on a jury deliberating the case of Tennessee v. Scopes Blog Essay: reflecting about how students used thir weblogs to prepare for seminar Assessments Individual and seminar assessments Observations of seminar discussion Maps of discussion, notes about content and process of discussion compiled by two research assistants. Individual interviews recorded and completed by research assistants

Poster Presented at the 2004 AAHE Conference

From a Student's Blog Essay April 26, 2004 Reacting to a perceived negative comment on the blog... "This comment made me realize that what I wrote in the blog was being scrutinized by other students. Luckily for me one of the members of our seminar commented to support my views, and so did I. After that posting, our blog seemed to change quite a bit; most of the comments posted were in agreement to the posts rather than to debate them. Self-censoring became the norm in our blog" (Chad D)

Sample of a Student Blog February 11, 2004 "After class on Monday I started to think about if this country was really founded on the principal of free speech. In my last blog I wrote that I though this country was founded on a principal being that we all have the right to voice our opinions. But this was never really true. It was through the hard work and the determination of many people that the idea of freedom of speech became possible. In [Frederick] Douglas' writing he writes about how the freedom of speech was being restricted because people began to realize just how powerful and meaningful it can be, no matter what class you live in or what race you are. If you have the ability to voice your opinion and get enough people to believe in your cause then your speech becomes the most powerful weapon you could ever have." (Chris A)

Select Bibliography Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog (Perseus Publishing, 2002) Kathy Charmaz, "Grounded Theory: Objectivist and Constructivist Models", in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2d ed. (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2000), eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln Sara Kajder and Glen Bull, "Scaffolding for Struggling Students: Reading and Writing With Weblogs" Learning and Leading With Technology 31(2) (October 2003): 32-35 Martha Nussbaum, "Cultivating Humanity in Legal Education" 70 U. Chi L. Rev 265 (2003) Todd Taylor, "Legal Literacy and the Undergraduate Curriculum", Journal of Business and Communication 10(2) (April 1996): 239-250 James Boyd White, "Meaning in the Humanities and the Law," in From Expectation to Experience: Essays on Law and Legal Education (University of Michigan Press, 1999): 89-110