In the paper sessions Deborah Ankor gave a very interesting presentation on her work and Lucy Evans’, at Flinders, modestly titled ‘Simulation on a shoestring: or how does one create a virtual experiential space with no more than an ancient learning management system’. There was reference to my work, but Deborah is taking the heuristic forward in different directions, and with very interesting and positive results. I hope she publishes it.
I was so busy talking to Deborah after her session that I was late for Kristoffer Greaves‘ session on online forums — ‘”I’m not like everybody else” — online forums and PLT – a study’. Interesting work, arising out of his Masters in Prof Ed & Training, where he used a Community of Inquiry approach. I’ve written on discussion forums — I discuss a conversational fragment in my chapter in the Affect book, and online forum improv briefly here, but I take a different approach, stemming from rhetoric & phenomenographic analysis. I liked his data analyses of forum items generated in College of Law courses (if I got that right, and I would have liked to know more (since we’re discussing stats) on the quality of learning — see here and here for examples of approaches to that — on which there’s quite a body of literature. Kris’s presentation was solid educational research, and very informative — I’ll be following his work.
Comments
4 responses to “APLEC, Friday am, presentations, 1 & 2”
Hello Paul, thank you for the mention here and your kind comments; I would have very much liked to have caught up with you at APLEC but perhaps that will happen another time. I am just reviewing my notes on your keynote presentation and would like to say that I was inspired by your talk. Also, it can be a bit lonely being a lawyer focused on pedagogy, so I felt a frisson of validation too!
Regards,
Kristoffer Greaves
Glad you liked the keynote, Kris. Re legal educational research, yes still a minority pursuit in the legal academy as well as the professional schools. But the more we put it out there, and get folk to listen, the more it’ll become mainstream. And there’s especially a need for good research into the digital domain of legal education, so keep up the great work! Just arrived back from Sydney — all in, around 26 hrs travel, so off to bed now.
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Hi Paul
I very much enjoyed your presetations at APLEC.
I did mean to send you the link to the Leo Cussen Centre for Law website in which we refer to your earlier work:
http://www.leocussen.vic.edu.au/cb_pages/ptc_educational_rationale.php
Please let me know if we might improve the way we refer to your work or how we might update our reference to it.
I was initially attracted to working at the Centre because of my prior practical and academic experience with the use of role play as a learning medium.
The simulation at the Centre was developed in the 1970’s and has fortunately continued.
I wish you well with your future projects and thank you for your engaging and practical contributions to the teaching of legal practice.
Adam May
Manager Education Services
Leo Cussen Centre for Law
Melbourne Australia