Transcript UK legal education & ICT: state of the discipline, state of the art… Karen Barton Sefton Bloxham Patricia McKellar Paul Maharg.

UK legal education & ICT:
state of the discipline,
state of the art…
Karen Barton
Sefton Bloxham
Patricia McKellar
Paul Maharg
four themes… and a question
1. ICT & legal education – from individual to
collaborative work
2. Innovative learning patterns need
innovative assessment
3. Unique signature pedagogy in legal ICT?
4. Habits of the head, habits of the heart,
habits of the hand…
Are we in heaven?
UK Law Schools Survey 2004
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BILETA survey of ICT provision
Most law schools use VLEs
Only a minority customise VLEs
Main use of VLEs - as resources archive
1/3 use VLEs for coursework submission
1/5 use VLEs for discussuion/conferencing
Few use VLEs for plagiarism detection
use of VLEs
90
80
70
60
50
All HEIs
Pre-1992
Post 1992
40
30
20
10
0
Use of VLE
Customised
how VLEs are used
90
80
70
Resources
60
Coursework
submission
Discussion /
Conferencing
Plagiarism
detection
50
40
30
20
10
0
All HEIs
The UKCLE VLE Project
Aims and Objectives
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Obtain case studies from UK law school websites
covering both undergraduate and professional legal
education.
Co-design a project website for UKCLE and BILETA
sites
Populate, and set up a procedure for authors to create
and maintain case-study web pages.
Provide a set of guidelines into VLE best practice
Website: www.ukcle.ac.uk/vle
LUVLE (Lancaster University VLE)
Collaborative Learning online
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F2F Lectures & Seminars
Online Resources
Any Questions? (asynchronous)
Inter & Intra Team discussions
Student mentoring discussion
Blended (weeks 6-14 & 21-24)
Virtual Negotiations (weeks 15-20)
LUVLE (Lancaster University VLE)
Negotiations – an online simulation
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Team-based collaborative learning all year
Inter-team online negotiations (term 2)
4-party problem or case study
Identification of legal basis for claims
Negotiation of settlements
Plenary session (F2F)
Written report
characteristics of TLE
• Active learning
• The practical realities of transactions forming the
basis of learning
• Opportunities to reflect on learning
• Collaboration (both within and across virtual
firms of 4 students per firm)
• Process, or holistic, learning
• Immersion in professional role-play
• Task authenticity
Transactional Learning
Environment
Ardcalloch: Transactional Learning
Environment (TLE)
• students engage in year-long collaborative
learning in virtual firms on seven substantial
projects
• they use f2f meeting (logs), activity logs,
personal logs, intranet discussion forums as chat
rooms, drafts folders, correspondence folders
and style banks
Blended Learning with webcasts
and transactional learning: Civil
Procedure Module
Webcasts
Tutorials
On-line TLE
Group
Project
student feedback
Paperworld student
• Preferred f2f lectures
• Didn’t use learning tools in the CD or online
environment
• Used books, not e-resources
• Took verbatim notes from the webcasts
• Only listened to the webcasts once
E-world student
• Comfortable using the webcast environment
• Used online information
• Used a word-processor to type notes
• Viewed and reviewed the webcasts
• Used the learning tools, eg speak-fast button
Civil Court Action Project
Sheriff
Clerk
Pursuer
Firm
Defender
Firm
Resources
Webcasts
TLE Project
Multimedia
resources
Civil
Practice
Flow Chart
Tutorial
Preparation
Tutorial
Assessment
Exam
Project
Motion
virtual firms…
‘…enables students to practice, in a safe
environment, what they will be practising
with real clients and in live legal
transactions……’
Excerpt from the Foundation Course in Legal Skills,
Diploma in Legal Practice, GGSL
student quotes…
• ‘Firms? Computers? Collaboration? Three
words guaranteed to strike torpor into the heart
of the average mature student.’
• ‘A feeling of dread crept over me when I realised
that much of the work for the Diploma was to be
carried out in firms.’
• ‘I struggled with the fact that I didn’t have total
control over where, when and how I worked.’
• ‘I don’t think that I’ve ever been quite so scared
in my life. ……Imagine my shock at discovering
that I’d be part of a firm and that I’d be
potentially responsible not only for my own
failure but that of three others. I almost left.’
• ‘Four strangers, four projects, one team?’
development of our matrix
Learning
20%
41%
Trust
12%
27%
development of our matrix
Learning
Legal Eagles
Learning
Community
Trust
Dysfunctional
Friendly Society
low trust and low learning
Trust
• Culture
– Suspicious, blame, independence, me first
• Task
– Not task focussed; low engagement
• Relationships
– Victimisation, polarised, abrasive, secrets
• Approach
– Inflexible, superficial, dictatorial, rigid
Learning
low trust and low learning
Trust
“not my place to act as social worker to my team
members.”
