Engaging students

The ‘engagng students’ stream at the Learning in Law Conference 2007 included the following papers:

• Reimagining legal education: a model for engaged learning and leadership in the 21st century – Steven Friedland and Bonnie McAlister (Elon University School of Law, USA) read report below
• Factors influencing prospective undergraduate law students in their choice of university: the student viewpoint – Paul Catley (University of the West of England) read report below
• Telling it like it is: giving feedback in difficult circumstances – Caroline Maughan, Jonathan Tecks and Tim Felton (University of the West of England) read full paper

Reimagining legal education

Elon University School of Law, in its first year of existence in Greensboro, North Carolina, is implementing an approach to legal education that is learning-centered and leader-centric, valuing engaged and curious students and generating a broader education that promotes a variety of skills – not simply the abstract and malleable ‘thinking like a lawyer’.

Steven and Bonnie led an activity explaining their approach, demonstrating some of the issues surrounding the question “what is good teaching”. Their emphasis was on the teacher as facilitator, drawing on a wide variety of teaching methods but linked to the basic premise that not all students learn the same way. An understanding of how to communicate – and listen – with different students was identified as an important skill for the law teacher.

Factors influencing prospective undergraduate law students in their choice of university

Paul presented findings from his research into student recruitment, based on responses to online surveys by law students in their first term. Participants were asked to guess the factors influencing prospective law students and the sources of information they valued most – with some surprising answers. The research allowed for analysis between old and new universities and a wide variant of factors including age, gender and ethnicity, as well as whether the students’ parents went to university.

For more on Paul’s findings see How do law students decide where to apply to?, an article in the Autumn 2007 issue of Directions
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Last Modified: 9 July 2010