VLEs and their role in legal education support: a UK overview

Marianne Barber, College of Law

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

This session provided an overview of the possible and the desirable in the promotion of legal resources via a virtual learning environment (VLE), based on a session given previously at the BIALL annual conference in 2004, the full text of which is available in Legal Information Management 4 (2004), pp232-235.

Marianne joined the College of Law in 1993 as an assistant librarian and was promoted to the new college-wide post of Information Development Manager in 2003 – the job description is still evolving! She has been a BIALL member since 1997 and was elected to Council in 2004. She first became interested in the application of technology in 1980 on the DipLib course at North London Polytechnic (as was) and has taken a keen interest in legal technology ever since.

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Efforts to produce an overview of what exists have been tantalising:

• official surveys take a long time to produce
• VLEs are inaccessible to outsiders

This paper aims to look at the following topics in the context of specific examples as well as more recent developments at the College of Law:

• the overlap with e-learning
• the added value of a VLE over a good online catalogue plus a library webpage
• the varying approaches and attitudes which exist
• the importance of copyright observance and other issues to be considered
• the next step – evaluation and development

Definitions and related terms

The JISC definition: “a VLE is an electronic system that can provide online interactions of various kinds that can take place between learners and tutors, including online learning”.

• only one of several definitions – for example, “an elaborate collection of software systems”
• sometimes part of a MLEs (managed learning environment)
• not ideal as CMS substitutes (need one of those as well) and waste of interactivity function
• now being joined by TLEs! (transactional learning environments)

Important characteristics of e-learning are worth listing:

• dynamism to keep people coming back
• a variety of teaching approaches to allow for the difference in learning styles
• a clear aim that matches actual need
• delivery at the right point in the course
• success or failure rely heavily on academic staff ‘buying in’ to the concept

Special functionality of VLEs:

• highly personalised
• allows the integration of resources – the learning process is better supported by not having to break off to find a named resource
• provides a vehicle for educating students in legal information literacy, for example:
  • identifying an authoritative case or a reliable source
  • how to make sure the law has been correctly updated
  • how to tell the difference between an amended statute and one in its original form

Use of technology

• students will find ways themselves of pushing the technology forward
• danger of simply transcribing paper into HTML
• requires significant change of approach

Extent of involvement

• depends on how your organisation views its VLE
• how involved are your library staff with VLE development?
• variation between different types of university
• variation between academic and vocational law courses

Full involvement may be evidenced by some or all of the following:

• course designers the subject specialist in the library from the outset
• library staff negotiate digital permissions and ensure copyright terms are adhered to
• WebOPAC modelled on the VLE (no separate name?)
• the catalogue is reached via the VLE itself
• library staff catalogue and store ‘learning objects’
• e-reserves are integrated directly into the learning units
• legal research skills sessions are augmented by online, interactive, (multi-media?) tutorials
• the institution has a learning technology unit
• online tutorials are linked to assessments

Involvement to a lesser degree might be:

• a link to the library catalogue from the VLE
• using the announcements facility to communicate with students
• library staff supporting users
• assisting with administering the VLE using knowledge management skills

Reasons for a department not being engaged in any way with a VLE:

• VLE only regarded as the ‘toy’ of certain departments with less gravitas than the law faculty
• some institutions have more than one VLE, which tends to fragment uptake even further

Prepare for change

• producing online tutorials and integrating resources is time-intensive
• need to have partnerships in place with technical experts
• VLE acceptance has a way of taking off once the students are involved.

The situation at the College of Law:

• all learning materials for the Legal Practice Course (LPC) and the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) are located on Blackboard
• all LPC and GDL students (plus staff) are enrolled
• student logs in to the VLE to get access to workshop materials, textbooks, legal databases, library catalogue, announcements etc
• students may take part in mediated discussion groups under the supervision of a tutor
• CAL (computer aided learning) exercises are used in all areas including legal method

Further planned developments:

• as part of our migration to the Voyager library system (summer 2005) the WebOPAC will be customised to mirror the ‘look and feel’ of the Blackboard screen
• Library and Information Services have been asked to produce proposals for an interactive multimedia tutorial in support of Practical Legal Research teaching for LPC students

Manchester Metropolitan University have embedded their legal research tutorials in the course itself to ensure take-up. This is the result of past experience and actively seeking feedback from students and staff. The law library is at the forefront of technological developments and other departments are now consulting them. Now extended to first year undergraduates.

