It's always a little puzzling when people talk about 'traditional legal education' because legal education has always been in such flux, any equilibrium has been so temporary. It seems that those who like to use the term are a) complaining about something new being different from when they were at law school or b) use it as a straw devil, thinking that their fantastic new teaching idea is going to shake the foundations of the grey beards' orthodoxy. Take the long view and legal education as a collective effort has been changing and evolving, embracing new technologies and approaches as the law itself evolves. Common law method equips you with tools for change.
Perhaps this embrace of change is also because legal education has been something of a latecomer at the academic table, with a preference for an apprenticeship model current until the mid 20th century. It is only recently that Phd qualifications have become common among law teachers and many institutions still prefer, or at least recognise, practitioner experience as a teaching credential. All is changing.
The didactic, lecture-centric approach has been common to Australian law schools, while international universities seem to prefer to engage students in small group based learning. Our delivery approach is evolving as we realise that students prefer engaging activities plus recorded lectures make the lecture form largely redundant. I also think that teacher satisifaction plays a big role in shifts toward more interactive delivery models.
Last year I did an ad hoc survey of teaching delivery methods at Australian law school (ie emailled some folks I know) and found a great diversity in approach, from lecture based, to seminar based, mixed mode, etc. One mode I found surprisingly absent was problem based learning. Many schools use legal problems for teaching, but I haven't heard of any that use the PBL method which foregrounds problem solving strategy and embraces different solutions to the same problem.
I recently read a report from CAUDIT, The Future of Education: Beyond the Campus (Jan 2010), a report which discusses developments in universities and forecasts some consequences of these developments. These include:
- Changes to the learning environment, the four walls of the classroom will begin to vanish.
- More connection with outside bodies, communities, non traditional education providers
- Research and scholarship becoming more 'conversational' as the blog generation grows up.
- More services being provided off campus, by organisations other than universities
However, the one little factoid really got my attention:
20% of students feel they were not challenged enough by their courses.
We spend so much time worrying about the other end of the spectrum, supporting those who risk failure, what do we do for the students who crave more of a challenge?
What does this report mean for those of us in legal/justice education? Apart from an initial period of sticking our heads in the sand, I can see new generations of increasingly information literate academics embrace these changes as a natural part of the information ecology. At the risk of sounding like Criswell, here are some predictions:
More online support, but of a de-centred kind which does not try to replicate the lecture/tutorial format online.
A move to smaller learning groups with a focus on smaller teams within the learning group. I can see seminars of 30 becoming common, but built out of groups of 5-6 where the academic moves between different teams to offer support and advice.
Less assessment, but more focus on meaningful feedback before final grades are decided.
Didacticism still has a role, but as 'mini lectures' of 10 minutes or so during the seminar process. I can see more reliance on recorded material, especially if it is shared across different institutions, for example I might interview a key policy maker on video, cut it down to a useful size and upload it to itunes uni for all to use.
Building on the last item, much more collaboration and sharing of teaching resources. These will be increasingly be bite sized learning modules rather than labour intensive textbooks. You will be able to access a set of materials and remix them for your class.
Changes to the research/teaching nexus. More emphasis on dynamic evolution of information as a community process, less obsession with journal publishing as a solitary activity cut off from the knowledge community at large. More connection with community organisations and real world activities such as students providing help in researching and developing information sheets, wikis, etc.
An evolution in the concept of academic work. Rather than being 'extras' above and beyond the meat and potatoes lecture, we will see the character of academic work change and, eventually, a recognition of this in the way that workloads are calculated. Maybe.
More attempt to appeal to adult learners, with a view to getting students return as postgrads. This will require more flexibility and options outside of the twelve week lecture model. Perhaps intensives, weekend learning, etc will be more popular. Of course finding academic staff to facilitate this will be a challenge and involve unis being a bit nicer to our teaching staff generally so that this kind of working week will be seen as appealing rather than oppressive.
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