UK legal education & ICT: state of the discipline,

state of the art…

Karen BartonSefton Bloxham

Patricia McKellarPaul 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

• 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

0102030405060708090

Use of VLE Customised

All HEIsPre-1992Post 1992

how VLEs are used

0102030405060708090

All HEIs

Resources

CourseworksubmissionDiscussion /ConferencingPlagiarismdetection

The UKCLE VLE ProjectAims and Objectives

• 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

• 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

• 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 feedbackPaperworld 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

We found that most students adopted a position somewhere along the spectrum of these two poles, and the position was variable depending on purpose of use.

Civil Court Action Project

Sheriff Clerk

Pursuer Firm

Defender Firm

Tutorial Preparation

Multimedia resources

TLE ProjectResources

WebcastsCivil

Practice Flow Chart

Tutorial

AssessmentProjectExam 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

Trust

12% 27%

20% 41%

development of our matrix

Trust

Dysfunctional

Learning Community

Friendly Society

Legal Eagles

Learning

low trust and low learningTrust

Learning

• Culture– Suspicious, blame, independence, me first

• Task– Not task focussed; low engagement

• Relationships– Victimisation, polarised, abrasive, secrets

• Approach– Inflexible, superficial, dictatorial, rigid

low trust and low learning

“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”

Trust

Learning

development of our matrix

Trust

Dysfunctional

Learning Community

Friendly Society

Legal Eagles

Learning

high trust and high learning

• Culture– Inclusive, fair, interdependence, team first

• Task– Task focussed: our way; high engagement

• Relationships– Open, valued, supportive, honest

• Approach– Flexible, organic, consensus, responsive

Learning

Trust

high trust and high learning“the great thing about the firm was that I felt that we 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”

Learning

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 ProjectObjectives of ProjectTo 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

Vocational Stage 1 Vocational Stage 2 Vocational Stage 3

The PortfolioSkills Assessment Tools + Learning Logs + Significant Event Analysis

The Law Society of Scotland Test of Professional Competence

Diploma + Subject Assessment

Traineeship+ Appraisal + Objective Setting

PCC + Attend.

Client Feedback

Portfolio Assess.

Model Proposed by Neil Stevenson at Diploma

Conference

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

karen.barton@strath.ac.uk s.bloxham@lancaster.ac.uk p.a.mckellar@warwick.ac.ukpaul.maharg@strath.ac.uk

http://zeugma.typepad.com