1. Using Online Learning Materials With Law Students
RiT Law Project Team
Keith Puttick, Chris Harrison, Judith Tillson

2. An Evaluation of the Use of On-Line Systems in the Development of Students’ Research, Reflective & Problem Solving Skills
Project Team
Keith Puttick
Christine Harrison
Judith Tillson
Partners
Stephen Gomez & Kerry George (Pearson)
Alan Gavin(Lexis)
Daniel Greenberg (Thomson Reuter/WestlawInsight)
Introduce the team. Last year we presented our findings from yr 2 of our RIT teaching project which looked at the Use of On-Line Systems in the Development of Students’ Research, Reflective & Problem Solving Skills. Move on to next slide our project

3. Our Project Focus Skills
Evaluating students’ use of online systems as a teaching and learning resource, and the impact on the quality of students’ work; their research and skills (reflection, analysis, etc); and response to the demands of the legal services market
Skills
Skills & assessment A particular focus is on skills, particularly the development, deployment, and assessment of research, reflective and problem solving skills (including assessment aspects).
How it maps onto MLX Pilot study. Skills development and SOL transferable skills – If we can teach students to be SOL learners then in the world of work they will be able to:-
In the world of work:-
Set goals
Plan and problem solve
Explore and manipulate in the real world (authentic problems)
Access and use online systems
Stubbé H and Theunissen N (2008) - SELF-DIRECTED ADULT LEARNING IN
A UBIQUITOUS LEARNING ENVIRONMENT:
A META-REVIEW

4. Introduction PLC On-Line, Jordans Family, Westlaw, Sweet and Maxwell
Are among the on-line systems we are evaluating
PLC On-Line, Jordans Family, Westlaw, Sweet and Maxwell
Pearson MyLegalExperience
Lexis Library
Working with the following partners we have been able to focus on research and research related skills. Free access to e-books (Sweet and Maxwell), interactive resources such as MLX – Pearson and workshop tuition on how to use online resources from both Pearson and Lexis Nexis.

5. Why?
90% of all new graduate jobs require high level digital skills (
Employers stress that being digitally literate is an essential attribute of an employable graduate.  Employers value graduates who can communicate effectively via digital media and critically judge the validity and reliability of information found online.  (JISC Developing Digital Literacies, 2012)
Staffordshire Graduate – Attributes - Digital Literate students and students who can reflect. Also, Suskind points out that Lawyerly skills and tasks are now supported by increasingly sophisticated on-line systems facilitating high-quality legal research, drafting, and document production

6. RiT PROJECT Aims & Objectives
To ascertain the effect of more structured approaches offered by online tools (OLTs) on the students’ learning experience; development of relevant skills; and their achievement, and employability
Aim
To help inform future interventions, and the design of tasks, delivery and assessment in modules & awards
At the end of the project, continue the evaluation, improve interventions, and embed the aforementioned skills into other modules by use of evaluated online systems.
Objectives

7. MyLegalExperience (MLX)
Level 4
Yr 3 –Pearson and the online simulation called My Legal Experience
A series of simulations to help students to understand and apply legal principles to their learning
Online Socialization – demonstration from Luke Rabbidge Pearson
Situative (real life) – links to experiential learning - Kolb's concrete learning experience – Practice based learning/Problem based learning
Integrated into the delivery of the Contract and Problem Solving module at level 4.
Students were given access to semester 1 topics on formation of contract. Initially it was used as a means of formative assessment and consolidation of topic areas.
Aim: to prepare students for their summative assessment problem solving exam in January. *

8. Activities in MLX
The activities, increasing in difficulty, aim to help students achieve the learning objectives for the topic:
Activities 1 and 2
Uses MCQs to focus on identifying legal issues and legal research. These are automatically graded, fed through to the gradebook and provide instant feedback.
Is this slide needed?

9. Student names
It would be worthwhile mentioning the analytics and how it formed part of the research piece – how it is useful for tracking performance.

10. Feedback Opportunities
MLX research pilot
Sections of MLX available to students
Qualitative data – student & lecturer attitudes
Quantitative data – learning analytics
Feedback to students, lecturers & resource design
Pearson is one of the world’s largest education publishers and it is well known for its textbooks.
Pearson is moving increasingly into producing digital learning resources and working with academics on testing their impact on student learning through research pilot studies.
With MLX, we made certain topics within MLX available to students to assist in their studies. These topics aligned with their module content and were designed to aid students’ understanding and performance when undertaking assignments.
We then assess students perceptions and attitudes towards online learning in general and MLX in particular.
Unlike textbooks, digital resources such as MLX, yield much data about student engagement and performance – learning analytics. In fact so much data can be derived that we can only show a couple of headlines in this presentation.
The results, when analysed are fed back to students to help them gauge their own performance, to lecturers to get a better idea of student engagement and performance and to the people producing MLX to inform further development of the resource.

11. Students’ perspectives
Around 50% students did not engage with MLX
Reasons uncovered in focus groups:
MLX not integrated into summative assessment
Students had already bought their textbooks
Preferred paper-based revision techniques
Students said they had developed own learning and revision techniques
Students who did engage said they:
Enjoyed using MLX and it helped them in their understanding and work

12. Lecturers’ perspectives
Positives:
Structure, flow and content
Videos and multimedia approach
Emphasis on self-reflection, opportunities for feedback and on-demand learning
Improvements:
More supporting case authority
More practical training on use of MLX
Teaching guide
Future use: I will get the students to work on some of the units during workshop time.  Also I see this as an ideal platform for our proposed blended learning course for the GDL especially if aspects of it can be incorporated into out VLE.

13. Analysis of Findings of Whole Group
The type of analysis that MLX can perform is extensive. So for instance, we can get data that shows a snapshot of student performance on a question by question basis and student by student basis.

14. Data Analysis Exam mark (%) Total time spent (Hr/min)
From the data, we can perform various analyses, such as this one which shows the total time spent by each student in MLX plotted against the final exam mark that the students obtained. Although there is quite a lot of scatter, a statistically significant positive correlation is obtained which indicates that the more time a student spends using MLX, the better is their exam performance. Of course this doesn’t provide evidence of cause and effect but only of correlation and more work needs to be done.
Total time spent (Hr/min)

15. Data Analysis Exam mark (%) MLX performance (%)
Similarly, we correlated performance in MLX against exam performance and there was a strong positive correlation, indicating that students who performed well in MLX also performed well in their exams. It could be argued that the better students engaged better in MLX, but nonetheless, if this relationship holds, it serves to identify students who are not doing well and therefore at risk of doing poorly in their exams.
These results are just indicative as more work needs to be done.
MLX performance (%)

16. Exam marks – those who used MLX vs not used MLX
Welch Two Sample t-test
p-value = 0.01
 Statistically significant difference between both groups
Exam
mark
(%)
Used MLX
Did not use MLX
n=53
n=43

17. Conclusions
Re-design programme delivery to more fully integrate the MLX activities into skills module
Integrate elements of MLX into blackboard sites to facilitate marking of activity 3
Agree L4, 5 ‘extensions 'to other modules In share results SU/ externally
Use our research findings to develop a GDL Blended Learning course and incorporate structured journal which will be assessed.

18. Thanks for your kind attention!

19. References & Information
JISC 2012 Developing Digital Literacies
RiT Project:
Meet the Team:
Enquiring Minds: