Having recently returned from my seventh consecutive AALS Annual Meeting it seems to me that now would be a good time to create an AALS section that focuses on educational and instructional technology. Over the past years I've noticed a couple of trends at the annual meeting. First, anything that touches on technology in relation to education and scholarship draws big crowds. Second, the number of associate/assistant deans and directors representing administrative functions of the law schools attending AALS has increased but this doesn't seem to include IT deans and directors. So, you have a situation where several thousand law school faculty are eagerly consuming any tech nuggets they find but without the voices of the IT folks who can provide the best guidance. Of course, this is something we can change.

While a number of AALS Sections include some sort of technology bent in their annual programs, there is not a section that is focused on bringing faculty the latest information about educational and instructional technology on a regular basis. This is the role I see for this section. The idea is to have a Section that does an annual program that provides the AALS Annual Meeting attendees with information about, and demonstrations of, the latest in educational and instructional technologies. The Section would provide a forum for interested faculty to interact with IT professionals in a situation that outside of the normal structures of the IT/faculty relationship.

The process to petition for the creation of a new AALS Section is pretty straight forward. Details on section creation are found in Chapter 1 of the Executive Committee Regulations (ECR) of AALS. To get a section started, ECR provides:

Upon receipt of a petition signed by at least fifty (50) or more full-time faculty members or professional staff from at least twenty five (25) or more member schools, the Executive Committee may provisionally establish a Section. The petition shall state the proposed name of the Section, the subjects that will be the Section's concern and the activities and programs contemplated for the Section. The petition shall identify those subjects of the Section's concerns, activities and programs that do not substantially duplicate those of an existing Section…The petition shall also state the names of persons to be the initial officers and executive committee of the Section, these persons to serve until the first Annual Meeting of the Association after granting provisional status to the proposed Section. Proposed bylaws shall accompany the petition.

So, we need bylaws, officers and executive committee members, and a signed petition. I've taken the liberty of creating a draft bylaws document based on bylaws of other sections found on the Internet. ECR requires each section have bylaws define required officers including a Chair, and Chair-elect, and other officers as deemed necessary. The draft bylaws include the Chairs, a Secretary, and a Treasurer as well as 3 additional members for the section's Executive Committee. These officials need to be named in the petition to create the section.

Officers for the section need to be drawn from the members of the section. By the draft bylaws membership is open to faculty and professional staff of member law schools. I believe that most people on the teknoids mailing list are covered by in this description, so teknoids provides a good starting ground for membership and potential officers.

Gathering 50 qualified signatures from 25 AALS member schools seems pretty straight forward. I am sure there are more than enough qualified folks on the teknoids mailing list, but, as with any petition, the more signatures, the better. I would encourage the IT deans and directors who read this to talk to faculty at their schools who may be interested in the is area about signing the petition once it is available.

At this point I think the next step would be to have some folks interested in pursuing this further to step up and take on the project. Because of my position with CALI I do not qualify as faculty or professional staff from a member school, so I cannot serve as an officer or member of the executive committee. I can provide my services as webmaster and the use of teknoids.net as a gathering place for the new section. To help with organizing things I have created a group on teknoids.net called Educational and Instructional Technology. If you are interested in working on forming this section, please surf on over to the group page and subscribe. You will need to login to teknoids.net to do that, but that I am sure you can figure out. Once the group gets going, this can move forward.