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TEACHING NOTE
LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION
The
Evolutionary Nature of
Computer-Assisted Learning
MAREE CHETWIN* & CALLY EDGAR**
INTRODUCTION
The wider community’s rapid assimilation of computer- based tools in the 1990s has given rise to calls by students for parallel integration of these innovations into their education.1 This call has been intensified by the provision of computer hardware infrastructure and of Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) programs2 such as Iolis. The United Kingdom’s Law Courseware Consortium’s (LCC) homepage3 describes Iolis CD-ROM as follows:
Iolis is a collection of learning materials for undergraduate law students.
It contains interactive exercises, charts, diagrams photographs
and more,
covering most of the subject areas taught in a typical UK undergraduate degree.
It also contains a large full-text library
of over 2,000 cases, statutes and
articles.
The features of Iolis have been described in detail
elsewhere.4 The features are summarised by
Grantham:5
(a) an easy to use and powerful navigation system
(b) self-test questions with feedback
(c) excellent resource books with leading case reports and some leading articles
(d) self-paced learning
(e) an increasingly wide range of subjects or modules
(f) a scrapbook and copying/printing facility
(g) annotation facility
(h) twice yearly updates
(i) recently introduced direct link with some Web resources.
As students
have become increasingly familiar with, and dependent on, computer technology,
the boundaries of what constitutes a comfortable,
stimulating, flexible and
varied learning environment have altered. This inevitably adds to the demands
placed on those individuals
who have painstakingly developed, programmed,
tested, and refined unique computer packages for student learning. Keeping
materials
updated is of particular importance in legal education, and this
maintenance function alone can consume substantial
resources.6 The task of adapting an existing program to
incorporate textual changes and new technologies on an ongoing basis, while
concurrently
developing new programs, is a particularly overwhelming one.
Indeed, the task may be beyond individuals or even institutions. For
the program
author who wishes to capitalise on work already completed and to enhance the
benefits gained thereby, a different approach
to future development is clearly
required.
This Note describes the development of a small-scale CAL lesson and
compares the benefits gained from it with those obtained from
some major
collaborative endeavours, in particular, the LCC Iolis program. The economies of
scale and scope achieved by the LCC coupled
with the benefits of flexibility and
familiarity of generic CAL authoring systems provide a compelling argument in
favour of the
collaborative approach. Australian Law Courseware (ALC) is
licensed by LCC to use Iolis to produce electronic teaching/learning materials
in Australia for distribution in the Asia-Pacific Region. The production of
workbooks has begun in Australia and is being considered
for New Zealand. For
countries such as New Zealand which are not currently developing CAL under the
auspices of a broader national
or trans-national education technology framework,
the task of catching up to countries like Britain appears daunting. Careful
analysis
of the research, however, yields an insight into how that goal might be
attained. Collaborative planning, development and resourcing
of Australasian CAL
programs for legal education is necessary to achieve widespread support and
acceptance by students, faculty and
the legal profession. In addition, a balance
of technological advancements, flexibility and standardisation using Iolis as
the de facto standard7 will allow fast- tracking
of development without undue back-tracking over individual initiatives.
THE EVOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP COMPUTER SEMINARS (PCS)
The original DOS version of Partnership Computer Tutorials (as it was then
named) was the result of a joint effort between one of
the current authors,
Maree Chetwin, and Ian Wilson (Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law) of the
Queensland University of Technology.
The programming was, of necessity,
performed by an expert programmer. The package was intended to supplement
lectures and be a substitute
for the three traditional tutorials required in the
running of the partnership module of a second-year level Accountancy course,
AFIS 253 Law of Organisations. It should be noted that this module constituted
only a small part of the entire course, typically
at the University of
Canterbury, consuming eight out of 50 lecture hours. Most of the students
enrolled in the course intended to
become chartered accountants and were
required to do the course or its equivalent by the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of New
Zealand.
It is a simple program designed to provide an
opportunity for students to review certain key aspects of partnership law. There
are
three question types:
The program contains cross-references
to two texts, and students are advised they should have a copy of the relevant
Partnership Act
with them for reference during the four lessons. In addition to
the revision questions and text references, the program provides
introductory
notes, expansions of answers in the form of explanatory text, and where
appropriate, passages from text that include
some of the more important sections
of the relevant Partnership Act.
The 1992 pilot program was initially run in
a campus networked computer laboratory. The partnership lecture component was
delivered
in the traditional oral manner, and students were assigned to tutorial
groups for the computer module. Attendance at tutorials was
recommended but not
compulsory, and approximately half of the 114 students in AFIS 253 attended the
three laboratory sessions. The
methodological problems in testing have been
referred to by others including Clark,8
Teich,9 and Mason.10 Like
Shapiro,11 it was decided not to experiment on what
was, first and foremost, a class. For this reason, control groups were not
implemented.
