Students work together in small groups, by planning and collectively facilitating class sessions, and for some, implementing group research and community action projects.

Provide opportunities for students to work together in small groups. This can be done by:

  Assigning groups to help plan and facilitate class sessions.

  Using break-out sessions in class.

  Encouraging group research and community action projects.

Students meet with the faculty facilitator(s) to organize their pedagogical goals around an important problem and an engaging format. They allocate roles and responsibilities for leading the class, collaborate to run the class, and debrief together. Such interactions and relationships motivate students, who do not want to disappoint their group. The groups are encouraged to work out disagreements among themselves about class readings or structure, preparing them for conflicts within the larger seminar.

	Co-facilitation by two faculty members who reflect diversity in race, expertise, and style. This was an ideal arrangement and we recommend it to others. However, individual faculty members can successfully facilitate this process.
	Willingness to share power with students over the agenda, content, and process, even when this means extensive meetings outside of the formal class session.
	Attentiveness to the methods and process, over time, including engagement with conflict.
	Shared commitment to experiment with new roles and ideas.

Faculty work with students to help them select materials, plan classes, and facilitate interaction within the seminar. Faculty also encourage students to address hard questions, to disagree, and to remain connected to one another. Faculty-student meetings are often the site of the most intensive learning for many individual students, triggering the "aha"moment.

This type of facilitation requires substantial time commitments by both faculty and students. Simply putting diverse people together with an agenda is not enough. Efforts must be taken to develop opportunities for active participation and learning, for gaining skills of listening and communication, and for developing relationships that can transform individuals and the group.

It is helpful to integrate artists, organizational consultants, community theater participants, and innovative lawyers into the interactive methodology of the class. Outside experts often bring different disciplinary or methodological approaches to their role as facilitators. They should be invited to work with students in planning their own sessions, conducting role plays and helping the class experiment with new forms of inquiry.

We have used variations on these techniques in professional responsibility classes of 50 students, employment discrimination classes of 75 students and first year civil procedures classes of more than 100 students.

Although it is not possible to pursue an interactive, student-facilitated format in every law class, we have successfully experimented with active learning through role plays, three person group take-away exams, and small discussion break-out groups. In a professional responsibility class, we have met with rotating groups of student facilitators in advance of class who then develop lesson plans for the entire class.