amcarter025
commented
5 years ago Fully and completely seconded. I basically had to cordon my homework time for this class between scheduled events so that I didn't allow it to consume my entire life. I think part of the problem is that we tried to cover a lot of material in this course, and most of it was completely different from the type of work that law students are accustomed to doing. I agree that a less ambitious syllabus would significantly help to decrease gobbleldygook-inspired stress levels.
In general, this class took up an inordinate amount of time, especially compared to my other 3 credit hour classes. Especially towards the beginning of the class, I would easily be spending 3x as much time on this class as I was any of my others. It started to lighten up a little later on in the semester, but not much, and when one article of reading is replaced with a homework assignment, there is not a lot of difference, time wise.
I think its important to remember that this is basically a new language for law students, and reading a 20 page article of in depth data methods is infinitely more difficult than reading 20 pages of case law. When that gets compounded to 80-100 pages of complex data articles, you have to start skimming just make it through the articles and therefore lose the benefit you're trying to gain by us reading it.
Overall, this is probably best served by lessening some of what we want to accomplish in the class, which would allow some of the material to be stretched out over a longer period of time, and thus spend more time on some of the more important ideas like Bayes rule or P values, etc.