A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Enhancing learning in legal education
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Evaluation
Case studies 2 and 3, examples of research-based learning in law, are both recent
innovations. Even so, they offer some relevant insights into what can be achieved,
albeit on specialist options with relatively small student numbers. They show that
it is possible to get students actively engaged with research in a way that gives them a
different experience of learning about the living law. They show how assessment can
be used to support the research-based character of the learning, while also enhancing
the students’ transferable skills (e.g. in the use of oral presentations, or writing in
different formats and/or for different audiences than the norm). They also suggest
a rather different dynamic and division of responsibilities between teacher and
learner. As Ben Pontin has observed in correspondence with one of the present
authors:
Students are brilliant at gathering ‘raw material’ . . . detective work. However, where
students needed input from an academic was in interpreting the significance of
empirical findings. Great at treating law as a material object (a field or stately home
protected against a polluting factory or sewage works), students struggled with law’s
ideas!
There are, of course, a range of practical matters to be considered:
• such courses may be relatively resource-intensive;
• there may be issues about ensuring the sustainability of the research element year
on year;
• ethical issues need to be addressed as regards the form of research collaboration and
the terms under which undergraduate students are engaged in research;
• research-based learning may create issues about managing student expectations in a
relatively unfamiliar learning environment.
However, none of these are insurmountable problems.
Interrogating practice
Consider a module you are teaching or would like to teach:
• How might you make the learning more research-based?
• What will you do to address the practical design problems you might
encounter?