We spoke with an award-winning lecturer from the Faculty of Law Jakub Míšek about thoughtful course design, the specifics of teaching technology law, and how cat pictures can be used in teaching.
Could you briefly introduce the subjects you teach?
The Faculty of Law is unique in its teaching structure due to the large degree programme Law, which partially shapes how the faculty operates and encompasses most of the teaching. Within this programme, we teach a compulsory course Legal Informatics in the first and second year, coordinated by Dr. Harašta. Three of us share the responsibility for hundreds of students who pass through our hands each year. In addition, I’m fortunate to teach several elective profiling courses in my area of specialization — data governance, personal data protection, and the right to information. We also provide courses for students of Information and Cybersecurity at the Faculty of Informatics, and we have a contractual collaboration with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication at Brno University of Technology, where we deliver courses for the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in Information Security. These courses aim to provide future information security managers with basic legal awareness. The topics range from an introduction to legal theory to an overview of information technology law. The goal isn’t for graduates to become lawyers, but to have a foundational understanding of law and be able to identify legal issues. At the beginning of the course, I always say that the aim is for a “red warning light” to go off in their minds at the right moment in practice, so they know to consult someone who can give them relevant legal advice.
In short, my teaching includes very general Legal Informatics, highly specialized elective courses for future lawyers, and general overview courses in IT law for non-lawyers.
Does teaching technology law bring any specific pedagogical challenges?
Anyone professionally involved in technology law stands with one foot in regulation and the other in technology. In teaching, this means presenting topics to law students in a way that is digestible and imaginable from a technological perspective. The same applies to legal topics for students at FI and FEKT. Together with my colleagues, we teach these students quite early in their studies. It can happen that their second lecture at a technical university begins with: “Hello, today I’ll talk to you about legal theory,” which can be quite surprising for them. So it’s important to present the topic in a way that doesn’t feel disconnected from the rest of their studies.
How do you ensure that students receive the topic in a broader, interconnected context?
I don’t have a specific method or manual, but I always keep this connection in mind when preparing lessons as well as entire courses. I also try to present the topic in an engaging way, using relatable examples from real life. For technical students, I use real-world phenomena from the online world, while for law students I refer to current legal cases that clearly demonstrate the intersection of technology and regulation.
Do you have any tricks for keeping students’ attention during lectures?
Although it started somewhat randomly, I’ve settled on one thing that I now use in most lecture presentations. It may sound a bit childish, but I intersperse slides with pictures of cats.
It might seem pointless, but it’s not: a hundred-minute lecture is quite long, and if something unexpected appears in the presentation, it catches one’s attention. Primarily, I use these images as transitions between different “chapters” of the lecture. It gives me a chance to take a sip of water and for the audience to ask questions. Even though at the beginning of each course I encourage students to ask questions at any point, I understand that they may feel uncomfortable to interrupt a lecturer mid-presentation. These pauses between chapters create space for questions and comments.
One thing that worked well during online teaching was the ability to ask questions in the chat during the lecture. Even in in-person teaching, tools like Slido can be used for ongoing questions, but I usually prefer the “pause time” method mentioned above.
You mentioned involving colleagues in teaching the courses you organize. What benefits and potential challenges does this bring?
It’s important to understand that information technology law is not a traditional legal field like civil or criminal law. To a large extent, it’s more of an overlay across all these categories. Within IT law, we deal with everything from online contracts, copyright, domain names, liability of online platforms, cybersecurity, personal data protection, to the emerging regulation of AI. It’s a very broad spectrum of topics connected by the issue of regulating new technologies. Except for a few honourable exceptions, none of us can claim to fully understand all these topics in detail.
Shared teaching in overview courses is a good practice that was already in place at our Institute of Law and Technology, and which I’ve adopted. It makes a lot of sense for cross-cutting courses that aim to cover a wide range of topics. The benefit is that students receive significantly deeper expertise. The challenge lies in structuring the semester so that it suits everyone and the teaching follows a coherent “dramaturgy.” Another challenge is organizing seminars. When there were fewer students and only one seminar group, lecturers taught both the lectures and the follow-up seminars. In the last two or three years, there have been more seminar groups, especially in courses for students from the Faculty of Informatics. Now, each seminar group is taught by one lecturer for the entire semester, which brings a new challenge: all lecturers need to be familiar with the material covered in all seminars.
You also teach in a combined degree programme — what does that mean for your teaching?
This involves two courses — one elective and one selective — in the Master’s programme Public Administration. The students are often people who are continuing their education while working. For the selective course IT in Public Administration, the first specific feature is that the teaching is organized in blocks, so we meet three times per semester. Even here, I try to ensure that specific topics are taught by experts. Probably the biggest challenge is how to conclude the course. It carries a relatively high credit value, which means the exam should be demanding. I know that students come from all over the country, and I find it inappropriate and unnecessary to require them to travel to Brno just for the exam. One of the few good things that came out of the COVID era is the possibility to do things online. For this course, I introduced an online open-book exam via the university’s Information system, available for 24 hours. I know the questions are challenging and students need time to complete them. That’s why I try to offer exam dates on different weekdays as well as on Saturdays. I want to offer maximum flexibility and allow students to choose a time that suits them. I’m well aware that studying at university while working is, to put it mildly, highly non-trivial.