However, at the completion of the partnership unit, participating
students were requested to complete a questionnaire prepared by
the
University’s Educational Research and Advisory Unit (ERAU). The survey
comprised 11 questions for which students rated
their response on a five-point
Likert scale. In addition, respondents were invited to provide open comment. The
questionnaire, summary
data, and students’ comments are set out in full in
the Appendix.
The survey results were used to gauge the general level of
interest in CAL by Accountancy students and to assess the potential for
further
development of the package. Summary data provided the view that between 92 per
cent and 100 per cent of surveyed students
considered the program to be of
average or above average value to them in the learning and revision processes.
Further positive indications
were noted regarding the availability, content
coverage, and organisation of the package; and a surprisingly large percentage
(92)
of students called for other course topics to include a similar approach.
As encouraging as these results were, it may be of significance
that all the
students surveyed had chosen to attend the computer labs; and as such, were more
likely than non-attendants to have
perceived tutorials in general to be of
value. These students were also more likely to have been comfortable in a
computer laboratory
environment. The data was, nonetheless, useful in assessing
the potential for further development of Partnership Computer Tutorials
and for
gauging interest in CAL in general. The students’ comments highlighted
technical areas needing improvement: notably,
access to computer facilities, and
occasional program errors. The lack of immediate feedback as per a traditional
tutorial appeared
to be of moment to at least half of the respondents and this
was of significant concern.
Subsequently in response to the questionnaire, an
optional traditional face-to-face tutorial has been held. On average,
approximately
a fifth of the students attended this tutorial in 1993 and 1994.
However, in the last four years this percentage reduced (no data
was kept). This
decline may be attributed to several factors. Substantial investment in
technology infrastructure and training by
our department in recent years has
raised the general level of student computer skills and has allowed realistic
access to 24-hour
networked computing facilities. Further the publication of the
corrected and updated program on floppy disk by The Law Book Company
in 1994
(renamed Partnership Computorials) enabled students to access the materials at
home where that was a desired option. In 1998,
the package was reprogrammed for
use within the web browser environment and renamed Partnership Computer
Seminars. As with previous
updates, these primarily aesthetic changes consumed
all available resources but offered no significant improvements in
interactivity.
A further factor influencing the decline in attendance at the
traditional tutorial was the provision of an online email feedback facility.
Whilst up to 20 per cent of students typically use email to contact the module
lecturer at least once, lack of time and financial
resources have restricted
development of this facility. Email is not an integral part of the program and
this form of feedback cannot
be provided in real time. For the lecturer, this
system has made forecasting and controlling the allocation of time for the
module
increasingly difficult as compared with fixed traditional tutorial times.
The importance of student and teacher interaction in CAL
has been well
documented and is reflected in our own student
feedback.12 Experience to date demonstrates, however,
that major improvements in PCS are not feasible on the current level of
resourcing, commitment,
and support. Funding of future efforts is limited to
small research committee grants, while commitment is restricted to the spare
time of a busy lecturer in an environment in which there is no national or local
guidance or support. Clearly, the repeated requests
from students for further
CAL programs in other law subjects are also likely to remain unfulfilled unless
a development system can
be devised that addresses these deficiencies while
retaining the many benefits provided by PCS.
THE CONTINUING EVOLUTION OF SUSTAINABLE CAL DEVELOPMENT
To what extent do other CAL experiences provide a new direction, and what are
the critical steps that must be taken? A study of other
small-to-medium scale
CAL projects initiated by individuals or individual institutions reveals several
obstacles. One of the most
common and manifest observations is the extent to
which available time and money restrict initial and future developments.
Kelman’s
successful virtual tutorial experiment at the London School of
Economics revealed a need for substantial future investment by the
lecturers to
produce workbooks and to develop the administrative support
structure.13 Migdal and Cartwright cautioned that the
“personal commitment demanded ... cannot be over- emphasised” and
remarked that
the number of staff hours required to produce their CD-ROM
exceeded their “wildest nightmares”! In this instance, the
program
authors sought economy of scale through the sharing of centralised programming
resources with two similar CAL projects proceeding
at their University. However,
after some trial and error, a software package was produced “which
operates as a program template
enabling anyone who has word processing skills to
author electronic teaching packages”.14 The
benefits of this approach are clear. Use of a template drastically reduces the
time and cost of initial programming. Furthermore,
significant efficiencies are
gained, as program authors need few (if any) programming skills in order to
produce a series of consistently
formatted programs.
