Course Information
Course Description
This seminar course integrates senior students registered in UWindsor’s Odette School of Business with upper year students from UWindsor Law in classes regarding business agreements to provide them with learning experiences at the intersection of law and business. Students will learn through readings, mini lectures, and writing short reports regarding their analysis of agreements, which prepare students for class discussion. Business agreements are case studies for class discussions for experiential, interdisciplinary learning. Students prepare for class discussions by completing different tasks and submitting written assignments before class. In addition to marks for weekly assignments and marks for participation in class, students submit and present their final paper as evidence of their achievement of the learning outcomes. Based upon each student’s interests, each student chooses a specific business agreement as a topic for a paper due near the end of the course.
In their final paper presented to the class, students will demonstrate what they have learned by doing the following:
- Choose and define legal/business objectives;
- Collect information to be used in the process of analyzing their chosen agreement;
- Identify options including negotiation positions; and
- Justify their proposals for negotiating changes.
My Teaching Philosophy – Lifelong Learning and Skill Development
- University should prepare students for lifelong learning through development of critical thinking skills.
- I aim to pass on my knowledge, experience and attitudes to students.
- I set high expectations
The course is designed to align learning outcomes and activities with assessments and adopts the views of Noam Chomsky (prof at MIT) who said during a speech in 2014:
“[His preferred education model is] for the student to acquire the capacity to inquire, to create, to innovate, to challenge—that’s education. You gain the capacity and the self-confidence for that matter to challenge and create and innovate, and that way you learn; that way you’ve internalized the material and you can go on. It’s not a matter of accumulating some fixed array of facts which then you can write down on a test and forget about tomorrow.”
Learning Outcomes
Prerequisite
For business (non-law) students is at least ½ semester of contract law and permission of instructor because the law students have an entire school year (2 semesters) of contract law.
Business agreements
Business agreements are case studies creating memorable, thought- provoking examples for study to help develop students’ skills and understanding of the structure and content of typical business contracts. Students gain “literacy” with business agreements by experiencing certain processes such as:
- Identify legal issues (contract structure and deal points sufficient to inform analysis);
- Review various business agreements including their structure, terminology and usual practices;
- Gather information and formulate alternatives and priorities (synthesize);
- Identify possible proposals for contract terms and rank/rate alternatives with reasons;
- Select an option and justify the positions taken (evaluate & defend).
Student Workload
Contact hours total 36 hours over 12 weeks. Typically 2 classes per week plus other weekly learning activities as follows:
Average number of hours per week that the student will be expected to devote to:
- Teaching and learning activities in class = 3
- Reading for the course = 3
- Work for assessment (essays, papers, projects) = 3
Suggested Instructional Team
1 faculty member and 1 teaching assistant for this course