Category: Uncategorized

  • Research skills and the researchers of tomorrow

    More on research skills, this time on the wider context from Jisc.  Their report, out in 2012, revealed the serious problems and the huge potential of the digital shift.  Over a project span of three years Researchers of Tomorrow analysed the working practices of  around 17,000 doctoral students born between 1982 & 1994, the so-called Gen…

  • Heroism, liminality, time

    The Hero MOOC called up more memories.  A large wall poster from my primary school days, in a Catholic boarding school — and me, aged eight, just arrived there, bewildered enough by the school, trying to make sense of the poster.  I remember an imperious-looking Greek man in a chariot drawing up in a sunlit…

  • MOOCs – learning by experience

    What’s it like to study a MOOC?  Well, you could read the studies, listen to students — but what’s maybe best of all, you could take part in one yourself.  Which is what I did about six months ago — I joined a Harvard MOOC,  The Ancient Greek Hero, me and about 36,000 others.  So what…

  • LETR and legal education research infrastructure

    The LERN event earlier this month, part of which I summarised here, picked up on the LETR call for more and better research into legal education.  The LETR report was tasked to be evidence-based, and thus to inform the second phase of LETR which we are now in.  As we pointed out, though, the literature needs…

  • Markets, modern universities, ancient values

    A while back I attended a two-day ASSA workshop  at the ANU College of Law, organized and convened by Professors Margaret Thornton and Glenn Withers.  I missed the first couple of sessions, but came in on Geoff Brennan’s paper on markets and Australian universities; and Fiona Jenkins’ very impressive paper on the impact of research evaluation exercises and the way they reproduce…

  • ALTA thoughts

    Very enjoyable conference.  This was my first ALTA, and as I said in the keynote I learned so much about what was going on in legal education in Australia from those sessions (which were the majority of the conference streams) on the subject.  You could say of course that I was talking about a sample…

  • Session 7: legal education

    Last presentation in the session — missed the earlier two, doing other things.  Penny Carruthers, on ‘Property law teachers: gatekeepers to a broader legal understanding through the rich tapestry of property law’.  Gave a resume of the Mildenhall case (2010) in Torrens, at macro- & micro-level.  She gave an overview of the skills that she…

  • Session 6: Legal education

    Missed the plenary — one of the dangers of having a conference in your workplace. This morning, another three legal education streams to choose from — riches!  I’m in a session with Michael McShane presenting on ‘Should law schools focus on the discipline or the profession of law?’

  • Panel presentation: law teachers as gatekeepers

    The full title is: ‘Law teachers as gatekeepers — How effectively are legal educators teaching students about the role of lawyers and the nature of legal practice’.  Kim Economides, Tim Bugg, Jemima Roe, Bradley Chenoweth on the panel, chaired by Michael Coper.

  • Session 3a: Legal Education

    Leonie Kelleher & Hubert Algie, ‘Gatekeepers of the Law: Revising the roles of academics, students and the profession’.  Descriptions of activities where students practise skills eg advocacy.  Hubert described generally the context that one might find in good advocacy courses, focusing especially on risk, failure in public in front of one’s peers.  One interesting point…

  • Session 2: Clinical legal education & practical legal training

    There are three legal ed streams in the conference, so I’m following one at a time.  First up in this session are Barry Yau & Vivien Holmes — What’s ethics got to do with it?  Requiring students to be cognisant of ethical parameters in commercial practice’.  Barry described the context of the GDLP course and the…

  • ALTA Conference, plenary 1

    I’m live blogging the ALTA conference, held this year at ANU College of Law.  The theme of the conference invites us to explore the idea of law teachers as gatekeepers.  First plenary is Carrie Menkel-Meadow, who started by talking about gatecrashing or rather gate-opening as characterising her career.  Question:  are we teaching sovereignty or humanity?  What is…