Next weekend I'll be taking finals for the first time since Clinton took office. (If you missed the news, I'm a full-time student again.) This has given me the opportunity to try out some modern takes on classic study methods, including flashcards and Jeopardy-style games.
Flashcards
From the first day of the semester I started making flashcards on standard 3” x 5” index cards. Initially, I I digitized them along with the notes from my notebook using Google Keep. While that was useful as a method to support my work, it wasn't great for studying things like Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12.
Until the midterms I was fine checking my physical cards. After that I had too many to keep in my pocket. Then I started using Flippity for my flashcards. With Flippity I was able to create a spreadsheet of my note cards that were then turned into digital cards that I study on my phone whenever I have a free moment (it takes some discipline to look at the cards instead of Instagram).
Here is a small demo. how to make flashcards with the classic version of Flippity Flashcards. And here is a demonstration. of the most flexible Flippity Flexcards. Both are good options and both work well. The classic version is the one I used because I only needed words on my cards and not videos or audio clips.
Jeopardy style games
I had a small study group that met every weekend during the semester. Some weeks we just work together on practice questions. Some weeks we ended up chatting about our kids more than anything else. And in preparation for the finals, I made a Jeopardy-style game for us to play. I did that again with Flippity. There are plenty of other ways you could have created a Jeopardy-style game. Those methods can be seen in the videos here on my YouTube channel.
Construction Summary
The syllabus for all of my courses this semester explicitly stated not to use ChatGPT or similar ai tools to summarize textbook material or assigned cases. I followed that rule for two reasons. First, because I'm a rule follower. Secondly, because I had a feeling that ChatGPT wasn't going to be able to create summaries or case summaries that provided what I needed.
However, I needed to test my hunch. And when I tested my hunch, it was confirmed to be correct. I tested it with a case where truckers filed a lawsuit against a dairy farm. The outcome of the case depended on the use of the last precedent doctrine. While ChatGPT was able to generate a summary, it was unable to generate a summary that actually addressed the legal issue related to the doctrine of last precedent.
For topics that aren't as complex as evaluating the use of the last antecedent doctrine, ChatGPT and other ai-powered tools are probably fine when you just need a set of facts or basic review questions. To that end, a couple of options besides ChatGPT and Google Bard worth mentioning are know (proven here) and Capricious (proven here).
Here are some video tutorials that I recently published:
Professional development courses!
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