Interactive learning in an eConfucius drama classroom

Amy Shee (National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan) presented an innovative pedagogy for passive students and conventional teachers based on interactive learning in a guided drama classroom.

Download Amy’s full paper at the foot of this page.

Amy has developed a new dimension to the work she presented at the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2008 and 2009. Based on the argument for a modern Confucius to replace the western Socrates and the findings of an experimental drama classroom, this paper introduces a model of interactive learning suitable for passive students and conventional professors of ‘the East’. Amy hopes it may serve as a new pedagogy for Asian law schools, involving curriculum changes and attracting conversations between scholars of the west and the east on the nature and methods of interactive learning.

At the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2008 Amy and Abdul Paliwala (University of Warwick) presented a paper on local cultures and global influences on e-learning in Taiwan. The underlying issue was how to promote active, reflective, independent, collaborative and transactional legal education within a Taiwanese context of passive students under a culture of rote learning. It was proposed that this can be done using Confucian principles of self illumination, guided independence, respect for the teacher and self discipline, calling for a modern Confucius to do the job of Socrates to achieve conversational learning in Taiwan (and other Asian countries).

At the Learning in Law Annual Conference 2009 Amy and Abdul conducted an experiment on Interactive learning in a modern Confucius classroom. Conversational pedagogies and e-learning techniques were tailored to assist the modern Confucius in performing ‘guided interactive learning’. This involved a collaborative exercise named ‘Making our drama classroom’ in which the teacher acted as a mother goose to help passive students find their own ways towards constructivist learning. The underlying purpose was to encourage students to develop their inner strength and overcome traditional cultural constraints against active and reflective learning.

The latest stage in the development of eConfucius interactive learning proposes a progressive pedagogy with concrete suggestions for curriculum design and academic training. It has been observed in many Taiwan law schools that the western Socratic method does not work for conversational learning. In contrast, the exercise of ‘guided independent learning’ has led students to active and reflective learning.

Elizabeth Craig (University of Sussex) reports:

In an enthusiastic and lively presentation Amy introduced the audience to her online persona and to Chung Cheng University’s distance learning course on marriage and the family, with links to e-lectures and podcasts as well as online videos of classroom activities.
 
She has developed an eConfucius drama classroom, telling a story named Beauty and sorrows across boundaries followed by a discussion amongst students in groups of relevant legal issues.
 
Discussion initially focused on the practicalities of using e-learning facilities in this way, with Amy reporting that some of her students were paid to provide media support during lessons, and on the extent to which a sense of community had developed amongst the students.

About Amy

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Amy Huey-Ling Shee is a professor in the Department of Law at National Chung Cheng University (CCU), Taiwan, as well as Director of both the Research Centre for Legal eLearning & Interactive Teaching and the International Office.
 
Amy holds an LLM from LSE and a PhD from the University of Warwick. Her fields of research and teaching are sociological and transnational aspects of family and child laws, and she also endeavours to promote interactive learning extending her academic interests to law and literature, law and drama and e-learning in law.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010