“Teamwork jarring is insoluble – some people are
just destined not to work together.”
“Basically I would say that our firm was a success
although we would have been better as a group of
three.”
“…this was done for selfish reasons as at the time I
had no desire to work with L as tensions between
us from the outset were high”
“…childlike tantrums…turned into a nightmare”
Learning
development of our matrix
Learning
Legal Eagles
Learning
Community
Trust
Dysfunctional
Friendly Society
high trust and high learning
Learning
• Culture
– Inclusive, fair, interdependence, team first
• Task
– Task focussed: our way; high engagement
• Relationships
– Open, valued, supportive, honest
• Approach
– Flexible, organic, consensus, responsive
Trust
high trust and high learning
“the great thing about the firm was that I felt that we
Learning all picked up on these weaknesses early on without
any conflicts arising”
“that doesn’t mean our differences have to separate
us…that is precisely what makes us work much better
together as a team”
“Greater than the sum of the parts springs to mind.”
“People were flexible about the work they took on and
were willing to try new things.”
“…responsibility was shared and that support would be
given if someone had a problem.”
“The other 2 members of the firm turned up on the
negotiation day to lend moral support and share in the
outcome”
Trust
future projects: e-portfolios
• A structured collection of evidence
• Belongs uniquely to an individual
• Draws the evidence together into a
coherent tale of learning
(David Baume, 2001)
the e-Portfolio Project
Objectives of Project
To discover:
• Is there a place for portfolios within legal education, the
legal profession and professional qualification?
• Are there any specific issues about legal education and
practice that we need to consider?
• Do portfolios provide an additional dimension to
vocational legal education and training that is currently
missing, or are they just more work and a passing fad?
outputs
• to develop a model which will allow students to
create a personal e-portfolio which will follow
them through their undergraduate, post graduate
and professional lives to include their training,
CPD and any subsequent academic
qualifications.
• Sufficiently adaptable design to accommodate
law students who seek not only to enter a
professional legal career but also those who
choose a legally related route or other
professional career.
partners
• Glasgow Graduate School of Law
Pilot project; bespoke VLE; p/g
• Oxford Institute of Legal Practice
e-portfolio application; open source VLE; p/g
• University of Westminster
new project; proprietary system VLE; u/g
habits of heart, head, hand…
• Important to development of professionals because it
enable us to learn from experience
• Students need to develop meta-cognitive skills because
these skills affect the ability to understand and make
sense of experience and are essential to the process of
reflection and working in situations of uncertainty
• Reflective practitioners draw on intuition to do what feels
right
• Asking students why they behaved or interpreted a
situation in a particular way provides useful insights not
only into how much and what they understand but also to
extent to which they draw on intuition
The Law Society of Scotland
Test of Professional Competence
Vocational Stage 1
Vocational Stage 2
Vocational Stage 3
The Portfolio
Skills Assessment Tools + Learning Logs + Significant Event Analysis
Diploma
+ Subject Assessment
Traineeship
+ Appraisal + Objective Setting
PCC
+ Attend.
Model Proposed by Neil
Stevenson at Diploma
Conference
Client
Feedback
Portfolio
Assess.
Sieberdam…
• KODOS Group, inter-university grouping, have
developed an environment similar to Ardcalloch
• GGSL is liaising with them on an international
project on IP in the Diploma, involving our
students and Dutch Business students in
Rotterdam’s Business Faculty.
• Sieberdam academic development team:
– Rudi Holzhauer
– Karen Jäger
– Pieter van der Hijden
TLE 2.0: large-scale
implementation of innovative
technologies
• Transactional Learning Environment (TLE) 2.0
• Development & use of suite of TLE 2.0 tools in seven transactions
across four faculties in Strathclyde University, and in three additional
law schools in England & Wales
• £202,500 funding by JISC, UKCLE and BILETA.
• Dissemination of TLE 2.0 as a fully-functioning environment, free, to
interested parties in HE and FE. Dissemination of evaluation results
at conferences and in papers to be published in peer-reviewed
journals and as book chapters.
• Post-project: dissemination of project applications; further
development of TLE within LTDU; archiving of all project
documentation on the project website for a minimum of three years
post-January 2008.
• TLE 2.0 leads to TLE3 – see other 3-D simulations:
contacts
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://zeugma.typepad.com