Larry Farmer: Joining deliberate practice methods with technology

Larry’s session updated his work on MediaNote. I attended this session not just because Larry’s stuff is always interesting and based on solid reflective practice, but because Karen and I have spent the earlier part of this week at the Franklin Pierce Law Centre, training standardized clients. More of that in a later posting.

Larry’s work on interviewing has always been on the mark because he is keen to extend his practice as an educator by thinking through and adapting technology — Karen, Patricia and I learned so much from his early work on document assembly. MediaNote, hosted on the CALI site, is a great piece of software that enables students to be more reflective of their practice and (in the model of interviewing assessment that Larry runs) enables staff to assess video. Larry has taken the research associated with the concept of deliberative practice and applied it to interviewing in his design of interviewing skills, and uses the MediaNote software to collate comment and feedback from alumni who are in legal practice.

We do things differently in the GGSL, in that we don’t used student > student intervewing except at the start of the interview skills process. Thereafter we use standardised client as per the medical model. I think that there may be problems in the standardization process of assessment with Larry’s approach, though it’s undeniable that students can get benefit from playing the role of the client. What’s good about MediaNote is that it can be used so flexibly in the curriculum — or outside it.


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