Spring 2022 Course Evaluations

cases or identifying key cases to assign is more helpful. The instruction could be improved by being more clear about what the black letter law is. Sometimes it’s hard to put it together and even though the cases are helpful, they seem to be scattered leaving us to put the rule together and then it never gets confirmed by Robertson. While Professor Robertson wanted people to participate in class, there seemed to be a common theme throughout the semester shared by many students that he would misunderstand the question and therefore his response would sometimes not be entirely helpful. While several of my classmates became frustrated at times due to this apparent disconnect, I believe that this is because Professor Robertson simply had trouble hearing the question which is really no fault of his own. Need to look more holistically into TA’s and more into their background to ensure that not only they know the subject but that they are able to aid students in an adequate manner. I really think the whole class needs to be revamped, down to how the course is organized throughout the semester. The syllabus should be rewritten and reorganized. Professor Robertson had us read every single case, sequentially throughout the book, which forced us to over-read certain topics that could have been taught with one or two example cases and speed through or even totally miss out on significant tort topics, such as duty. Professor Robertson is a very knowledgable person. However, there is a huge communication barrier. It is very hard for him to understand our questions and therefore cannot guide us in a direction. Professor Robertson is a nice guy, it’s clear he’s very smart and he always made himself available to students if they needed help. He clearly cares about his students. However, the fundamentals of teaching simply were not present for this class. Professor Robertson epitomizes the old school, hide-the-ball approach to teaching law. There is a right way and a wrong way to teach the law via the Socratic method, and unfortunately, this instruction fell into the latter. It was lazy, not engaging, and not well executed. Additionally, it was difficult for Professor Robertson to hear student questions when they came up during class. I wish Professor Robertson did not waste so much time on the Intentional torts chapters. Negligence seems to be a vast subject so we should not be rushing into it. Additionally, most of the time Professor Robertson is not straight forward in his answers when we ask a question. Professor Robertson used this class for his theatrical amusement. His inappropriate, sexual jokes, made in a room full of women in their 20s, disgusted me. Along with this, I feel that the amount of theatrics used to "discuss" each case was beyond distracting. I could not follow along with anything that was taught. In addition, Professor Robertson never answered a single question anyone asked. On multiple occasions, 5-9 students would ask the same question and he would still not answer it. Would completely talk around the question because he genuinely NEVER understood what was being asked. I feel that this type of instruction was COMPLETELY

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