Supporting law teaching: training and teaching

Presentation at UKCLE seminar on teaching and learning for legal skills trainers, 16 February 2005

Peter’s address provided a framework within which the remaining presentations at the event could be viewed and appraised.

Dr Peter Clinch is an Information Specialist for Law at Cardiff University. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students legal research skills for many (too many!) years. He has contributed to the IOLIS, co-produced a video on Using Halsbury’s Laws and is the author of the UKCLE guidance note on Teaching legal research. Since 1996 he has been advisor on library provision and legal research skills training to the General Council of the Bar for England and Wales in relation to their Bar Vocational Course.

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This presentation is divided into four sections:

1. A brief history of VLEs
2. Definitions of basic terminology
3. Some theories of learning
4. Pedagogical models and e-learning

A brief history of VLEs

The software that provides the functions of a virtual learning environment has been around since the early 1990s. Computer-aided or computer-based learning (CAL or CBL) was popular in the early 1990s and underpinned the development of many hours of courseware through the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP). Each project covered a different subject area, and for the teaching of law in England and Wales the end product of the TLTP Programme was the IOLIS courseware CD.

With the Internet and the increased development of networks within and between educational institutions, it became possible for different learners scattered across the country to access resources and communicate about them through bulletin boards and e-mail. In our use of the Internet we have moved from the creation of a few relatively undynamic webpages reproducing the text of lectures to complex websites and tools which will support a range of types of text, video and images.

Four further developments mark out the modern VLE from its predecessors:

1. Content management is more sophisticated; it can be changed easily and quickly (rather than having to wait for the issue of a new CD).
2. Student activities can be tracked and achievement and assessment recorded.
3. Communication between the tutor, the learner and learning support specialists is possible via e-mail or conferencing.
4. Links can be created to other administrative and resource systems, both inside and outside the organisation.

Perhaps a fifth development may be noted; that the author software now produced for VLEs is rather more intuitive than that available in the early 1990s and today’s authors are in less need of the support of a software developer in the back office.

Already some jargon and terminology has crept in which needs to be defined, so I pass to my second topic.

Definitions of basic terminology

I want to discuss just five concepts: e-learning, blended learning, MLE, VLE and information literacy.

I am going to dispose of the last one first, because to my mind if we don’t get the educational rationale right for what we are trying to do in the e-learning arena, we will be wasting our time.

Information literacy (to paraphrase the American Library Association definition) is concerned with training students to realise when information is needed and providing them with the skills to locate, evaluate and use the needed information. This package of skills can only be learnt if information literacy training is embedded within the curriculum. Partnerships need to have developed between all those involved in the teaching and learning process – not just lecturing staff but also library staff and IT trainers. If learning opportunities provided by support staff and tutors are not integrated within the curriculum then, whatever the medium of delivery, ranging from traditional chalk and talk to sophisticated electronic software, the training will lack timeliness and focus and the student will not be motivated to learn.

Now, the second term to define: e-learning. According to an Australian commentator, Derek Stockley, e-learning is:

the delivery of a learning, training or education program by electronic means. E-learning involves the use of a computer or electronic device (eg a mobile phone) in some way to provide training, educational or learning material.

Now, my third term, blended learning. Blended learning is e-learning combined with other, more traditional training methods. So, e-learning might be used as a prequel or sequel to face-to-face events. According to the report of the EUNIS European E-Learning Workshop, published in June 2004, e-learning is mostly used as part of blended learning; entirely online courses are in the minority. We will see in my discussion on pedagogical approaches how this integration of e-learning within other methodologies has much to commend itself. The art is to take the best qualities of each training method and blend them together to create a learning environment which offers more opportunities for the creation and experience of quality learning events.

The same EUNIS workshop recognised that blended learning can encompass several different ways of blending:

• blending of course delivery – mixing electronic and face-to-face activities
• blending of location, where online activity can be used in a classroom environment but with a tutor present, or the online activity can be carried out in study areas or off-campus
• blending of resources – online and paper materials can be brought together and used together by the learner

My fourth definition: MLE or Managed Learning Environment. The report of the JISC Managed Learning Environments Workshop held in early 2000 suggested that the definition of a MLE would be that:

a Managed Learning Environment is a system that uses technology to enhance and make more effective the network of relationships between learners, teachers and organisers of learning, through integrated support for richer communication and activities.

An MLE will therefore include the timetabling system, the student records system, learning resources such as the library catalogue, financial and business systems and quality assurance systems. An MLE might be widened to include external organisations, such as the college or university bookshop, so that there is seamless movement between any of these systems.

So, the fifth definition: VLE or Virtual Learning Environment. Put simply, the term VLE is used to refer to interactions of various kinds which take place between learners and users.

