• 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…

  • Affect

    Just dealt with the final queries for our book, Affect and Legal Education: Emotion in Learning and Teaching the Law, edited by Caroline Maughan and myself, which is now in production.  It’s the first book-length study of the subject – astonishingly, given the importance of emotion to teaching and learning.  It’s also another first, being the first…

  • Standardized Clients @ Northumbria University Law School

    Karen Barton and I were at Northumbria U Law School this week, training Standardized Clients (SCs), at the invitation of Jonny Hall, Acting Associate Dean.  We had a brilliant time – what a great bunch of SCs – attentive, witty, fast learners.  Northumbria U. is the first English university to adopt the method – why…

  • SLS conference, 2011

    At SLS last week, and attended some interesting & thoughtful papers.  Fiona Cownie (Keele) gave a general overview of her curiosity in the skills literature in legal education: why is there so much of it, why has it taken the shape that it has, how it could (and should) be analyzed.  It was the germ…

  • Standardized clients in Ireland

    I was over in Dublin recently helping to train Standardized Clients for the Law Society of Ireland.  If you’re not sure what SCs are, head over to the Standardized Client Initiative occasional blog.

  • Problem-based learning and experiential learning

    Is it useful to think of problem-based learning as a form of experiential learning?  I didn’t used to think so, but re-reading a meta-review — Koh et al, reference below – and thinking of the work of Maggie Savin-Badin and others in online environments, I’m not so sure.

  • George & Judith Baines and progressive English primary education

    The end of May, and I was deep in the archives of the Institute of Education, UCL, London, researching the papers of George and Judith Baines, who had been remarkably original and innovative teachers and curriculum designers. I knew George in a personal capacity only very slightly, having been introduced to George and Judith by…

  • Ross Priory, 2011

    Spent two days at the invitation of Alan Paterson (Strathclyde) and Richard Susskind discussing legal practice and legal education at Ross Priory, Strathclyde’s retreat house on Loch Lomond, which has one of the best views anywhere in Scotland.  Great hospitality, great talk and insight.  This year Richard had invited Mari Sako, Professor of Management Studies…

  • New book series: Emerging Legal Learning – call for titles

    Over the past six months or so, amongst much else I've been involved in putting together a couple of book series.  This post is about the first: Emerging Legal Learning (ELL), published by Ashgate Publishing and co-edited with Caroline Maughan, Visiting Fellow, Bristol Law School, and Elizabeth Mertz, Professor, Wisconsin-Madison Law School and the American Bar…

  • Systems learning

    Before the conference started John Garvey took Karen Barton and me to a school in Tribeca where his daughter taught, and to a class where the grade one kids (ages of around 6) were learning about library cards.  It was a wonderful class.  

  • The money

    Third place, by the way, landed us a cheque (or rather a check) for $6.62M (virtual).  Any ideas how I get that into the UK?