Learning to solve legal cases:

The effects of instructional support

Fleurie Nievelstein

Tamara van Gog

Gijs van Dijck*

Els Boshuizen

Open University of the Netherlands

*Faculty of law, Tilburg University

Reasoning about cases complex skill:

• Domain complexity- Interpretation legal concepts- Using external sources / knowledge about the structure- Adversarial reasoning - High number of non routine task aspects

• Students’ knowledge structures

Problematic for preferred instructional method: ‘learning by doing’

Is ‘learning by doing’ effective for learning ?

Previous research suggests high cognitive load caused by:

• Incomplete conceptual knowledge • Search process

(Nievelstein, Van Gog, Boshuizen, & Prins, 2008; in press)

Instructional support

• Optimize cognitive load; more capacity for processes effective for learning - focus on important task aspects- trying to understand the underlying legal framework- intention to improve reasoning performance

• Cognitive load is measured by the mental effort scale

Experiment 1

79 first-year law students Tilburg University

• Pre-test• 2 Training cases• 1 Test case • Mental effort

Experiment 1

(1) Concept explanations and Condensed civil code

(2) Concept explanations

(complete civil code)

(3) Condensed civil code (4) No support‘learning by doing’

(complete civil code)

Results reasoning on test

• Support by condensed civil code during training leads to sig. better performance on the reasoning test than students not supported with the condensed civil code

• No interaction effects • No effects on mental effort• Higher efficiency

• Lot of room for improvement…!

Performance test

0

5

10

15

20

25

ConceptsCond.Code

Concepts Cond.code No support

Max 100 points

Experiment 2

• 75 first-year students & 36 third-year students

• Pre-test• 2 Training cases• 1 Test case• Complete civil code• Mental effort

Experiment 2

(1) Worked-out examples and Proces steps

(2) Worked-out examples

(3) Proces steps (4) No support‘learning by doing’

Results experiment 2

• Support by worked examples during the training phase leads to significant better results on reasoning during the test

• Applies for both, first-year and third-year students! No expertise reversal effect!

Performance test first-year students

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

WorkedEx Steps WorkedEx Steps No support

Max 100 points

Comparing first-year students exp. 1 and 2

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Cond.code Worked examples

Max 100 points

Performance test third-year students

0102030405060708090

WorkedEx Steps WorkedEx Steps No Support

Max 100 points

Mental effort• Students who studied worked examples reported

less mental effort (during learning) than students who solved the case with no support or problem steps

• No differences on mental effort reported on the test, but....

• Studying examples leads to higher performance

Practical / Theoretical implications

• Support by worked examples improves learning • Higher efficiency • No expertise reversal effect; probably due to the

domain complexity

Thank you for your attention

Questions, remarks??

Fleurie Nievelstein

Fleurie.Nievelstein@ou.nl