I have found the JISC definitions rather cumbersome, and perhaps it is easier to define a VLE by what it usually contains – although there is no single recipe for a VLE. The common features include:

• controlled access to the curriculum
• tracking of student activity and achievement
• support for online learning
• communication between online learner, tutor and support staff
• links to other administrative systems both in-house and externally

As well as presenting this definition of VLE I thought it would be useful to provide some statistics which indicate how widely UK universities use VLE software. In 2001 and again in 2003 the Universities and Colleges Information System Association (UCISA) carried out national surveys of the use of VLEs in higher education universities and colleges in the UK. The results are illuminating.

The 2003 survey found that 86% of higher education institutions (HEIs) had a VLE (97% of post-1991 HEIs, 84% of pre-1991 HEIs, 67% of HE colleges). Over 50% of HEIs were using more than one VLE, and 17.7% were using three VLEs.

In terms of the software used, 43.2% of HEIs were using Blackboard, 34.1% WebCT, 26.1% were “intranet based”, 22.7% were using an in-house product and 19.3% were using FirstClass. Other products were used by under 7% each.

Looking at the integration of library resources into VLEs, in post-1991 HEIs 5% were fully integrated and 64% claimed some integration, while 23% had no connection and 5% had no VLE. In pre-1991 HEIs none were fuly integrated and 38% had some integration, while 33% had no connection between library resources and VLE and 24% had no VLE.

Before I leave the section on definitions I want to briefly highlight a development which is not a VLE but enables access to electronic services to be embedded in Web-based units. It is the INHALE Project (Information for Nursing and Health in a Learning Environment). The project was based at the University of Huddersfield and ran from 2000 to 2002. It developed a set of standalone Web-based information skills units which can be successfully embedded within a commercial VLE such as Blackboard or WebCT. The successor INFORMS Project has developed a number of subject based information skills modules. Institutions can join the INFORMS Project and gain access to the software and use it to develop their own information skills modules. In fact, several university law librarians have done so and created short instructional modules on how to use individual law databases.

Now, returning to the survey results, as far as the pedagogical use of VLE is concerned the survey found that the greatest numbers of institutions have high levels of use of VLEs as supplementary to face to face teaching, that is as part of blended learning, and low levels of integrated or fully online use.

Some theories of learning

In the time available to me this will be a very brief and selective review, but I hope to focus on how the various theories should underpin what we do in legal research skills training and the design of the medium we choose to use to deliver the learning. I shall concentrate on:

• behaviourist theories
• social cognition
• experiential learning

First, the behaviourist school of thought. In my view, at the classroom practice level, the behaviourist approaches appear to bear little relationship to what actually happens in information skills training. I can see little direct application of Pavlov’s stimulus-response conditioning. Skinner drew several conclusions from his work, one of which I feel has validity in the way we devise learning; that the learning process should be short and grow out of previously learned behaviour. When designing learning events we need to think in terms of incremental, step-by-step learning.

However, Skinner’s approach focuses on changes in behaviour as a result of response-reward situations without providing any insight into changes in behaviour which result from learners gaining a deeper understanding of a situation.

As a result of the narrow and simple stimulus-response theory of the behaviourists, theories of social cognition developed to deal with the complexity of human behaviour and learning. Followers of this school try to explain how our awareness of the outside world is internalised either through assimilation (or fitting ideas into your mind) or accommodation (by changing your existing understanding). Understanding the solution to a problem comes only through internalising and gaining an insight into the whole picture, not just the individual components. Further, learning comes only through interaction with other learners and the learning task.

This approach has application in our work, for we are often concerned with trying to convey the concept of structures and categories and how components fit together. So, rather than teach students by rote how to search a single database, we ought to convey principles about information search techniques and motivate students through lesson design, timing in the year and integration of subject matter with other parts of the curriculum, to pursue the testing of those principles across a range of sources.

An important element of the theory in practice is that learners should discover skills at their own speed and in a supported environment. Cognitivist researchers, such as the Russian Lev Vygotsky, place emphasis on learner potential rather than achievement and have led to an increased role for supported learning using techniques such as scaffolding, group work, and guidance and coaching. Scaffolding is where the tutor continually adjusts the content of their help in response to the learner’s performance, moving gradually to a point where the learner has acquired independent problem solving skills. This technique clearly has application in our information skills teaching, where the end goal of our work is the independent legal researcher. But how far do we really appreciate that our learners are starting from quite different levels of knowledge and that we ought to be creating learning situations which will assist, stimulate and carry forward each learner with equal efficacy?

Another aspect of the theory is the importance of interaction between learners. Learners learn extremely effectively from one another. This should inform our design of lessons and tasks. This concept of peer learning is different from group learning, which I know colleagues adopt in teaching legal research skills.

