Following the successful pilot event (read the blog post here) in Manchester in November 2010, UKCLE staged a follow up National Law Students Forum in Birmingham in June 2011. The event was attended by 50 nominated law student representatives from university law schools throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, including some who had attended in November 2010. UKCLE was greatly assisted in this venture by a small group of students and academics who had formed a steering group after the November event.
The full report on the event can be accessed on the UKCLE Student Forum website.
The event began with Sefton Bloxham, the event organiser, indicating the key issues (identified from feedback from the previous event) that would be addressed and ending by identifying three key themes for the event – engagement, empowerment and enjoyment! This was followed by an unforgettable ‘icebreaker’ session led by Rebecca Huxley-Binns (Nottingham Trent University), which set the tone for the remainder of the event.
After lunch, there were two parallel sessions. Victoria Passant (NUS Student Engagement Officer) talked about student engagement from an NUS perspective, encouraging students to get involved in local projects, and Linda Graham (Student Development Officer, University of Northumbria) talked about approaches to peer mentoring. Linda had participants sharing examples of good practice via a ‘brick in the wall’ display which remained on show for the duration of the event.
The parallel sessions were followed by an interactive session on mooting and communication skills, led by Rebecca Huxley-Binns, at which participants were able to exchange ideas on all aspects of mooting from organisation of competitions to advocacy skills for mooting.
The second morning began with a session, led by Sefton Bloxham, on shared student experiences of legal education. Discussion took place in small groups on issues of concern to students. A number of issues had been identified though responses to a questionnaire issued in advance of the event, but on the day each group was left to determine its own topic. Interestingly, most groups opted to talk with some passion about how to improve informal communications with law staff.
This was followed by a presentation on LLB student perceptions of assessment and feedback: Lessons from the National Students’ Survey by Lisa Webley (University of Westminster) which provoked further questions and discussion. After a break , there followed two more parallel sessions. Ben Fitzpatrick (University of York) led a participatory session on problem-based learning, drawing on his experience of developing the law programme at York, during which groups of students were confronted with a problem and asked to identify the legal issues involved. And Michael Bromby (Glasgow Caledonian University) spoke about simulated learning, introducing students to a range of ways in which simulations have been used within legal education, prompting some very interesting discussion around the respective merits of online and/or ‘real’ simulations. Michael was also tweeting throughout the event, updating followers and engaging with presenters and participants.
After lunch, and much anticipation, Sefton Bloxham reminded participants of the question he had asked on the first morning – why are you all here? He stressed that if the Forum was to continue then it was in the hands of those present to grasp the nettle and establish an organisation for the future. Sefton introduced Clare Weaver (Oxford University Press) and Tom Laidlaw (LexisNexis), both of whom had been in attendance throughout the event. Both Clare and Tom welcomed the development of a student forum and indicated that both publishers may be willing to offer some form of financial support in the future. At this point, Sefton announced, to some looks of horror, that the presenters, facilitators and potential sponsors would be leaving the room and the student participants were to be left to form a new steering group/committee and establish an action plan for the future.
UKCLE has no record of what happened during the next hour or so, other than the fact that it was noisy, but at various stages individuals emerged for refreshment, reporting that “it’s getting a bit chaotic” and “it’s a bit like Lord of the Flies in there”. Finally, after about 90 minutes, the doors opened and the presenters were informed that “a committee has been formed”! There followed a brief plenary session in which the new committee identified themselves and pledged to set up a discussion forum for participants to continue the discussion of the key issues – a name, objectives, membership, structure, future activities, sustainability (resourcing). That discussion forum was set up the same evening and all participants at the event are encouraged to contribute to the discussion which will determine the future shape of the new organisation.
The committee are:
This was a highly successful event which appears to have been enjoyed by all participants and which has produced an outcome that exceeds the expectations of the organisers. UKCLE is confident that the new committee will succeed in establishing a new, independent, law student network which will, in time, be able to act as a ‘student voice’ for all law students.
