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PBI Course Planner Guidelines
May 5, 1998
As a PBI Course Planner, you have a very important role to play in developing a high quality, educationally sound CLE program. You will be working in conjunction with a PBI staff attorney and program manager throughout the course development and presentation phases of the course. We will advise and support you at each step of the process to enable us to jointly provide the best CLE possible.
To aid you in understanding how the course planning process will unfold and what your role is in it, we offer the following guidelines.
1. Identify course level and objectives. The level of the course is one of the first items to be determined. What skills or tasks do we want those who attend to master as a result of attending the course? We will work with you in identifying these objectives. Frequently, we use these objectives in developing marketing pieces for the course.
2. Develop a course outline and title. This is key to course development. The course outline focuses the substantive subject matter. The more detailed it is, the better. Subtopics help other faculty members to understand clearly what it is that we are asking them to speak or write about. Your suggestions of course titles are appreciated.
In developing the course outline, find the angle for the course. A subject might be approached in a number of ways including one or more of the following: substance, procedure, strategy and tactics, document drafting, other skills, hot topics or new developments.
3. Identify topics for course manual. Often the topics for chapters in the course manual mirror the major topics identified in the course outline. However, there are some courses in which the presentations will focus on skills training or have other objectives so that the chapters in the course manual will not mirror the program topics. In those cases, a separate outline of the contents of the course manual will be needed.
In nearly every course, we ask that a course manual be developed that will serve as a ready reference source after the course is over for those who do not attend the course.
4. Recommend possible faculty members. Faculty members should be skillful, experienced, conscientious and knowledgeable professionals who are also effective communicators, both orally and in writing. Diversity should also be achieved.
Consider the writing and speaking strengths of potential faculty members. On some projects not all faculty will need to write. (In rarer instances, you may want to include someone who will write, but not speak.)
Think about whether there are any potential faculty members who will be a "significant draw" because of their position or reputation.
We also ask that you attain diversity on the faculty by being sensitive to gender and minority balance, small firm/law firm representation, plaintiff/defense balance, practitioner/academician/judge representation and geographic diversity.
As a rule of thumb, we try to recruit local faculties (speakers from the region in which the program is being presented). This enables us to provide accurate local practice pointers and also helps to keep our expenses under control.
We leave it to your discretion whether you will serve as an author and presenter of a specific topic, in addition to handling the moderator's role.
We ask that you discuss potential faculty members with us before inviting them. PBI has confidential records on past speakers which the staff attorney or program manager with whom you are working can access to aid in the selection of faculty.
5. Develop a creative, interesting course format. Getting and keeping the attention of the audience is of paramount importance in the educational process. Lawyers attending our courses ask us over and over again to provide practical, "how to do it" programs, rather than ones in which cases and statutes are merely recited. We will be happy to brainstorm with you formats which would be appropriate for your course. Interactive question and answer segments, point/counterpoint discussions, breakout sessions, a speakers' script, case studies, video vignettes, computer-generated presentations, role playing, mock hearings/negotiations are a few examples of engaging techniques that can bring life to a program. We encourage the use of one or more of these methods to strengthen your program. Be sensitive to the use of "war stories". Practical, to-the-point, examples of applications of points being discussed are invaluable. However, lengthy discussions of one's cases is typically not well received.
6. Participate actively in the planning meetings/conference calls. Your leadership and excitement for the project is a great motivator. We ask for your assistance in identifying potential overlap of subject matter, helping to clarify roles of each faculty member and providing overall guidance to the faculty members. Advise the faculty of your intended format and of what is expected of each of them.
7. Editing the Course Manual You are always encouraged to edit course materials for content. This is particularly important for books which are typeset, but is also extremely valuable in our more standard "yellow books". Let us know early if you are willing to do so, that we can allow for more lead time in developing the course.
When you are the course planner for a course which is being repeated, it is vitally important that chapters be thoroughly reviewed, updated and improved. We do not want to repeat or reprint past mistakes or fail to provide the most recent developments!
