The Future of the LLB: Lessons from Digital Learning
- alexdachs
- Mar 3, 2021
- 6 min read
For many university staff and students, ‘digital learning’ has become a phrase with adverse connotations. It means fiddling around with different logins for a range of software platforms of varying usefulness. It means missing large portions of conversations because of background noise or tussles with the infamous ‘mute’ button. It means not getting the usual expected in-person teaching that underpins the ‘university experience’. From my perspective, as someone whose job it is to try and piece together a cohesive digital learning experience, digital learning means all these things and more. However, I also think it presents an opportunity to develop teaching strategies and tools that can be used to reshape the way that law is taught at universities in the future. Integrating my observations and opinions from my time in this role, this article will explain why I think this is the case.
Structuring Online Learning
As any law student will tell you, studying law requires a lot of reading. Complex, jargon-ridden judgments can require a significant amount of technical knowledge and several re-reads to break down, while some articles contain so many references that it becomes difficult to keep track of exactly what it is that you are reading. However, contrary to popular belief, these lengthy reading lists are not compiled for the sole purpose of punishing law students. By completing all of this intensive reading, students learn not only the substantive law but also the societal context within which it exists.
Reading such a large amount of information can be difficult at the best of times, but the pandemic has made this task even more challenging. It is no secret that staring at a screen for long periods is bad for your physical health and, as long reading lists pile up, it can certainly take a toll on your mental wellbeing too. This mixture of physical and mental fatigue makes the process of learning the law a very stressful experience for any law student. Furthermore, the absence of in-person teaching has significantly cut down the number of time students can spend discussing their reading with academics. This makes it much harder to develop an understanding of how all this reading feeds into both exams and the real world.
So, how can this issue be tackled in practice? The first step seems quite obvious, but it is also very effective: cut back on mandatory reading. However, this does not mean that useful and important content is ditched from the curriculum. Rather, reading lists and individual materials are carefully reviewed to determine how much value they add to a student’s learning. In any case, if an unlisted source is a particularly important piece of work in its field, a determined law student will probably find it when doing their independent research.
Another useful strategy is introducing self-paced learning. When students have so little time to engage with teaching staff, it is important to use that time effectively. While lectures present valuable opportunities for students to learn from academics, they do not allow for the same level of discourse and interaction offered by seminars. To take full advantage of face-to-face teaching, digital or otherwise, lectures and base learning material can be delivered through pre-recorded videos and interactive digital activities. This means that face-to-face sessions can be used for seminar-style discussions and that students can learn at their own pace. This strategy also accommodates students who prefer to take their time when learning new content, without slowing down the pace for students who prefer to move more quickly. As such, this style of teaching delivery could be a very useful way of catering to a variety of student needs once teaching returns to campus.
Improving Engagement
At times, the law student experience can be overwhelming. Alongside tightly-packed schedules of teaching and independent study, you may be involved with one or two societies, drafting job applications, or taking a well-deserved break from all of the above. This means that you may need to miss a lecture or a seminar, or that you may not be one hundred percent focused when you do attend them. This is a completely normal part of being a law student and student in general, but it is something that has been exacerbated by the shift to online learning. Add in the stress of an unreliable internet connection, noisy housemates and the uncomfortable prospect of unmuting yourself during an eerily quiet seminar, and online learning can be quite daunting.
All of these difficulties can make it much harder to fully engage with learning opportunities. Law is a subject where the ability to engage with the content - case law, academic opinion and other source material - is interwoven with assessment criteria and learning objectives. Therefore, improving and maintaining student engagement is a key priority in any digital learning environment. Oftentimes, it is even used as a metric to gauge the success of digital learning as a process.
Engagement stands out as a particularly challenging issue to address, and it is the target of many novel digital learning developments. One of the most popular options is offering resources that specifically address the topic of critically engaging with the law. This may come in the form of a webpage containing interactive resources, annotated examples and pre-recorded mini-lectures that teach you how to think more critically about the law. These resources are complemented particularly well by live sessions where students can ask questions and see worked examples. Collections of resources such as these will always be valuable for law students, and storing them online for students to peruse at their leisure is something that would greatly enhance the learning experience for future generations of law students.
Another strategy that I believe would feed nicely into teaching post-COVID is the fostering of an open and collaborative learning environment during taught sessions. Taking inspiration from Dr. Carol Dweck’s idea of the ‘growth mindset’, such an environment would make students feel more comfortable expressing their ideas and then critiquing them. By focusing on expression, evaluation and improvement, the learning environment would transform into one which produces more innovative and well-rounded perspectives on the law that could boost results for students and universities. Such a strategy would, however, require an absolute commitment from students and teaching staff to make it work. While digital learning could be an interesting sandpit within which such ideas could be tried out, the creation of such an environment may be best implemented during a time where the pandemic is not at the front of everyone’s minds.
Making Learning Accessible
In some respects, accessibility represents one of the greatest advantages of digital learning. As many law students will attest, clicking a link is often significantly easier than dragging yourself out of bed early in the morning and trekking to campus for a lecture. It can also be easier for the university, as there is no need to book venues or make arrangements for guest speakers and attendees. Furthermore, as cloud storage makes it easier to access learning materials, other aspects of the learning experience can be replicated fairly well online. This is particularly beneficial for students who have other commitments to balance with their studies, such as part-time employment or caring responsibilities.
However, there is a caveat that comes with accessibility. For these benefits to be reaped, the technology must work. Unreliable wireless connection, network outages and software faults are just a few of the main practical threats looming over the future of digital learning. Unfortunately, these issues are particularly difficult to solve. Universities can offer dedicated spaces with access to computers and strong WiFi to partially solve some of these practical difficulties, but other solutions may be comparatively difficult for universities to solve alone. In the meantime, software developers’ IT departments can probably expect a steady flow of support requests and stressed-out phone calls from digital learning professionals for a while yet.
Conclusion
It is clear that digital learning has its flaws, and that some of those flaws cannot be easily patched up within a year. However, alongside those flaws are some real opportunities to improve the university experience for law students, and to revolutionise the way that law courses are structured and delivered in the years to come. If these opportunities are seized and improved upon, it could lead to the development of law courses that are well-structured, engaging and accessible to the students that study them.
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