With Video, Tech Lead Makes Classes More Valuable
Corinne St. Claire, the director of Law School Technology Services at LMU Loyola Law School, and her team live by a simple motto: “If people don’t realize we’ve done anything, we’ve done our jobs well.” St. Claire and her office team provide more than technical and digital support for the entire LLS community; they also work to ensure that both faculty and students have the digital tools they need to succeed academically.
Instrumental in the law school's expansion of virtual offerings amid COVID-19, St. Claire facilitated the use of the Brightspace learning-management system. She also helped ramp up other pre-existing technology, such as Zoom, and assists all members of the LLS community with related issues.
For these and other outstanding contributions to the school, St. Claire was named the 2020 recipient of the law school’s Bobby J. Pollock Distinguished Staff Service Award. "Just knowing that she and all her team are there has been an incredible relief," wrote one advocate in her nomination submission.
Elsewhere, St. Claire is also known for her work on “flipping the classroom,” or helping professors free up their class time so they can connect more with students and refine the learning process. St. Claire and her team regularly assist professors with creating and curating video materials for lectures—in some cases, faculty will actually conduct lectures entirely via video.
With these visual resources, students can watch a lecture digitally before attending class, and then faculty can use classroom time to answer questions and encourage dialogue. St. Claire and her team maintain the technology, including smart technologies, that allow professors to share their class materials with students. Additionally, her office and the Admissions Department recently started live-streaming Q&A panels with current students, allowing incoming or prospective students the opportunity to ask questions about not only the law school process but also campus life.
St. Claire is always striving to help students connect not only with faculty, but with the school as a whole as well. She is well-suited for that, having graduated in 2018 from the law school's Masters of Science in Legal Studies (MLS) program with a Specialization in Cybersecurity & Data Privacy Law. Part of her rationale: seeing "from a student’s perspective how we can do more to make their experience a truly positive one,” she said.
At the end of day, St. Claire aims to make students’ lives a little more straightforward. “My role,” she said, “is to help people find the tools they need, and to help people become comfortable with these tools.”