An Autobiography of a Digital Idea - Southwestern Law School

492 Journal of Legal Education
their learning and can guide it in a way that suits their needs. I, therefore,
sought to create a convenient and efficient resource to engage these students
in and out of the classroom.
IV. The Interactive, Engaging, Online Book
The interactive, engaging online book, TeachingLaw.com, 44 incorporates
the learning theory I had researched into a practical, pedagogically sound,
fully integrated, technological tool for digital students. 45 I designed it to
combine non-linear text, interactivity, immediate feedback, and multimedia
into a convenient digital package to try to bridge the digital divide and meet
my students on their side of the laptops.
A. Non Linear Text
First, I recognized the need for some text so students could read materials;
I realized, however, that the resource would need much more than traditional
text. I, therefore, decided the text would not be linear. Instead, students could
enter the text in any location that suited them at that time. Instead of chapters,
I created “rooms” for exit and entrance at will. I wanted professors to be able to
easily assign readings from any room so that students would not feel as if they
were “skipping” parts of the text. As an alternative, I wanted students to be
able to “surf” the book, through a random clicking process, a search function,
44. Diana R. Donahoe, TeachingLaw.com (Aspen 2006), located at www.teachinglaw.com.
45. I spent more than six years designing, writing and building TeachingLaw.com. I then tested
it for two years in the classroom at Georgetown University Law Center, and, in 2006, it was
updated, published and tested again by Aspen Publishers. The current version (version
3.0) is now used at Georgetown and at approximately twenty other schools nationwide and
internationally and has become a new platform for digital teaching. In addition to my book,
Aspen has added Amy Sloan’s Basic Legal Research (4 th ed. 2009) to the platform. Some
professors have used the courseware package for their doctrinal courses as well.