Visitors
Over the year 1 Aug 10 - 20 Jul 11 (with comparisons to last year in brackets) there has been 3,802 visits (+89.72%) with 5,081 page views (+61.10%) coming from 117 different countries (80 last year), the bulk of which being from the UK, but still representing all of the continent and sub-continent regions and a vast array of legal systems:
Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows short updates (or tweets) to be constructed of 140 characters or less. An update will include the name of the account holder, prefixed with the @ symbol and may also include a hyperlink if entered by the user. A tweet or update can be viewed by anyone unless the account is restricted to those who request access to view the account. No registration or login is required to view tweets, but in order to reply to them or to receive regular tweets as they are published then a free account is required.
Launched in 2006, Twitter has become a popular tool for providing short pieces of information or opinion across a variety of sectors. The number of twitter users is estimated at 12 million users in the United States alone although there is no data to suggest how many accounts are in active use, the frequency or regularity of account usage, or indeed the content of the short messages that are created. Nielson Online reported in March 2008 a total of 14 million US visitors to twitter, Emarkerter.com calculated 6 million US users in 2008, rising to 12 million in 2009 and 18 million in 2010.
Initially, Twitter was predominantly used by private individuals and celebrities, however, with a change to the website’s prompt where updates are entered into Twitter from ‘What are you doing?’ to ‘What is happening?’ and the widespread update and adoption of Twitter in general, more businesses and organisations are using Twitter to supplement their website, blog or online presence in general.
Overview
UKCLE’s twitter account was first used on 13 April 2010. In the one year period to 12 April 2011 there have been 182 updates to the account. These tweets comprise:
The account was maintained by Michael Bromby and Lauren Goodchild, and subsequently by Michael Bromby, Danielle Lysaght and Sarah Stacey. The updates were made using the main twitter site, the co-authoring service Hootsuite and the automated service Twitterfeed.
Manually entered tweets
The manually entered updates predominantly featured news relating to UKCLE events or additions to the website, dates of conference and events. They also contained web links using the shortening function of bit.ly or ow.ly. Manual entered tweets also included the #followfriday feature which has become a practice among many twitter users to highlight some of the twitter users that they find interesting and provide a list of names or user accounts on a Friday along with the hash-tag #ff or #followfriday. This was adopted by the UKCLE account in the earlier part of the year to expand our presence on twitter and to gain a wider audience. This would frequently result in either a public or direct (private) message with a note of thanks for the mention, or inclusion of the @hea_UKCLE tag in a #ff tweet of their own. The concept of follow Friday was adopted slightly to have a thematic grouping of users each week. Examples include:
#followfriday #ff with a law news theme: @LegalNewsUK @TimesLaw @inner_temple @ScotsLawNews @IP_Law_News,Fri Apr 30 13:20:13 +0000 2010
#FollowFriday UK academic session starts soon - law librarian theme: @bulawlibrary @thelawbod @SueHouse @UWElawlibrarian @nuliblaw,Fri Sep 03 09:05:02 +0000 2010
#ff student theme: National Law Student Forum this week http://ow.ly/34Spc @kslawsoc @lselawsociety @Essex Uni Law Soc @PortsmouthLaw,Fri Nov 05 10:48:48 +0000 2010
In total, the manually entered tweets comprised 50% (n=90) of all UKCLE twitter activity. #ff tweets were made on 17 occasions and a total of 75 twitter users were given a mention as part of this feature.