Can you say something about teaching a fully asynchronous course?
This is a course on personal data protection, which I prepared together with Dr. Kasl, and my PhD students help me run it. Teaching takes place through an interactive syllabus in the university’s Information system. Students have access to videos we created with excellent support from colleagues at the Faculty of Informatics. The work is divided into eight weeks, during which students complete quizzes and small assignments. The last two to three weeks are dedicated to the final paper. The course is designed this way because I know that the “I’ll do everything at the end of the semester” approach doesn’t work well for anyone. If I imagine studying like that myself, I know I wouldn’t retain anything that I learned. As a lecturer, I also wouldn’t be happy to receive dozens of assignments right before Christmas. From the feedback I’ve received, I get the impression that the course is running well and functioning effectively.
However, we’re facing another challenge in the field of technology law: due to the rapid pace of regulatory and judicial developments, the course material changes quickly and sources become outdated. We prepared the course about four years ago, and I know we’ll soon need to re-record some of the videos.
“Students know that the course is designed with intention — not because I woke up one morning and thought, ‘Let’s do it this way today’.”
Jakub Míšek
How would you summarize your approach to teaching?
I don’t have extensive formal didactic training, but I follow a general principle: “do things so they make sense.” That’s also how I think about things. I try to teach in a way that the material builds logically and doesn’t include unnecessary information. Saying that might sound extremely trivial, but it’s very important for the content of the course to fit together cohesively — and for students to understand why they’re there. I’ve found it helpful to dedicate a significant part of the first session to explaining what we’ll be doing, why we’re doing it, how we’ll study the topic, what practical takeaways students can expect, and why we believe it will be useful to them. For example, I explain to students in technical fields that even if they don’t yet understand why they should study legal theory on their second day at university, upcoming courses in later semesters will require us to speak the same language. In elective courses for students of Law, I always explain that we’re pursuing two goals: we’ll discuss how personal data regulation works, and we’ll also practice legal writing. That’s because the seminar group in the elective course provides space for training legal writing and receiving quality feedback. In the combined course I mentioned earlier, communication is especially important because I know the course has a slightly problematic reputation among students due to the difficulty of the exam. In recent years, I’ve therefore spent time in the first session explaining how the course is structured and why. Students also have the opportunity to respond and discuss the course setup. I find it important to always set expectations in teaching. It helps prevent frustration and ensures everyone knows where they stand. Students know that the course is designed with intention — not because I woke up one morning and thought, “Let’s do it this way today.” I’ve noticed that this kind of expectation-setting reflects positively in student feedback, but more importantly, in their approach to the course and mutual collaboration.
If I had to summarize it: it’s important to do things consciously and keep in mind the specific situation and design goal of each course.
“It’s important to do things consciously and keep in mind the specific situation and design goal of each course.”
Jakub Míšek
We’re meeting in the second half of the summer break. What are you looking forward to in teaching next semester?
That’s a tricky question (laughs). Last week I caught myself cautiously starting to look forward to teaching. My teaching load is uneven — there’s relatively a lot in the autumn, and less in the spring. I always have big plans to write during the spring, but often I just need to recharge after a demanding autumn. Now, in the second half of summer, I’m starting to look forward to teaching again. I feel like I’ve found a rhythm that suits me. Days with multiple lectures or seminars are, of course, demanding. But teaching also feels like a kind of meditative exercise: when I step into the classroom, I don’t think and can’t think about anything else but the moment. Suddenly, a hundred minutes have passed in the blink of an eye, and I find myself thinking, “That was actually nice.” A key factor, of course, is whether the group is at least somewhat responsive. Every semester, you encounter a “group from hell,” where everyone stares at their screens and I feel like if I undressed, no one would notice. Let me stress — I haven’t tried that and won’t be trying it (laughs). But there aren’t many such sessions, and I genuinely look forward to many others. If the group works well, time flies in class, and I feel it’s truly meaningful time well spent. Lectures with students in the combined programme and the LLM course are often great. Their motivation also likely stems from the fact that they pay for the course, attend it in their free time, and travel to Brno for it. Students with practical experience often comment on how things are handled in their workplaces. Sometimes I become more of a moderator of a lively discussion than a lecturer. Those sessions are truly excellent.
Interviewer: Karolína Zlámalová, Quality Office RMU (zlamalova@rect.muni.cz)
In our work on quality assurance in education, we regularly participate in various events and exchanges of experience. One of the recent ones was a workshop held as part of the international project ETHICS – Responsible Conduct of Research, which aims to support quality and integrity in higher education and research in Georgia.
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