Digital Directions

LILAC09: Going ‘beyond text’, ‘out for a walk’ and ‘telling a couple of stories’ in legal education

The next four speakers seemed to be well connected in terms of looking at the law beyond the constraints of written statements, arguments, opinions, rules etc.  Firstly, Zenon Bankowski set the scene with a new AHRC funded project to look at uncovering the hidden information that is not perhaps visible through a textual approach to the law.  In particular, the problem a museum curator has when visitors refer to the catalogue to gain information on the object before them; and Wayne Rooney’s tempero-spatial awareness to know the past, present and future location of fellow players have commonalities that can be introduced to legal education.

Next, in a rather exciting outdoor session, Gary Watt took the audience on a guided walk around Warwick campus – in the manner of a school trip – identifying things relating to the law.

First stop, in the quasi-Roman amphitheatre, the hierarchical nature of the steps led on to discuss the building and edification of the campus.  Second up was the tree, sharing qualities with law such as branches, roots, growth, and a tendency to hurt if you run into it!  Lastly, the water feature highlighted qualities such as fluidity, man-made constraints yet eroding qualities and attempting to settle on an even level.

This was made interesting by noting the name given to Aristotle’s students (peripateikos) as they followed him walk around the gardens and courtyards; and the pedagogus slave who was responsible for walking a child to school safely.

The next two speakers looked at the narratives and versions of the facts.  Robert McPeake and Marcus Soanes gave a practical BVC perspective to identifying basic plots, story framing and identifying ‘outsiders’.  This also 'involved the audience' to look at the characters in a case and identify their role/plight/motives with a basic plotline such as tragedy, quest, rags-to-riches, comedy, rebirth etc.  Audience participation was certainly appearing to be a key theme of LILAC09!

Lastly, an excellent story was told by Dawn Watkins who will attempt to engage her students in more dry subjects (in this case final year trusts and equity, but could be done in tax or revenue) by empathizing with the key characters in a case, adding, perhaps, intrigue, mystery or even humour.  The gist of the story involve academics in hi-vis jackets on JCBs shouting through megaphones at students to "find the ratio!" whilst they sat on top of a hole in the ground that had been filled in, but previously contained a mass of lawyers, boundary disputers, mouners, judges and others!  It made sense at the time!

LILAC09: CSI meets Murder, she wrote!

 Carole McCartney (University of Leeds), Roger Summers (Staffordshire University) and John Cassella (Staffordshire University) presented their attempt to bring forensic science into the law curriculum, detailing a current project at Leeds in collaboration with forensic science at Staffordshire.

Carole allegedly dropped biology at school as soon as possible, but is raising the pertinent question of whether lawyers really understand ‘science’ to the extent that they can employ experts and lead their evidence in court.  The fast pace of developments in science is not perhaps reflected in the law curriculum or in professional CPD.

A module at Leeds has been re-designed to make theoretical lectures more interesting and practical by using a mock crime scene at Staffordshire (involving a dead student!) with a variety of good and bad crime scene analyses.

Roger and John (the experts!) brought a practical aspect to the presentation. The audience were encouraged to pair up and look at some information and comment on the evidential and inferential value posted on the rear wall.  This was a great task, although rather hard as we only had 10 minutes or so to look over quite a number of statements, photographs and other resources.  I thought it might be interesting to see how students deal with this type of 'real world' problem solving in teams - in particular how they divide their tasks, who does what etc etc.

Participants were encouraged to complete the survey on forensic science on law programmes. Further details of Carole's project Bringing forensic science into the law curriculum are available, which will inform an expert workshop hosted by UKCLE and the Physical Sciences Centre on 27 May 2009 in Leeds.

LILAC09: Project Panacea – Yes Minister meets Fantasy Football!

Paul Almond – University of Reading

Paul runs a final year module that looks at theoretical criminological concepts and applies them to a practical setting.  It appeared that students couldn’t always make the link between theory and how policy/practice should be formed.  The key question posed by Paul is ‘how can assessment tackle both elements and link them together’?