The concept of experiential learning explores a cyclical pattern of learning, from experience through reflection and conceptualisation to action and so onto further experience. This process is most widely known through Kolb’s learning cycle.

The principle is that ideas are formed and re-formed through a cycle of experience. The learning process starts with a concrete learning experience; the learners need time to reflect on what they have learnt by drawing up theories and processing the new ideas through ‘abstract conceptualisation’. During the final stage, ‘active experimentation’, learners use the theories they have drawn up to test and solve problems. Kolb’s learning cycle is an iterative process that describes learning not only as a process of receiving information and converting it to knowledge, but also emphasises the importance of reflection and action.

Those of you involved with vocational law courses may know that there is increasing use of the ‘reflective journal’ concept in learning. It admirably illustrates Kolb’s principles. One example frequently employed with Bar Vocational Course (BVC) students training to become barristers is that following classroom-based instruction in the basic skills of advocacy and court procedure students are required to make a number of visits to local courts to observe the proceedings. Each student creates a personal journal or diary of what they saw and reflects on how it confirms or is at variance with the classroom-based work. They are also encouraged to reflect on the advocacy they have observed as a way of improving their own level of performance in the skill.

The same Kolb learning cycle principles lie behind the assessment requirements for legal research on the BVC and Legal Practice Course. They require students to submit a research trail, indicating the research strategy with reflective comments on the value of the sources employed. On some BVC courses students are required to create a personal development portfolio (or PDP) containing selected pieces of work with reflections compiled by the student on their attainment. It has been suggested to me that pieces of legal research work could be placed in the file and students required to reflect on their research performance as a way of developing their skill throughout the course through self critique.

There is valuable comment on the application of Kolb’s theory to the training of library users in the Winter 2004 issue of Legal Information Management in the paper presented at the 2004 BIALL Annual Conference by Sharon Markless.

Not everyone learns the same way. It is important that we use this knowledge to design learning which motivates learners. One particular learning strategy or way of learning which has been identified is deep versus surface learning.

In surface learning, the learning is either designed or the learners themselves adapt to a purely utilitarian approach. The learners merely match their learning to the requirements of the course, simply regurgitating the information required, but not retaining the new knowledge for any length of time. Deep learning, on the other hand, takes place when learners absorb or digest new information, and this fundamentally changes the way learners think about and use information.

Now, my point in putting forward this brief review of the major learning theories is to show that there are important insights which need to be taken into account in the design of e-learning materials. As Markless notes, the tutor is not there in person to support the learning process so appropriate learning has to be built into the materials. Online transmission of contents or sets of closed, mechanistic questions are not likely to engage, challenge or lead to deep learning.

This brings me to the fourth part of my presentation and the consideration of the pedagogy of virtual learning – the system through which the use of VLE may optimise learning.

Pedagogical models and e-learning

The work of one educationalist is pre-eminent; Prof Diana Laurillard. Her book Rethinking university teaching: a framework for the effective use of educational technology was first published in 1993 and has become a seminal work.

The most lucid and valuable discussions I have found are in two publications: a JISC funded report by Britain and Liber published in 1999 and a paper by R M Crawley, an academic in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Brighton. The JISC report not only discusses the theoretical background to the pedagogy but applies and tests the theory against several commercial VLE products.

Laurillard proposes that teaching media can be divided into four categories; discursive, adaptive, interactive and reflective. Discursive media should allow the student and teacher to exchange views freely. Students must be able to act on, generate and receive feedback appropriate to the topic goal, whilst the teacher must be able to reflect on the student’s actions and descriptions in order to adjust their own descriptions, making them more accessible for the student.

Adaptive media allow the teacher to use the relation between their and the student’s understanding to determine topic goals for the continuing session. Interactive media enable students, acting to achieve topic goals, to receive meaningful and intrinsic feedback – “something in the ‘world’ must change observably as a result of their actions”. Finally, reflective media facilitate teacher support for the process by which students link feedback on their actions to the topic goal. It is imperative here that the student determines the pace of the learning process, so that they may reflect upon what has been learned so far.

Crawley’s version of Laurillard’s basic, single student model (known as the Conversational Model) redraws Laurillard’s model making it rather easier to understand. There are three columns; in the centre are activities which are interactive and take place through a medium. Other activities to left and right of the centre column are internal to either the teacher or the student.

The model incorporates all four categories of media. Adaption (stages 5 and 10) and reflection (stages 11 and 12) are internal to both teacher and student. Their dialogue is at two levels transmitted over the media: discursive (stages 1 to 4) and interactive (stages 6 to 9).