Re-tweets
Re-tweets (RTs) are the repetition of fellow user updates that are then circulated to the original account holder’s followers. The purpose of an RT is not only to circulate content more widely, but also acts as an advertising mechanism to introduce users to each other as each RT contains the content as well as the username and logo of the original author. Example RTs are:
RT @lilianedwards: Really good analysis costs of online Masters delivery - real value in tutoring not content - http://tinyurl.com/2vv98b7,Wed Nov 24 15:37:41 +0000 2010
RT @colmmu: Legal Think Tank Calls for Major Shake Up of Legal Education http://me.lt/4UmA, Mon Nov 22 18:08:17 +0000 2010
RT @cearta: Tech and Law - Find ECJ (European Court Justice) cases quickly from the case reference http://is.gd/8Mbr6H <~ Very useful indeed, Fri Jan 14 10:52:40 +0000 2011
The UKCLE RTs (%, n=35) were drawn from 28 different users. This reflected the wide range of accounts that were followed by UKCLE and, to some extent, indicated accounts which were felt to contain relevant and reliable content both for the tweet that was re-tweeted and their tweets in general.
Automated tweets
Automated tweets arose from a number of services that were programmed to send out alerts in response to RSS updates elsewhere on the web. These arose from the Digital Directions blog, Julian Webb’s blog hEaD SPACE, the UKCLE news alert and the UKCLE slideshare site. The service
Twitterfeed allows the inclusion of other tweets drawn from RSS feeds to be made automatically. For example:
DIGITAL DIRECTIONS: Casebooks: from Langdell to H2O: Earlier this week Kevin Ramakrishna at the Best Practices f... http://bit.ly/b6C1MI,Thu Sep 23 14:46:47 +0000 2010
hEaD SPACE: Live blogging from ILEC IV: At Stanford University for the fourth International Legal Ethics Conferenc... http://bit.ly/c9PwKV,Sat Jul 17 19:19:48 +0000 2010
UKCLE NEWS: Using simulation in teaching and learning: Simshare SIMPLE and the OER approach: This is a collabor... http://bit.ly/9RSrtg,Tue Nov 09 10:06:23 +0000 2010
UKCLE SLIDESHARE: Podcasting: Slides for the presentation by Chris Hull (St Mary’s University College Twickenham... http://bit.ly/c7PGuS,Wed Apr 28 09:56:12 +0000 2010
These four were chosen as there is little or no editorial control over the automated service other than deleting a tweet (if it is thought to be irrelevant or undesirable) once it has been retweeted. From these automated tweets, 24 arose from Digital Directions, 5 from hEaD SPACE, 13 from UKCLE NEWS and 12 from SLIDESHARE, totaling 54, or 31% of all activity.
Followers
It is possible to monitor who follows a twitter account. This is not an indication of active participation but does offer an indication of the level of readership and, more interestingly, the people who have chosen to follow the UKCLE account.
As of 12 April, there were 394 followers. This number has altered throughout the year, however it has in general increased rather than decreased. There has been no detailed analysis, but the followers can be categorized broadly into three distinct groups: HEIs (such as law schools and universities), bodies corporate (such as law firms or publishers) and individuals (such as academics or students).
One measure of active participation is to examine whether the web links provided within the tweet are followed. All automated tweets containing hyperlinks (31% of all tweets, n=54) were shortened using the bit.ly website. This service offers some analysis of the number of clicks that are made through the short link to the full url, although this is limited to the automated tweets only.
An indicator of perceived value or interest in the UKCLE tweets can be gained from whether the updates are re-tweeted by other users. 47 tweets were re-tweeted by a total of 62 users.
Lists
Twitter users are permitted to create lists of users which they follow and give such a list a name. These lists may be privately kept by the user or made public for others to see and follow. UKCLE created 8 such lists to assist followers in finding relevant legal or educational twitter feeds:
The lists were not exhaustive, however they were maintained and updated when new twitter accounts were discovered.
UKCLE appeared on a variety of lists (n=22 on 12 April 2011) under a variety of list names:
Following
The UKCLE account follows a number of notable persons or organisations. Largely, these are academics, practitioners/law firms, news reporters, students or similar organisations in the UK or internationally. The prime reason for selecting followers was to identify other tweets worth of re-tweeting. The UKCLE account was following 397 other accounts on 12 April 2011. There may be some overlap between followers and following as there is a perceived practice of following those who follow you as a matter of courtesy or common practice. However, there are a large number of spam accounts or accounts which simply act as advertising and not as conversations.
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