Paul was inspired by a Reading seminar on problem-based learning (PBL) which described a real-estate module using real world clients and student groups would work on their issues or policies.  The problem with the criminal justice system is the lack of, or lack of access to CJ ‘clients’ and government policy departments!  So, Paul created his own set – Project Panacea.  It sounds rather like Yes Minister! meets Fantasy Football as students receive a budget (£100m) and will be working for the ‘Minister for Justice’, Sir Geoffrey Hagan, and must justify their policy and allocation of funds.  A list of 20 options allows the student to select policies and then discuss their choices in a non-assessed group presentation.  An assessed written report ‘for the Minister’ is then required that should identify a coherent set of theoretical principles and show how they would work in practice.

The ‘client’ was created to be as realistic as possible –Paul highlighted that using stimuli such memos and press releases, email account (i.e. do not email your lecturer/tutor) and a blackboard site with videos, podcasts, and regular official-looking documentations all contribute towards making the project look realistic and plausible for the student groups.

Using some great videos (apparently the Rt Hon Minister is Paul’s father-in-law), the project does simulate the real world and professional practice.  As the project continues, government policy sways, the minister looks increasing more tired and dishevelled with a little haphazardness introduced along with a few changes in priorities!

Using an enquiry-based learning project to develop criminological understanding

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: enquiry_based_learning criminology)

Maximising the effectiveness of virtual worlds in teaching and learning

In the run up to LILAC 2009 (and also because it was taking place just around the corner at Strathclyde), I thought the CETIS-Eduserv-VW2009 would be of interest in relation to previous posts on Second Life and legal education, especially as Martin Jones and myself will be giving an overview of our own experiences at LILAC later this month.

Specifically, the event aimed to explore the following issues:

• What are the teaching situations for which Virtual Worlds are best suited?
• What are the policy issues which arise from using Virtual Worlds for Learning and Teaching?
• What are the technical characteristics/constraints of Virtual Worlds which have an impact on their use in Learning and Teaching?

The first speaker, Sheila Webber owns the Infolit iSchool in Second Life, and is at the University of Sheffield in real life!  Much of the presentation related to Inquiry-based learning illustrating that educators will go into SL with their own approaches to teaching, and not all teaching situations can be brought about in a virtual world.

Second up was David White from the Open Habitat project at Oxford University, who presented a really interesting diagram on the relationship between shared endeavours and the sense of being part of a group.  I'll try and get a copy from slideshare after the event closes (here it is!):

What I took from the diagram is that some tools encourage 'eventedness' (the sense of being part of a shared endeavour) and others may be good at giving participants a sense of being with others (co-presence).  So, for example, discussion forums can only go so far in terms of participants feeling that they really belong to a group, but can go reasonably high up the collaborative and productive scale.  MUVEs, however, can range from really good experiences to really bad experiences!  This means that the educator has to take the role of making sure that students are heading towards the top right of the graph so that they experience as much as possible, the sense of belonging and communal collaboration.

I was also inspired by the concept of 'latent presence'.  Often, when the user leaves the virtual environment there is no trace of their presence or activity unless resources are built or developed.  This suggested to me that we should aim to be constructive in terms of ensuring that something should be retainable from a virtual world session.  If it is purely seminar discussion, the the transcript could be kept for further reflection and analysis on an individual level, or as the next group activity.  Perhaps a blog or other commenting mechanism could be used to record the activity in real time.

Before the lunchbreak, Fiona Littleton from VUE at Edinburgh University looked at learning spaces - Holyrood Park on their SL island can be booked out for other university groups to use by booking slots.  This is something that would be far less common with real rooms and real resources, but can be commended for virtual spaces which perhaps have other resources built-in to enhance the use of virtual spaces.

After lunch, an overview on policy was given by Ren Reynolds from the Virtual Policy Network.  Looking at the concept of fear, the following were addressed:

• Parental fear
• Student fear
• Fear of students
• Fear of law
• Establishment

Newspaper reports and negative editorials were discussed with the audience and seemed to be common concerns across universities.  Codes of conduct and the transference of common or sharable 'blogging standards' into virtual worlds may need to be facilitated.

Some of the twitters from the event can be seen here, and the tag #cevw09 was used so many other blogs and reviews can be identified as they appear.  The session was also run concurrently in Second Life and here's a snapshot of the attendees:

Video killed the law lecturer?

