Category: Uncategorized

  • APLEC 2012 roundup

    Fine conference, well designed for its participants by the UTS team.  Professional legal ed conferences are different from academic in terms of the quantity & quality of research and discussion arising out of research.  Papers tend to be much more practical, linked to legal practice, obviously, or linked to legal educational practice.  As always there’s…

  • APLEC, Saturday am, second plenaries

    Sally Kift’s keynote presentation gave an overview of academic standards in AU HE — ‘Academic standards: the national context and remifications for legal education’. She outlined, as she said, a highly complex field, a ‘perfect storm’ of regulation for AU HE and PLT in particular.  Her presentation was vintage Kift: hugely informative, delivery at a…

  • APLEC, Saturday am, presentations 2 & 3

    Next up was Deborah Ankor (again — with all this innovation she’s creating @ Flinders does she ever sleep?), on ‘Using Standardized Clients for assessing interviewing skills’. This was the report on an initial trial using SCs. The context: an LLB/LP incorporating skills throughout the degree (so unusual degree structure) — fairly conventional teaching, in…

  • APLEC, Saturday am, presentation 1

    In the first of the small group sessions on Saturday, I attended the ‘Addressing Stakeholders Needs’ stream. First up was Helen McGowan, on ‘The Bush lawyer pipeline: service learning and practical legal training in regional Australia’. Legal aid, aboriginal community service and other adjacent services that were RRR — regional, rural and remote [check out the videos…

  • APLEC, Friday pm, plenaries

    Your intrepid blogger ducked out of the next plenary session to sit in the pleasant courtyard of the UTS law school and catch up on postings and email; so for me the Stakeholders’ Panel was next up — ‘How does PLT fair from the other side?’ The Panel consisted of Michael Day, DPP, Vivien Swain, Magistrate,…

  • APLEC, Friday am, presentations, 1 & 2

    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…

  • Autumnal photo

    Someone asked about the banner photo above.  It was taken in September, about 0845, from the car park below Ben Narnain, looking across Loch Long to Arrochar.  Magnus and I were just about to start on the Cobbler.  Brilliant day.  Full photo below. This is my 200th posting since starting this legal educational blog, first…

  • Workshop on legal ethics, pm

    Afternoon session consisted of a workshop by Graham Ferris and Jane Jarman on addressing pluralism and the discourse it leads to; and yours truly, on ‘The Standardized Client Initiative (SCI): a portrait of the outsider as teacher’ — slides at Slideshare, or on the Slides page here.   The title refers to one of the…

  • Workshop on legal ethics, am

    The workshop started the evening before, at a dinner hosted by Clark and Nigel. After welcome & intros, where Clark introduced the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism (NIFTEP), we started with a session on ‘Anti-money laundering, ethics and professional judgment: a teaching exercise’, co-presented by Nigel and Clark. We were shown a video…

  • Workshop on teaching ethics in the law curriculum

    This is a workshop organized by Nigel Duncan and Clark Cunningham, held at City Law School. In the morning I’ll be live blogging in the next few posts, if I can get a connection. In the afternoon I’m speaking on Standardized Clients (SCs) — ‘The Standardized Client Initiative (SCI): a portrait of the outsider as…

  • LMSs & free beer

    Stephen Downes blogged Steve Kolowich’s article on Pearson’s announcement that they’re teaming up with Google to provide a a cloud-based ‘new learning management system that colleges will be able to use for free, without having to pay any of the licensing or maintenance costs normally associated with the technology’.  According to the article, OpenClass has no…

  • National Teaching Fellowship and interdisciplinary professionalism

    I’ve been awarded a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship — here’s a list of this year’s Fellows, and we’ll be awarded our Fellowships at a dinner event on Wednesday.  I have to say I have mixed feelings about belonging to groups such as this.  When I was made a Senior Fellow I had thought…