Part I The Nature and Structure of CANINE
Chapter 1 CANINE and What Drives It
CANINE (The Complete Article Nine) is a unique set of learning materials designed to assist law students to become effective Article 9 practitioners. CANINE consists of three parts. One part is a comprehensive collection of text and problems modeled after a conventional casebook or treatise. This part of CANINE, entitled “CANINE Hardcopy,” is available in hard copy (or in electronic form suited to being printed). CANINE Hardcopy is aimed at those who prefer to work with printed, easier to read (but essentially linear and “one-way”) materials. It is designed to be used with a commercially available set of commercial law statutes.
Another part of CANINE is entitled “CANINE Online.” It consists of the same text and materials found in CANINE Hardcopy, but it is delivered in electronic form and is intended to be used online. The primary advantage of CANINE Online over CANINE Hardcopy is that it contains a wealth of hyperlinks that allow a reader (or, more accurately, a user) to pull up statutory and secondary references with the click of a mouse. Another advantage is ease of navigation facilitated by keyword searching that avoids the need to struggle with a conventional index or table of contents. Still another advantage of CANINE Online is that the online materials may be cut and pasted and organized to suit a user’s particular learning style or research needs, subject, of course, to copyright constraints. The major disadvantage of CANINE Online is that it requires reading material displayed on a computer screen rather than in print.
The third part of CANINE is the most unique and ultimately is likely to be the most valuable to students. This part of CANINE consists of Problem Sets. The problems are essentially those found in both the hard copy and online versions of CANINE and probably are best used with those materials, but the problems also may be done as stand-alone exercises. The problems in the Problem Sets are in electronic form and are designed to be used online.
The special value of the electronic problems is that they were prepared with CALI Author (authoring software available from CALI, the Center for Computer-Assisted Learning Instruction) and are interactive. Users are given the immediate feedback that is important to effective learning. They are guided through the problems and feedback by means of complex branching that tailors a user’s learning experience according to the user’s responses. This tailoring of problems to fit a user’s level of expertise and understanding allows a user to proceed at his or her own pace and to reexamine questions and feedback as the user may wish.
A special feature has been added to the CANINE materials beginning with the 2006 edition. The special feature is a “Case Commentary.” The commentary consists of an informative and sometimes insightful discussion and analysis of selected cases decided after the effective date of new Article 9. The commentary will be published separately in hard copy.
There also will be an electronic version to which the electronic version of the CANINE materials will be linked. References to cases of particular relevance to a specific chapter or to specific chapters of CANINE will be added at the end of the chapter or chapters. Students will be responsible for the decisions in the Case Commentary only to the extent that they decisions are discussed in class or students are referred to them in a message or posting.
Eventually, CANINE may include an image map designed to assist users to visualize the essential features of Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the fundamental tasks associated with Article 9 practice.