Adaptive Teaching Approaches Implications for the Law Curriculum

Current Environment 21st Century students Grown up with Technology Most have part time jobs Most will have major higher education debts More law students then ever in law schools 41 Australian law schools

Post GFC Tightening up of Market Not as many lawyer positions Need to look wider than the legal profession for employment Law School responses – Western Sydney – Reduced our law student intake by 20%

Reframe legal education What do our law students need? Still need critical thinking Ability to communicate, be it in the law office or other professional work Exhibit a professional approach to their law studies Ethical approach to learning

Reframe our learning and teaching Academic staff numbers are not growing Academics have not been trained or have little experience in technological devices Resources are not necessarily available Confusion over what is meant by online, flipped classroom, and the use of interactive devices

Online Material/Flipped classroom Providing material online and nothing more? Flipped classroom – utilises multimedia applications Integration of e learning and then reinforcing this with face to face tution Issues? Tied to assessment; Academic staff and adjustment of teaching style

Is this Enough? Need to use active learning methods across the curriculum Academics cannot force students to learn Academics can only create good learning environments for students

Adaptive approaches Just in time teaching Concept mapping teaching? Collaborative not Adversarial Emphasis? What is this all about?

Stop thinking about Silos Assumption is that everyone teaches roughly substantive law in fairly similar sequences Introductory Law, Torts, Contracts, Criminal Law

First Year renewal at WSU First Year Report 2015 Need to integrate active learning of the Course content throughout the law degree Realignment of first year units studied

First year Framework Fundamentals of Australian Law (FAL) and Criminal Law studied at the same time More face to face tution for FAL Legal Analysis and Critique (LAC) studied with Torts More face to face tution for LAC

Collaboration between Teachers Equity/Property Trusts/Revenue Law Contracts/Property/Revenue Law

Example: Revenue Law Contract Law: Oral/Written Contract principles with Capital Gains Tax Property Law: Notions of Property aligned with Capital gains Trusts Law: Aligned with Wills, Death and Income and Capital gains Corporate Law: Aligned with revenue Law from a perspective of separate legal entity

Concluding comments More face to face tution for First year introductory units Acquisition of skills linked with application of a substantive subject Collaboration between academics over content Scaffolding of content, online material, student expectations and assessments