8. Assist in the marketing process. We welcome your ideas about what organizations or groups might be interested in the course so that we may send marketing pieces to them. In addition, we seek your advice about the initial advertisement to be sure that it accurately represents your concept for the course. A letter or memo under your signature which we will send to targeted segments of the bar is one effective marketing device. We encourage you to try techniques such as this to help get the word out about the program.
9. Assist in keeping the course development schedule on track. We know that lawyers have busy schedules and that work on CLE projects sometimes has to be put aside to attend to client matters. A quick phone call from you when there is a recalcitrant faculty member works wonders!
To provide continuity, we generally ask the course planner to serve as moderator at each live presentation. The following are some helpful moderating tips:
1. At the beginning of the program, give the audience a preview of what the day will hold.
2. Give a very brief introduction of each faculty member, i.e., name and firm. Biographical sketches are included in the course manual for those who are interested in learning more about a presenter's background.
3. Explain how questions from the audience will be handled. You may want to have them written on question cards or may want to take them live from the floor using a roving microphone or a combination of both. The size of the audience and the logistics of a program will often help to determine which is most suitable.
4. Keep the program on schedule. As moderator, it is your job to enforce the time allotments. Remember that each faculty member has prepared for the program and is counting on having the designated amount of time to teach. Equally important is that members of the audience want to hear from each speaker and frequently feel shortchanged when an earlier speaker takes more than his or her allotted time forcing speakers later in the program to rush through material. Encourage speakers to deliver well the material they have time to present and not make apologies because the time is limited.
With mandatory CLE, members of the audience rely on breaks being taken at the scheduled times in order to make a short telephone call to the office or run a quick errand. We recommend not changing the published schedule on the day of the program.
5. Clarify and reinforce particularly significant points. Summarizing and reinforcing important points made by faculty members helps to drive them home to the audience. As moderator, you can enhance the learning process by giving a practical example or application of a point made by a member of the faculty. If you are concerned that a point may not have been clear, you may want to ask a follow up question of that faculty member or of other panelists to have the point clarified.
6. Remind the audience once or twice to complete the course evaluation forms. The evaluations provide invaluable advice about what worked and what did not work at a program. Your request of the audience to complete them enables all of us to continually improve our CLE offerings.
7. Prepare remarks to make the transition between topics. A few sentences between program segments to bridge one segment to the next provides continuity and a sense of organization to the course. Briefly summarize what has been covered in the previous segment and then provide a quick introduction to what is coming next and what significance it has.
8. Stand up and move around the room. We encourage you to move away from the podium and the head table. A wireless microphone frees you to walk around the seminar room and interact more with the audience.
9. Be relaxed and convey a "we're all in this together" attitude. When the audience sees that the faculty is excited about the course content, it is contagious!
1. Post Course Analysis Consider whether a "de-briefing" of the faculty is in order. There may be courses in which follow up with registrants is appropriate as well. We are available to assist in the post course evaluation process. Be sure to complete a Post Course Faculty Evaluation Form to let us know how you perceived your experience in working with PBI.
2. Express appreciation to faculty members
3. Review course evaluation summaries provided by PBI staff.
4. Notify your staff attorney or program manager of any errors you find in the course manual and of any significant changes in the law which date the manual. This enables us to either insert an errata sheet or take the book out of circulation, whichever is appropriate.
1. PBI can produce PowerPoint software presentations for your course. Once we are supplied with the content of the presentation, our experienced staff will design an eye-catching presentation to be used with a laptop computer and LCD projector so that it can be displayed on a large screen.
2. PBI's experienced video staff can tape video vignettes to use in your program. We will work with you and other faculty members to prepare scripts, recruit actors, and tape the vignettes.
3. PBI's graphics department can produce large charts, exhibits and other audiovisual aids.
4. PBI also has state-of-the-art electronic typesetting capabilities, and continues to explore the Internet and other technological tools for effective delivery of CLE.
5. PBI has an extensive variety of course materials from related courses which may be of use in planning your course. We are happy to discuss them with you and make them available to you.