Seema Mohapatra, Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Principal Investigator: Seema Mohapatra, associate professor, Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Project Title: Creating an Online Bioethics and the Law Course Utilizing Case Studies that Allow Students to Develop Practice-Ready Skills
Funding Level: $5,000
Abstract:
I propose to study and evaluate outcomes and perceived student practice-readiness in a highly interactive online class, with a significant practice-ready component. Specifically, the project involves designing a Bioethics and Law course for students enrolled at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law (“IU McKinney”) that incorporates weekly case studies to enhance student engagement, practice-ready skills, and interest in bioethics and health care law. I am currently offering an online Introduction to Health Care Law and Policy in Spring 2019 to law students, and this Bioethics and the Law class will serve as a more practice-intensive online sequence for students interested in Health Law. The proposed outcomes in Bioethics and the Law focus on helping students evaluate weekly case studies to help them become more practice-ready. Using student survey data, I plan to compare outcomes and perceived practice-readiness in my online Bioethics and the Law with the other online health law course I am currently teaching that does not yet incorporate such practice-ready enhancements. Bioethics and the Law examines the legal, ethical and social issues related to health care and decision-making. Some of the specific issues that will be studied include organ donation, assisted reproduction, health care disparities, food insecurity and bioethics, determination of death, life and death decisions, and regulation of clinical research. The course introduces students to the leading approaches in analyzing the ethical issues involved, with a special emphasis on their influence in the courts as well as the legislative and regulatory areas. The Bioethics and the Law course would be designed as a fully asynchronous online course that incorporates hypothetical case studies so that students can develop practice-ready skills in bioethics and health care law. This will allow students to learn better in a more flexible environment, helping them become practice-ready, and help increase their interest in the course material.
