Chair's report: Michael Bromby

Parallel Session 3 (Chancellor’s 1)

Chair: Michael Bromby (Glasgow Caledonian University)

The personalisation of the curriculum: the Programme Overview Browser on the City Law School Bar Professional Training Course.

Marcus Soanes (barrister and principal lecturer on the BPTC at City University) presented an interesting approach to supporting learners and delivering material in a logical fashion – making analogies to carpet weaving with yarn (the various modules) to craft a rug (the syllabus). The Programme Overview Browser offers students a weekly overview that links to the Moodle site where various silo-like parts of each module are accessed.

Lots of discussion arose from the case studies that re-appeared at various points throughout the course, adding visible threads to the rich tapestry of their BPTC! Work still to be completed included an evaluation using questionnaires and a cognitive walk-through with some students to understand how they use this system for their learning activities.

Tuning in, not zoning out: teaching students legal skills via a multimedia learning hub.

Sanmeet Kaur, lecturer, and Emily Allbon, law librarian, (also from City University) demonstrated how they have engaged undergraduate students to tune-in to some visual resources, and not to zone-out from either underwhelming content or overwhelming amounts of it! Resources are available at http://learnmore.lawbore.net and their presentation focussed on how to take a refreshing look at traditional content.

Overview

Both presentations examined how students learn, how virtual learning environments or online content can be scaffolded, and how resources are presented in such a way as to promote a holistic view for two quite different programmes (LLB and BPTC) at the same institution. Both papers described issues specific to the study of law which may be encountered by any provider of legal education, yet the approaches taken could also be adapted by other disciplines to support different needs and requirements.

Last Modified: 31 January 2011