When the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) wanted to teach other evidence professors how to take advantage of the latest classroom technology, they came to Campbell Professor Woody Woodruff.

Woodruff demonstrated the use of an audience response system to evidence professors from around the country at the AALS Mid-Year meeting June 3-6, in Cleveland, Ohio.  The system permits the professor to pose a question to the class and get immediate feedback from the students. The hardware and software display the results of the “polling” of the class in real time giving the professor a snapshot of where the class is on a given topic, and, equally important, revealing to the students where they stand relative to their classmates in their understanding of the material. 

“Our students are tech savvy. They’ve been using technology in education almost their entire life, and there are some great innovations available in the world of educational technology that appeal to current students and enhance the pedagogy,” Woodruff explained. “Why not use it?”

“While the feedback for both professor and student is very valuable, I’ve found that use of this technology actually keeps the students more engaged during class and generates a more robust classroom discussion of the issues,” he added.

The audience response system is not the only technological innovation in use in Campbell’s classroom. A state of the art classroom capture system records a video of the class, posts it automatically on the course web page, and allows the students to review the class, including any Power Point slides, from any computer with internet access. 

“We’re ahead of most law schools in the use of classroom technology, and the AALS acknowledged that by inviting Professor Woodruff to speak at the Mid-Year meeting,” Dean Essary said. 

“I accepted the Dean’s position here because I believed Campbell Law School was the best kept secret in legal education,” she added. “Well, the secret is getting out, and that’s a good thing.” 

About Campbell Law School: Since its founding in 1976, the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law at Campbell University has developed lawyers who possess moral conviction, social compassion and professional competence, and who view the law as a calling to serve others and create a more just society. The School has received two prestigious awards from the American Bar Association (ABA), the first for having the nation’s best Trial Advocacy Program, and the second for having the nation’s top Professionalism Program. In 2008, the Law School’s Moot Court Program was ranked 17th nationally among 196 ABA accredited law schools. Campbell Law boasts more than 3,000 alumni, including 2,000 who reside and work in North Carolina as well as the highest average overall passage rate on the July N.C. Bar Exam for the past 17 years. For more information, visit law.campbell.edu.

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