The West Education Network (TWEN) is an online extension of the law school classroom. It is a tool that many professors currently use to post syllabi, course notes and resources, and assignment information. However, there are many additional interactive features of TWEN that are either unknown or rarely utilized. I will highlight a few of those:
Sign-Up Sheets: These can be used to set up office hours and schedule student conferences. They can also be used for students to sign up for paper topics and/or in-class presentation times. Essentially, if there is something you need students to sign-up for, this is the tool for you! You choose the dates and times and set the parameters for cancellation. TWEN also makes it easy to set up regularly scheduled office hours for the entire semester in a matter of minutes.
Customized Polling: Create polls that students can respond to anonymously. You can poll the class with the following types of questions: yes/no, true/false, and multiple choice. Use these polls in class our outside of class. Polling is done within TWEN and you can view the results visually as a bar graph or pie chart.
Wiki: Within this section of TWEN, you set up pages that can be collaboratively edited by faculty and/or students. You can specify who can view each page and who can edit each page. This is a great feature for activities or assignments where two or more students or faculty are working together to create a product.
These are just a few of many interactive features now available on TWEN. Next time you, the faculty, are organizing your course on TWEN, consider ways in which you can integrate these components effectively into your classroom instruction. For more information on other features, such as creating alerts, sharing a folder, making a newsletter and much more, click here to be directed to Westlaw’s user guide.