Standardisation of CAL
authoring tools has been an important feature in what must be acknowledged as
the ongoing success of Iolis.15 In the same year that
we began work on PCS, the LCC commenced centralised development of the Iolis CAL
authoring templates for use
directly by their authors. At the time of writing,
there were over 100 Iolis-based lessons on CD-ROM available for UK law
students16 and a similar number produced by The Center
for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) under licence for their US
counterparts.17 In addition to largely solving the
authoring problems experienced by Migdal and Cartwright and others, the widely
used templates
have provided a single, consistent, and familiar-looking program
interface within a reasonably flexible framework.18 These economies
of scale can
dramatically reduce the time required for students and teachers to master
program navigation and feel comfortable with
the CAL components across their
courses. Where an authoring tool such as Iolis is used across institutions
nationally, or even internationally,
even greater economies of this nature are
plainly attainable. Clearly, major collaborative endeavours are superior in
terms of cost,
time, and output than individual stand-alone efforts with
PCS.
Nevertheless, as compelling as the argument for standardisation is, the
“mass-production” approach inherently implies
restrictions on
program control. Indeed, Migdal and Cartwright’s decision to develop their
own CAL template was motivated by
a policy decision to include a substantial
human element on video, as such a facility was not available within the Iolis
framework.19
The importance of pedagogical goals as
the starting point for CAL development has been well
documented.20 When planning a CAL program, establishing
whether pedagogical aims are attainable using a standardised package is
obviously a precursor
to using such a template. For those of us considering
converting an existing program into a standard form, the extent to which both
systems are likely to achieve pedagogical goals must be reviewed and compared.
Quoting the 1995 edition of Iolis, Paliwala notes
that “the design of the
courseware was deeply influenced by the need to ensure respect for pluralism as
well as the need to
enhance existing educational
values.”21 However, in his generally favourable
assessment of Iolis, Moodie highlights several current features that may limit
its potential
application:
The very nature of CAL development is evolutionary. Whilst every case will be determined according to the required balance between time, resources, and program features,23 the speed of development of technology requires CAL program designers to factor anticipated changes into their planning. That is, the sacrificing of desirable program features such as integrated email and conferencing can be considered temporary and should not necessarily be used to reject adoption of a standard template. Indeed, the increasingly integrated nature of global telecommunications is likely to render CAL standards almost universally portable, further augmenting their economies of scale and their scope and popularity. Following their experiment exploring the potential of email technology (in conjunction with Iolis courseware), Widdison and Schutte predicted that “the most likely end result will be an electronic communication medium that is infinitely plastic ...”24
CATCHING UP TO THE COLLABORATORS — HOW DO WE DO IT?
If we accept that CAL has a continuing role to play in legal education in the
new millennium, countries such as New Zealand which
do not take a coordinated
approach to development, are in danger of becoming increasingly isolated
backwaters. The Iolis and CALI
research suggests that many programs can be
delivered via standard templates, and many more will become feasible as
technology advances.
Furthermore, the resource and time constraints associated
with individual CAL attempts plainly prevent sufficient programs from being
developed at all. It is therefore imperative that New Zealand legal educators
investigate utilising Iolis as a national de facto
CAL standard in order that
program development time be reduced dramatically and quality program output be
increased substantially.
More importantly, the current levels of maturity and
stability made possible by Iolis provide timely opportunity for the analysis
of
the successful collaborative CAL integration model applied by the LCC. By
borrowing experience and leasing technology from the
forerunners, it is
anticipated that the development of a sustainable and effective national (or
intra-national) CAL structure appropriate
to Australasian conditions can be
accelerated considerably.
In addressing the issue of the high cost of CAL
development, Dale observes that:
The techniques which might usefully be applied to make it cheaper —
large-scale development and distribution, efficient reuse
of components,
licensing content from other publishers — are by their very nature
techniques which are most effective when
utilised within a large-scale project.
Yet bringing about the creation of such projects requires initial large-scale
funding and
collaboration between institutions, which is itself difficult to
achieve.25
Despite this inherent difficulty, the
need to overcome these obstacles is clear. In 1993, Laurillard produced a
comprehensive and
detailed blueprint for embracing educational technology in
which she advanced the concept that “quality is best established
through
organisational infrastructure and
collaboration”.26 Paliwala, in a recent review of
the LCC’s progress, corroborated this view, and summarised the key
ingredients in their success:
These essential components — in addition to serving as a useful starting-point checklist for developing a more comprehensive national CAL plan — highlight the importance of commitment. In terms of Dale’s Development Triangle,28 commitment from academics, technical people, and national policymakers appear to form congruent triangles of interdependence in which a change in one component alters the balance of the other two components. The superimposition of this commitment relationship on Dale’s development interdependence model can be graphically represented thus:
Just as a change in development time alters the balance of features produced
and resources required, a lack of commitment and funding
from policy makers, for
example, will necessitate greater commitment from academics and technical
people. Given this interdependence,
it is of paramount importance that a
feasible and sustainable balance of commitment from these parties at the outset
is established.
