Experimentation stimulates participants to prioritize, define goals, and assume responsibility for their own learning. We vary the class formats to accommodate different learning styles and to tailor what people learn to how they learn.

Faculty and teaching fellows conduct planning meetings with small groups prior to class. Student facilitators prepare by reading assigned materials and thinking about goals for the class. In larger classes, student facilitators write persuasive essays based on the readings and share these essays among themselves and with faculty before class. Student facilitators brainstorm different approaches to the material, often drawing from personal and professional experiences. Conflict sometimes arises in the planning process, and it is helpful to explore its relationship (if any) to the subject matter, to learn from and resolve those conflicts.

See resource page for examples of lesson plans.

The seminar invites problem solving and brainstorming using unconventional formats, from discussion to storytelling, from role plays to theater. Lesson plans may also include structured discussion and small group work. A variety of formats accommodates diverse learning styles and backgrounds and spawns novel methods of inquiry based on session goals.

This methodology is designed:

	to move continuously from the personal to the political, the conceptual and the professional and back again;
	to reveal how our "ideologies" are often rooted in our personal stories;
	to use story telling and other active methods to create trust, openness and the willingness to take the intellectual risks that lead to reframing problems.

The role of the faculty facilitator includes keeping the conversation going long enough to make these moves and to keep pushing students from one dimension to another, to get them unstuck, or to allow them to "fail" in the short run and not be defined by that failure in the long run.

The deepest learning often happens when students relate theory to personal experiences and professional aspirations, via storytelling or other means. Emotional connection to the material and long-term commitment through practice or field research amplify students' interest and involvement.

One option is for students to write weekly reflection pieces in the format of their choice to grapple with course material. Students' personal and intellectual journeys become a site for learning through a draft political autobiography that describes how the strands of their life and their identity come together to strengthen or impede their commitment to social change. The autobiography is revised over the semester to incorporate peer and faculty feedback, as well as new content based on subsequent class sessions. The essay formats range from linear arguments to expository writing and narrative collage. Students, who are urged to meditate on how the strands of their life and their identity come together to strengthen or impede their commitment to social change, consistently report that writing the political autobiography is one of the most meaningful exercises they had been asked to do in law school.

To encourage and assess class participation, students submit a self-evaluation memo commenting on their own contributions and that of their peers. They are also asked to include in the memo a debriefing of lesson plans that worked well for them.

See resource page for examples of political autobiographies and self assessments.