The Glasgow Graduate School of Law have developed a virtual community for their vocational law students (similar to Gladbury, the virtual town used at BPP with Bar Vocational Course students). They have a Learning Technologies Development Unit and are developing multimedia course units (in themselves VLEs) with interactive tutorials and integrated primary materials.

Most of the technological elements are now in place for a learning system which can build up a profile of an individual student. Legal information resources could be presented on their personal versions of the VLE and tailored to their needs.

Sharing ideas and experience:

• commercial competition may put up barriers to sharing between institutions
• not possible to get ideas by browsing – only by specific invitation (‘guest log-in’)
• collaboration with publishers may be the way forward
• students expect to see resources developed by the institution to which they have paid their fees – Iolis being the exception (not markedly branded)
• read published books such as Jane Secker’s Electronic resources in the virtual learning environment: a guide for librarians for development ideas

A selection of digital tutorials (some more interactive than others):

• PoLeR (Practical Online Legal Electronic Research) – course used by students on the Legal Practice Course at Manchester Metropolitan University
• BLIS – course used by students on the Graduate Diploma in Law at Manchester Metropolitan University
• Practical Legal Research – quiz used on the Legal Practice Course at the University of Hertfordshire
• Research Methods in Law – tutorial developed as part of the CASE Project
• Introduction to Case Law – tutorial from the University of Kent

Third party copyright:

• an important issue involving considerable work
• infringement of copyright becomes more visible when tutors’ materials are published on a VLE

Loss of paper research skills and the effect on purchase of paper resources

• diminishing importance of hard copy offset by the benefits of accessibility
• practitioner works perhaps more suitable to electronic format than scholarly texts
• currently students seem to be combining paper and digital – speedy searching and updating online complemented by in-depth study using books

Loss of serendipity and independent researching?

• will the proliferation of VLEs and the integration of information sources result in a lack of information literacy?
• is this just an extension of book selection, cataloguing and classification, library guides?
• Google Scholar will take over as the research method of choice unless we teach information literacy skills and provide a better service than the search engines

Measuring success:

• a successful VLE must engage the students
• endorsement from teaching staff and feedback from them can be invaluable
• measure how often they come back – usage statistics, anecdotal evidence, participation in voting or registering comments
• learn from research into the effectiveness of e-learning
• look for a manageable amount of links without reducing overall depth of coverage

In conclusion…

• everybody’s situation with regard to a VLE will be different
• realising the technological potential requires a fundamental re-think
• suitability of law:
  • need for high quality, up to date authoritative sources
  • high cost of databases and hard copy
  • diversity of law students
    • further support coupled with off-campus access

Leading insitutions in the field of legal education, such as the College of Law, are committed to the use of e-learning and VLEs as part of their strategy for maintaining excellence. Changes in student circumstances and in education in general are favouring reliance on remote delivery. The participation of library and information services in the use of VLEs to deliver legal teaching is therefore likely to increase.

References

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• BILETA (1996) Information technology for UK law schools: the second BILETA report into information technology and legal education
• Collinson T and Williams A (2004) ‘The alternative library’ Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives 56(3): 137-143
• Core J et al (2003) ‘A guide for support staff’ (LTSN e-learning series no 5) York: LTSN Generic Centre
• Maharg P and McKellar P (2004) Presence, emergence and learning objects: user interaction in a virtual learning environment Glasgow: Glasgow Graduate School of Law Learning Technologies Development Unit
• Maharg P (2004) ‘Virtual communities on the web: transactional learning and teaching’ The Law Teacher 36(3): 307-332
• Secker J (2004) Electronic resources in the virtual learning environment: a guide for librarians Oxford: Chandos
• Williams C (2003) ‘Embedding e-resources in learning and teaching: Manchester Metropolitan University vision of the future’ Multimedia Information and Technology 29(4): 127-128

Last Modified: 4 June 2010