• 50 years of assessment in legal education – liveblog

    Am liveblogging the conference as much as I can.  Julian and I up first, slides on the Slides tab.  Whirlwind tour of past & present on the theme of the title, ‘Of tails and dogs: Standards, standardisation and innovation in assessment’. First up, Craig Newbury-Jones and Nigel Firth, Plymouth U Law School, on ‘Digital assessment for…

  • 50 years of assessment in legal education

    This is a conference hosted by the Association of Law Teachers at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, today, and part of their 50th anniversary celebrations (there’s a 50 Years of Legal Education conference later in the year), which are looking back as well as looking forward to the future(s) of legal education.  Maybe it’s…

  • New media and digital research literacies for legal educators

    Second presentation to LERN on this subject, this time a seminar of three hours rather than 20 or so minutes.  Also gave a version to staff at Nottingham Trent U Law School.  The subject seems to be attracting interest, at last.  We so need to develop this as a discipline, and we also need to…

  • Simulated Clients @ Chinese University of Hong Kong

    Been travelling recently, so not much posting.  To Hong Kong in early December, training Simulated Clients for the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, organised by Elsa Kelly.  Spent four intensive days on scenario and assessment standardisation, with 10 clients.  The sessions were attended by Matthew Cheung and Martin Doris.  Martin and I go…

  • LERN: digital media and legal education research

    Am doing a brief slot for the Association of Law Teachers (ALT) Legal Education Research Network (LERN) today on social media and research, in a workshop designed to explore, in the words of Patricia Leighton, the ‘various ways that we can make people aware of our research and its findings, moving beyond the “traditional methods”…

  • Convergence and fragmentation

    I’m giving a paper today at Melbourne Law School, by kind invitation of Gary Cazalet, title ‘Convergence and fragmentation: legal research, informatics and legal education’.  Slides up on the Slides page above.  The paper is a version of draft chapter five of a book I’m writing, Genealogies of Legal Education (interim chapter titles in the…

  • LETR on regulatory relationships

    I was revisiting LETR on regulatory relationship for a paper I was giving here at Denver U Sturm College of Law.  A year or so on, how is it looking?  The responses of the main regulators were reasonably predictable though the future consequences of their actions are difficult to foresee.  But what of the report itself?…

  • Referendum

    MacDiarmid had the words for it: The rose of all the world is not for me. I want for my part Only the little white rose of Scotland That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart. In truth the Referendum vote, Yes and No, is a continuum into the future.  In that future…

  • Educating tomorrow’s legal educators: our lives as sine curves

    First, my grateful thanks to the Planning Committee of the ETL Conference, and especially to Rebecca Kourlis and Alli Gerkman for the invitation.  I enjoyed it.  I’ve been to too many conferences where panels of deans or assorted professors droned on about their institutions, or spouted some mangled reading of the Carnegie Report in support of their…

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, day 3, am

    Final day, focusing on how assessment was being carried out throughout the ETL Consortium.  Four 15 min presentations: ‘Are experiential modules really better? Qualitative assessment for student learning’, Christine Cerniglia Brown and Monica Hof Wallace (Loyola U New Orleans College of Law). ‘Assessing the “Roadmap for Employment” Experiment, Neil Hamilton, U of St Tomas School…

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, day 2, pm session 3

    Final session of the day.  Two presenters, first up Sarah Valentine, Academic Dean, CUNY School of Law.  She discussed the revisions to the ABA Standards for approved law schools, related to learning outcomes and experiential learning, particularly Standards.  Interesting because she was going in detail, via a handout, on what law schools are supposed to…

  • 3rd Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, day 2, pm session 2

    George Brandes now, talking about Making Sense of Assessment Data, and in particular Learning from Online Assessment.  George is Exec Director of Concord Law School of Kaplan University, LA.  Interesting analysis of designing at programme level via designing at more detailed, learning outcome level.  He sees the issue being one of moving up and down…