Leading today's people towards tomorrow's law school

In their paper Lynn Leighton-Johnstone and Ian Fox-Williams (University of Wolverhampton) presented the approach of one modern university towards transforming the study of law.

Ian and Lynn presented their paper in two halves – Ian presented the first half in person, and the second part by Lynn was, appropriately for a paper which looked to the future, via vodcast. They sought to identify and project one law school’s attempt to challenge and modernise the study of law so at to equip today’s students with the professional skills needed tomorrow.

Competing objectives from the various stakeholders (including the Bar Standards Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, HEFCE and the Quality Assurance Agency, the skills agenda…) were identified and examined, followed by a reflection on the methodology used within the School of Legal Studies at Wolverhampton in transforming its culture.

Penny English (Anglia Ruskin University) reports:

Ian described some approaches Wolverhampton is using to help students develop skills that enhance employability and are professionally relevant. Using technology to deliver revision lectures in a virtual chat facility was so successful that the number logged on to the system caused it to crash! The feedback was excellent and the module results were good – the key seemed to be that students were comfortable with the technology.
 
This student familiarity with interactive technology was harnessed by using Facebook as a learning tool. Online study groups were established, which had a high participation level and were demonstrably popular with students. It would be interesting to explore a comparison of the use of wikis within institutional VLEs with Facebook. Are students more willing to use Facebook since it is more familiar, or do some prefer to keep their social and academic lives distinct?
 
Lynn discussed a slightly different aspect of the experience at Wolverhampton, describing the development programme for middle managers. Clearly successful, as the negative side of the programme was the existence of a promotions bottleneck, since there are too few posts available at the next level to meet the aspirations – and identified abilities – of those involved.

About Ian

---

Ian Fox-Williams is a lecturer and LLB Course Leader in the School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications at Wolverhampton.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010