One common denominator in all successful CAL programs has
been the commitment of development time by the academics driving the project.
The greatest progress, however, has been achieved when this enthusiasm and
vision — coupled with commitment to sound educational
values — has
been aggregated and centrally coordinated.29 Currently
there is no national effort being directed at CAL development in New Zealand.
The Victoria Law Foundation30 in Australia, however,
has recognised the importance of collaboration through its funding and support
of the Australian Law Courseware
(ALC). Although not yet a national institution,
the ALC is licensed to use Iolis software for production of workbooks in the
Australasian
region and comprises authors from several Australian states. The
ALC has spent approximately 12 months modifying the UK workbooks
and, at the
time of writing, has produced 30 workbooks for use by Australian law students.
It is too early to assess the value or
impact of the ALC’s efforts in the
classroom, however, their application of the UK collaborative development model
and technology
has clearly brought about the economies of scale and time-savings
required for sustainable CAL.
CONCLUSION
United Kingdom enthusiasts,31 meanwhile, are at the
stage of looking beyond Iolis. Widdison, for example, foresees legal education
fully embracing computer-based
simulation games and using “virtual law
tutors ... as managers of the learning process”. Clearly the long-term
future
of Iolis is secured32 and will continue to
improve in quantity and quality.
Technology has an important role to play in
campus- based legal education. The centralised process of producing workbooks
has begun
in Australia and is receiving increasing support. As we head into the
next millennium, it is critical that New Zealand law lecturers
and tutors
recognise the current opportunity to commit, collaborate, and capitalise on
existing achievements and technical expertise.
We must lobby the policy makers
and legal profession for their commitment to support CAL and embrace a
full-scale mass production
to catch up. The adoption of the tried and tested
Iolis model will accelerate the process.
APPENDIX
Questionnaire and Summary Data
1 Not at all
valuable 0%
2 0%
3 40%
4 47%
5 extremely
valuable 13%
1 Very
little 0%
2 1%
3 46%
4 48%
5 A great deal 5%
1 No, not at
all 0%
2 8%
3 40%
4 40%
5 Yes, greatly 12%
1 No, not
really 0%
2 2%
3 6%
4 31%
5 Yes, please! 61%
1 One time
only 50%
2 27%
3 18%
4 5%
5 Five or more times 0%
1 No, not
really 33%
2 14%
3 25%
4 16%
5 Yes please! 12%
1 No, not
really 14%
2 25%
3 20%
4 25%
5 Yes please! 16%
1 Much too
little 0%
2 0%
3 94%
4 6%
5 Much too much 0%
1 Very
disorganised 0%
2 0%
3 18%
4 56%
5 Very well
organised 26%
1 Very
inaccessible 0%
2 7%
3 20%
4 33%
5 Very
accessible 40%
1 Useless 0%
2 4%
3 20%
4 45%
5 Very
useful 31%
STUDENTS’ COMMENTS
* Senior Lecturer, Department of Accountancy, Finance & Information Systems, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
** Research Assistant.
©2000. (1999) 10
Legal Educ Rev 163.
1 See T Suwardy and P De Lange, Delivery of
Accounting Subjects via the Internet: Student Perceptions (1998) 11
Accounting Research Journal 327, at 335 in which the authors report the
findings of an empirical study into attitudes of students towards the Internet.
They
note that “94% of respondents believed that the Internet would be
used increasingly as an educational tool and that this would
be beneficial to
their careers” and that the “vast majority (90%) of respondents felt
that the Internet would be “a
significant part of their (future) work
environment”.
But see also R Jones and J Scully, Hypertext
within Legal Education (1996) 2 The Journal of Information Law and
Technology
<http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/cal/2jones/>
where they cite
evidence that approaches used in some electronic workbooks act to
“demotivate and discourage” students.
2 See Students’ Comments, infra Appendix A, in which a call is made for further computer tutorials on other subjects offered in the AFIS 253 course.
