Reflections on Extra Life

Failing in first semester is an unfortunate, but necessary experience for some law students. It can be difficult to find an appropriate response as an educator, particularly where a student tries hard but fails by a narrow margin. Repeating a unit can put a student behind, especially where there is no summer school option and a student's subjects get out of sync with their peers. Supplementary assessment just seems to set students up to fail at the same task that we already know they have a problem with. Disturbingly, there seems to be an increasing trend toward blaming the teaching in these situations. 'Extra Life' was an idea we cooked up to develop a different path which integrates students back into the learning community.

Learning Module: Violence and Legal Stories

Download the Module here.

One of the functions of legal jargon is to mask the narrative function of rules, the stories that they tell about us, our society, our shared values. Choked in legalese these rules can sometimes appear objective but are more likely to seem archaic, inaccessible and disconnected from everyday life. This exercise tries to get students to think about the social context of rules and the values they embody.

What is Connected Law?

The Connected Law program at VLS is an experiment. Drawing together workplace learning, flexible delivery, the teaching/research nexus and law reform,, we are attempting to create a program of law research projects which are useful for students, outside partners, academics and the community at large. A tall order to be sure, and in semester 2 we are running a set of pilot projects to see if it all comes together.

Attached is the brief information sheet that I have prepared to give an overview of the program. The biggest breakthrough was realising that rather than placing students out in workplaces, we could create our own work environments and bring the outside partners in. It is amazing how many people are keen to get involved with uni students, but lack the resources to take them in as volunteers or placement students. If we flip the relationship we can take advantage of university resources and create a better place for everyone to work together.