Reflection on a work experience option

Case study by Sue Prince (University of Exeter) showing how one law school has gone about integrating student reflection with benchmarking and quality assurance requirements.

During the academic year 2001-02 the School of Law at the University of Exeter offered first year undergraduate students the option of taking part in a module reflecting on their work experience as part of the Introduction to Law module. From a cohort of 200 students 150 chose to take this option.

Aims

The section of the law benchmark statement on general transferable intellectual skills states that students should be able to demonstrate basic abilities of analysis, synthesis, critical judgement and evaluation, as well as demonstrating autonomy and the ability to learn. The work placement module gives students an experience on which they can begin to reflect. It enables students to understand why these skills are important and to be able to apply them in the context of their own learning of law. The aim is to encourage students to reflect on their own experiences to help them better understand and apply this to their learning of law and how they wish to develop their personal, academic and employability skills for the future.

Requirements and evidence

Students are encouraged to organise their own law or law-related work placement. They need to undertake at least 50 hours work experience to fulfil the criteria for the option. The work experience undertaken may be paid or voluntary work, it may be full or part time, or in the Christmas or Easter vacations. The work chosen by the students must involve them or enable them to participate in tasks or projects rather than just observing others (which may not result in the student having an experience for themselves). In addition, they have to be able to make links between the work they are doing and the law degree. These links are clear when the work is in a law office, but not so clear in other types of business. Students may choose work outside the law if it requires them to develop the sorts of skills required in the legal profession; it is for the students themselves to think about what these skills are and how they can relate them back to their academic studies.

Students are supported by a series of lectures on legal system and legal institutions. They are also required to attend workshops aimed to help them learn and reflect (this includes work on learning styles).

Students are required to work on a community project that helps them to see the law in action. The work experience option therefore allows them to draw upon the material they have gathered elsewhere in the module and to reflect upon it in the context of their own learning. Tutors spend time encouraging the students to think about how they learn and to then set themselves some specific measurable and achievable goals before they undertake their work experience. They can do this by looking at goals related to work but also to social, academic and personal goals to see how they all intertwine.

Assessment

The option is assessed on the basis of a portfolio. Students are assessed on the level of their reflection and the links they make to law and legal studies in their portfolio and on a seven minute (with additional time for questions from peers) oral presentation summarising their own development. This is worth 20% of the module.

Observations

Changing thinking about learning – for many students it was the first time they had been asked to set their own goals, rather than having them set for them by a tutor, and many of them did not like the lack of certainty this generated. However, the emphasis was very much placed on requiring students to act autonomously and think about the way in which they learned best. It was clear from the workshop that some students were very theoretical learners, who wanted to think carefully and analyse issues, whilst others learned more by doing than by thinking. By encouraging the students to set goals for themselves they could see what opportunities the workplace could provide (for example the development of IT or research skills, or wanting to meet and interact with a variety of people) and seek out and be proactive about how they would achieve these.

Writing reflectively – we also asked the students what it meant to them to think reflectively, and asked them to complete a number of exercises. We tried to show the difference between writing descriptively and writing reflectively. By asking students to recall past experiences and what they then learned from them it was possible to show them the benefit of reflection. The ability to reflect and analyse themselves in the light of their commercial, voluntary and academic experiences enables students to gain high marks on the module. This is not an easy process, as all those who have tried it for themselves will know. The reflective process was modelled on academic work to reflect the difference between writing an academic essay in a descriptive manner (which could only achieve a 2:2 result) and writing analytically or reflectively (which would bring the marks up to a 2:1). If students could understand and start to think in a reflective manner they could also apply this to their written academic evaluations in all of their other areas of study.

Support – during the workshops the students were given a learning pack, which underpinned the reflective process and also gave them guidelines as to what to include in their portfolios for assessment.

Remarks

Many students were unhappy with the fluidity of the option, but many also reported in their portfolios that the option had been extremely beneficial. The level of a student’s self perception increases when required to record their development, so that they can continuously review and reflect upon their own goals and strengths and weaknesses. One student stated the benefits of learning to write reflectively: “I did not at the start of the option see any point in knowing your learning style or how keeping a diary could help you in any other way than to remind you what has happened. However, once I got into the work I became increasingly interested and found the learning methods useful for studying and in employment.”

One of the main points made by the students was that it had helped them to increase their confidence in themselves and their abilities, because they understood and knew far more about what they were capable of after reflecting on their abilities in the workplace. They gained insight into law and saw that law involves real people and their problems. By bringing this knowledge back to their academic work they should be able to make more sense and have a greater understanding of what academics mean by ‘the law’.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010