After a short delay, here is the review of the afternoon session at the SWAP event earlier this week!

Phil Wane reviewed some of the technologies available to create video resources – and we’re not talking the Spielberg-type artistic or polished films, but rather short rough-and-ready clips that are designed to trigger students into either thinking about the topic or doing some further research.

Typically, Phil speaks for about 2-3 minutes on his mini ‘talking heads’ and covers anything from breaking news to updates on the module - even a short sell on ‘why you should attend the next lecture’ or a module options presentation! 

We looked at YouTube as a medium for quick and easy uploads, easy access, the possibility to make clips private to particular groups, how to remove the comment/rate features etc.  We also considered how good (or actually how mediocre) the recording equipment need be – frankly, most mobile phones have some built-in cam that could be used to record a quick session… so this is something that even the students could be asked to take up and submit short clips covering the news or a policy review.

Beyond the ‘talking heads’ we also considered other formats that could be created by using Audacity, Camtasia, Second Life videos and the CommonCraft Show, of which I’m a big fan and still planning to come up with my own version!  The subject centre’s Project Help Sheet Making Educational Movies – Without a Camcorder! was included in the pack as a useful introduction to the freebie Microsoft Movie Maker (usually comes ready installed on any PC) and also provides a guide to organizing and planning a movie clip from materials to narration and production.

I think the intention was to produce something ourselves in the session, but for various reasons we never got that far – but I will include my first attempt at a module movie that I hurriedly put together this past September for your amusement below!

E-learning SWAP-shop!

As it is being held on my own campus, I thought a one-day event on Authentic assessment, e-portfolios and e-learning would be of interest.  Run by the Social Policy and Social Work Subject Centre, I thought there would be some overlap that could be brought to the field of legal education.

Professor Richard Kimbell - leader of the e-scape project and Professor of Technology Education, Goldsmiths, University of London started the morning session with an overview of Project e-scape: e-solutions for creative assessment in portfolio environments.  I hadn't come across this previously, and neither had a few other Scottish delegates whom I spoke with during the coffee break - although the main focus of e-scape seems to be secondary education so that might be why.

Richard's presentation focused on two key issues -portfolio creation and assessment - my own notes reflected more on the issue of assessment and in particular Pollitt's comparative pairs methodology (also known as Thurstone's Methodology (see pp 57-59 here) to create a rank ordering that is more reliable than typical criteria based assessments.  I'm keen to have a go at this, especially for a short piece of formative assessment and think that peer-assessment (getting the students to do the judgment on which of two pieces of work is the better) would be an interesting way to get the students to read and evaluate their own work.

After lunch, a choice of three workshops were advertised:

• Workshop 1: Authentic voices : using audio and video resources within the “Clydetown” virtual community - Janice West , Glasgow Caledonian University.
  This workshop will allow participants to work with the resources of Spoken Word Services to create online learning and teaching resources.
• Workshop 2: Creating your own video resources - Phil Wane, Nottingham Trent University.
  Utilising some of the new handheld digital video equipment that is available, participants will develop proposals for how this technology can be used to support learning and teaching
• Workshop 3: Making best use of ‘learning objects’ - Neil Ballantyne , IRISS.
  Demonstration of some of the growing number of e-learning resources currently available for social services education, and discussion of how they can be integrated into a blended learning environment.

I signed up for the second one as I was familiar with some of the Spoken Word Services in the first, and to be honest, not too sure what the last one was!  The workshop was really interesting and sparked a lot of thoughts that might be best in a post of their own tomorrow... TBC!

Twitter-Knitters and Conferences further afield...

A recent blog entry by John Kirriemuir amused me, as I've yet to spot a twitter, or indeed a knitter, at any conference!  Perhaps I'm not paying enough attention to the delegates or attending the 'right' events...

However, I thought I'd make mention of a few conferences still to come this academic year - if anyone attends, please let me know if you see any knitters!

The Commonwealth Law Conference (CLC) will be holding their biennial conference in Hong Kong, also the Commonwealth Legal Education Association (CLEA) are in Hong Kong for their biennial conference at which myself and Patricia McKellar will be holding an e-learning workshop.

Itechlaw will be in Seattle in May and the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Conference will be in Perth, Australia, in July.