3 <http://www.law.warwick.ac.uk/lcc/>
4 R Widdison, Law Courseware: Big Bang or Damp Squib? (1995) 4 Web JCLI <http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/articles4/widdis4.html> P Moodie, Law Courseware and Iolis: Assessing and Constructing the Future (1997) 1 The Journal of Information Law and Technology (JILT) <http://elj. warwick.ac.uk/jilt/cal/97_1mood/> A Paliwala, Co-operative Development of CAL Materials: A Case Study of Iolis (1998) 3 The Journal of Information, Law and Technology <http://www.law.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/ 98-3/paliwala.html>
5 D Grantham, IOLISplus — Extending the Electronic Learning Environment (1999) 1 The Journal of Information, Law and Technology <http://www.law.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/99-1/grantham.html>
6 For a discussion of development issues related to CAL, see J Dale, The Money Pit: Why is CAL So Expensive? Paper presented at the Australian Conference on Assisted Legal Instruction, Brisbane, 1996. In explaining his contention that “developers are frequently in the position of being able to develop only a single module or lesson because it takes all their time and resources to create the first electronic lesson”, Dale uses the “Development Triangle” model showing the interdependence amongst time, resources, and program features.
7 Moodie states “the other major attraction of IolisAuthor is that it must now be seen as the de facto standard for the production of law courseware in England and Wales”: P Moodie, Law Courseware and Iolis: Assessing the Present and Constructing the Future (1997) 1 The Journal of Information Law and Technology <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/cal/97_1mood/>
8 R C Clark, The Rationale for Computer-Aided Instruction (1983) 33 J Legal Educ 459, at 468.
9 P F Teich, How Effective is Computer-Assisted Instruction? An Evaluation for Legal Educators (1991) 41 J Legal Educ 489, at 489.
10 R Mason, Where does Computer Aided Learning Fit in the Tertiary Education Equation? (1996) 7 JLIS 105, at 112.
11 S J Shapiro, The Use and Effectiveness of Various Learning Materials in an Evidence Class (1996) 46 J Legal Educ 101, at 109.
12 See infra Appendix A.
13 A Kelman, Distance Learning at the LSE with Virtual Tutorials, IT Review (1997) 1 The Journal of Information Law and Technology <http://elj.warwick. ac.uk/ jilt/sw/97_1lse/>
14 S Migdal and M Cartwright, Pure Electronic Delivery of Law Modules — Dream or Reality? (1997) 2 The Journal of Information Law and Technology <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/cal/97_2migd/>
15 See, for example, A Paliwala, Co-operative Development of CAL Materials: A Case Study of Iolis (1998) 3 The Journal of Information Law and Technology <http://www.law.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/98-3/paliwala.html/> for an overview of Iolis and a commentary on progress.
16 See Subject Coverage in Iolis <http://www.law.warwick.ac.uk/lcc/ subjects.html> for an updated list of Iolis lessons for UK law students.
17 See The CALI Catalog <http://www.cali.org/calitech/catalog.html> for an updated index of links to the CALI Library of Computer-based Legal Exercises, based on the licensed Iolis templates, for use by students in the US.
18 Moodie, supra note 7.
19 Migdal and Cartwright, supra note 14.
20 See, for example, R Warner, S D Sowle and W Sadler, Teaching Law With Computers (1998) 24 Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal 107, at 170. See also R Jones and J Scully, Hypertext within Legal Education (1996) 2 The Journal of Information Law and Technology <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/cal/2jones/>
21 A Paliwala, Preserving Educational Values (1995) 4 Law Technology Journal 3, at 4.
22 Moodie, supra note 7.
23 See Dale, supra note 6.
24 R Widdison and J Schutte, Quarts into Pint Pots? Electronic Law Tutorials Revisited (1998) 1 The Journal of Information Law and Technology <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/cal/98_1widd/>
25 Dale, supra note 6, at 6.
26 D Laurillard, Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Technology (London: Routledge, 1993) 224.
27 Paliwala, supra note 15.
28 Dale, supra note 6.
29 For example, the British and Irish Legal Education Technology Association (BILETA), the National Centre for Legal Education (NCLE), the Computer Teaching Initiative (CTI) Technology Centres, and the LCC in the UK; and the Center for Computer-Assisted Learning (CALI) collaboration between the University of Minnesota Law School and Harvard Law School in the US.
30 See <http://www.viclf.asn.au/html/> for an overview of the Victoria Law Foundation’s law courseware project.
31 See, for example, Grantham, supra note 5; R Widdison, Computerising Legal Education: What Next? 14th BILETA Annual Conference, York, 1999: http://www.bileta.ac.uk/99papers/papers99.html
32 See LCC website, supra note 3: heading ‘Our sponsors’.
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