Interdisciplinary learning for the work-based student

In her paper at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2010, Caroline Coles (De Montfort University) took a look at teaching methods for law to benefit the work-based student.

Caroline’s slides are embedded below.

How can we provide legal education in a meaningful and useful way for work-based students, who may not wish to become qualified solicitors? Caroline looked at developments in the curriculum across the postgraduate and professional courses she teaches, designed to meet the expectations of the modern student and the increasing move to distance and work-based learning.

Caroline teaches on a certificate of professional development and on a variety of knowledge transfer schemes, an element in all research degrees at De Montfort. She offers short, multi-disciplinary modules utilising e-learning via podcasting, wikis to support interaction and online tests. Her paper covered design issues, the use of blended learning, peer to peer collaboration, pastoral support and issues in the affective domain.
 
She also reviewed the findings of two recent reports (JISC’s Great expectations of ICT and the CLEX Report from the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience) exploring the expectations of the modern student entering higher education and exploding some myths about their approaches to learning. Reference was also made to the 2006 Leitch Report on the characteristics of these students and their learning.
 
The developments presented seek to meet the challenge for higher education of benefitting the wider community whilst maintaining academic rigour.

Melissa Hardee (Hardee Consulting) reports:

Caroline explored the teaching of law in the context of other disciplines – not as law per se but as the law component that these studies might entail. As one member of the audience noted, this is ‘supply teaching’ by another name, but also about finding new opportunities for law teachers to use their skills and knowledge.
 
There are of course pedagogic and other considerations – particularly the content of materials for a multi-disciplinary audience and the actual mode of delivery. There is, for instance, no point labouring over statues and case law to non-law students – this is not what they need to know. Rather, it is the legal context and its implications for the particular discipline which they need to understand.
 
Another consideration is the risk of the non-lawyer believing himself to be legally competent from studying a little bit of law. These concerns can be dealt with by appropriate focus in the actual teaching of the law component.

About Caroline

Caroline Coles is a principal lecturer and solicitor at Leicester De Montfort Law School and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. The majority of her law teaching is with postgraduate distance learning students, covering the subjects of business law and intellectual property (IP). She also teaches research methodology for Masters courses, contributes to the assessment of a business enterprise course and teaches IP on research degrees. Caroline co-ordinates and develops e-learning for the law school.

Caroline makes contributions to social networking sites for e-learning and educational research, such as De Monfort’s Learning Exchanges blog, a distance learning special interest group (using Ning) and a Yammer microblogging network. She presented papers at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2008 on creativity in e-learning and at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2009 on Developing research skills. In December her article, The role of new technology in improving engagement among law students in higher education, appeared in JILT 2009 (3).

Last Modified: 9 July 2010