Laurillard then considers the properties of different media and the forms of learning experience they support. She identifies five media forms which cover all the 12 activities identified in the model. They are: narrative, interactive, communicative, adaptive and productive. These can be mapped to different kinds of learning experience, the delivery method and the media forms utilised:

Learning Experience	Method/technologies	Media Forms
attending, apprehending	print, TV, video, DVD	narrative
investigating, exploring	library, CD, DVD, Web resources	interactive
discussing, debating	seminar, online conference	communicative
experimenting, practising	laboratory, field trip, simulation	adaptive
articulating, expressing	essay, product, animation, model	productive

Five principal media forms with the learning experiences they support and the methods used to deliver them (Laurillard 2002)

To take one of the media as an example, narrative media represent a linear presentation and are non-interactive. Despite their non-interactive form, books have established themselves as the supreme educational medium over several centuries. The more recent technological developments of TV, video and DVD similarly display linear presentational characteristics.

Laurillard then goes on to compare how each type of media compares with the interactions described in the Conversational Model. This very usefully helps not only to identify what each media form undertakes best, but which particular interactions in the model particular media cannot support. In this way, media can be selected to perform the tasks they do best for each of the 12 interactions described in the model. Laurillard also observes that each of the media forms can be combined to produce better coverage; for example the narrative medium of audio is enhanced with exercises, interactive Web resources are enhanced by the inclusion of a communicative environment.

So, the development of a pedagogy for the effective use of learning technologies leads us to what has been defined already as blended learning.

Thus far I have presented only Laurillard’s model in the form of student-teacher interaction, but Crawley develops the model to describe group-student interactions. Given the limited time available to me I direct you to his paper for further discussion of the model.

The discussion on e-learning and pedagogy is far from over and much investigative work continues. In 2003 the JISC Committee for Learning and Teaching funded a new e-Learning and Pedagogy programme to run until Autumn 2007. The programme focuses on three areas; e-learning and pedagogy, technical frameworks for e-learning and innovation. A number of desk studies have already or are about to be completed.

When giving instruction, what is the single most important quality a question should possess?

The answer put forward was that the content of the question should be at the limits of the learner’s understanding of the topic.

In all the information skills training we undertake I suggest we must seek to meet this challenge. In a face-to-face learning situation, given the range of prior knowledge of our learners it is difficult enough to pitch the question at the right level in a class. In a class we are able to react to the verbal and non-verbal cues given by the learner and re-phrase the question as appropriate. But, how do we rise successfully to this challenge in the electronic environment so that the content and timing of questions are pitched at the optimum point of benefit to learners?

Perhaps the answer lies in Laurillard’s work, that whilst electronic media have many valuable qualities in the pursuit of learning, posing interesting questions and dealing with the answers in a way which promotes learning may not be one of them. I shall be interested to see whether any of today’s presentations will provide illumination on this point.

Bibliography

Entries are given in the order in which they were covered in the presentation.

Definitions

Information literacy:

• American Library Association (1989) Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: final report Chicago: American Library Association

E-learning:

• Derek Stockley’s definition of e-learning
• Allan B (2002) E-learning and teaching in library and information services London: Facet Publishing

Blended learning:

• Derek Stockley’s definition of blended learning
• Report of the EUNIS European E-Learning Workshop, 2004

MLE:

• Report of the JISC Managed Learning Environments Workshop

VLE:

• JISC (2000) MLEs and VLEs explained (briefing paper no 1)
• JISC (2002) Overview of MLE issues and how JISC can help
• Browne T and Jenkins M (2003) VLE surveys: a longitudinal perspective between March 2001 and March 2003 for higher education in the United Kingdom [PDF file] Oxford: UCISA-TLIG
• Rothery A (2004) VLEs and blended learning: a discussion paper based on TLIG meetings held during 2004 Oxford: UCISA-TLIG
• INFORMS Project

Some theories of learning

• McLuhan M (1967) The medium is the massage London: Penguin
• Vygotsky L (1978) Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes London: Harvard University Press
• Kolb D (1984) Experiential learning Englewood Clifs: Prentice Hall
• Bawden D and Robinson L (2002) ‘Promoting literacy in a digital age: approaches to training for information literacy’ Learned Publishing 15(4) 297-301. Quoted in Andretta S (2005) Information literacy: a practitioner’s guide Oxford: Chandos
• Markless S (2004) ‘Teaching your users: what you really need to know’ Legal Information Management 4(4) Winter 2004 221-225

Pedagogical approaches and models

• Laurillard D (2002) Rethinking university teaching: a framework for the effective use of educational technology (2nd edition) London: Routledge
• Britain S and Liber O (1999) A framework for pedagogical evaluation of virtual learning environments (JISC Technology Applications Programme (JTAP) report 41) Manchester: JISC
• Crawley R (nd) Evaluating CSCL: theorists’ and users’ perspectives
• JISC e-Learning and Pedagogy Programme

Last Modified: 16 June 2010