Digital Directions

Welcome

Welcome to the new Digital Directions blog from the UKCLE.  Here you will find discussion related to e-learning for legal academics as well as the other related subjects.  You will also be able to comment and contribute to this blog, receive regular updates and subscribe to podcasts using the links on the right hand side column.

I recently came across a rather interesting java applet at www.wordle.net that seemingly counts up how many times each word is used in a bit of text, and then presents a visual image of all the words - the more frequent the word, the larger the font.  There are other bells and whistles to change the colour scheme, layout etc.

Created by Jonathan Feinberg at IBM, I saw this as a bit of a gimmick that might be useful for putting together a pretty picture for a module handbook, or perhaps just a look at the popular words used in a journal paper or a bibliography.  It will even do RSS feeds - I bring you the words of Digital Directions:

Seems I have a facination with Google!

However, in his blog, Feinberg has created a few visual comparisons of inaugural presidential speeches, which made me think about comparing a few judicial speeches in HL cases.

I haven't got the colour scheme right, as I think the feature to compare texts is not yet available to the general public, but this is a visual representation of the Shogun Finance Ltd v Hudson (FC) [2003] UKHL 62 text:

Nothing special, one might expect to see words such as 'contract', 'person' and 'goods' appearing frequently.  But, compare now the individual speeches of the Lords.
Nicholls and Millet dissenting:

Hobhouse, Phillips and Walker affirming the Court of Appeal:

There are some differences - Hobhouse and Walker both mention the word 'contract' far less than the others.  Walker is the only one to mention 'principle' to any great level, and he also uses the word 'Lord' extensively, but then he does concur with and make many references to Hobhouse's speech.  Nicholls and Hobhouse both refer quite often to a 'crook' and a 'rogue' respectively, but only Hobhouse refers to 'Patel' the innocence third party in the case to any great extent.  Phillips makes more use of the word 'contract' than anything else, whereas the other Lords often make similar usage of other words such as 'person' and 'agreement'.  I could go on, but I'm not quite sure what this analysis tells me.  There may be some merit in looking at the words 'face' and 'written' but when the context is removed, it's not particularly analytical.

I may have some more thoughts on this for deeper analysis; but I thought it might be fun, and perhaps useful for the occasional seminar.

Beyond Text in Legal Education

This has received quite a bit of attention lately, both Paul Maharg and Julian Webb have commented on the activities of the AHRC funded project at Edinburgh University that took place this past weekend.

Here are some links to the blog posts and the project in general:

Page for the two-day conference
hEaD space - Beyond Text – Day 1
Zeugma - Beyond Text Conference, 21-22 June, day one
Zeugma - Beyond Text Conference, 21-22 June, day two

Digital Britain and Web 2.0 for research/teaching

I wasn't planning on mentioning the Digital Britain report released earlier this week - it's rather lengthy, uninteresting from the legal education perspective, and many other commentators have covered the interesting aspects of creative technologies, IPR and other rights management (see TechnoLlama, panGloss, Charles Arthur, Chris Marsden, and TorrentFreak), and covered them well.

However, the National Centre for e-Social Science are "investigating the extent to which Web 2.0 tools represent useful means of communicating, sharing and disseminating research ideas and outputs for researchers across different disciplines, with a view to exploring implications for the future of scholarly communications".  And I thought this kind of fitted with the idea that new technologies are pervasive within the education system and that we might expect newer (and especially younger) researchers to be embracing such web 2.0 tools, more so as time goes on.

"The study is aimed at:

(i) Informing researchers, institutions and funders on the effectiveness of these new resources as means of communicating, sharing and disseminating research ideas and outputs
(ii) Advising research institutions and funders about the possible implications of the use of these resources for the recognition and reward of research outputs
(iii) Providing librarians, information professionals and publishers with a view about how they might develop their roles in the scholarly communications process in order to complement the evolution of new means of sharing information in research communities.

To what extent are Web 2.0 tools are being adopted as a scholarly tool in different institutions and departments across the UK, in different subject fields and disciplines, and at different stages of the scholarly communications process?

• -Which tools are being used, for what scholarly purposes and to what degree?
• -What are the demographic characteristics of researchers who use these tools?
• -What factors influence researchers to adopt and use Web 2.0 tools?
• -Are there specific skills and training needs relevant to the adoption of Web 2.0 resources by researchers?
• -Is there evidence that Web 2.0 tools are changing researchers' behaviour in significant ways?
• -How do perceptions about quality, scholarly merit or permanence of content affect researchers' use of Web 2.0?
• -Is there evidence of impact on perceptions and practices of how research can be peer reviewed?
• -What are the ethical and legal implications of disseminating information via Web 2.0, with regard to ownership of information, etc?
  
• -What is the relationship between Web 2.0 resources and established search and discovery services?"

Prompted by the chance to win a new i-pod touch, I completed their survey!

Whilst the Digital Britain report concentrates mainly on the HEI provisions for supporting the development of a digital nation (i.e. graduates in ICT areas - see Chapter 6: Research, Education and Skills for Digital Britain), little is mentioned about the general use of web 2.0 tools within HEI - although there is some mention of embedding skills at primary and secondary level education.

I look forward to seeing some of the data generated from the NCeSS survey, particularly as some of the earlier questions asked about subject areas (and the relevant RAE 2008 subject codes) which might give some interesting comparisons not only for the research and teaching community, but regarding usage within disciplines (such as law) as well.

Welcome to our World!

Whilst the joint UKCLE/Physical Sciences Centre event on law and forensic science teaching was free to attend, both Carole McCartney and John Cassella made us work for our lunch earlier today.  Over 40 delegates attended what was originally planned for 20, and still more were on the reserve list thus indicating that the level of interest.  An even split between law and science teachers brought a balance to the discussions.

Entitled ‘lowering the drawbridge : law and forensic science education in the 21st century’, the event was designed specifically to discuss what legal education forensic science students require, and what scientific training law students require.  These two bastions of academia may indeed lower their drawbridges for passing trade between the two disciplines, but at what cost, to what ends, and are there trolls beneath the bridges causing us concerns?

 

I felt it was a very productive day, not only to take stock of my own module’s content and style of delivery, but also to hear and reflect on the practice of others, both common and uncommon needs and barriers.  This confirmed the expected diversity (in terms of how much forensic science law students get, and vice versa) that Carole proposed in Directions (and which I blogged on the Scottish perspective) last year.

No doubt we have raised more questions than had to start with, and answered fewer of the original questions than we anticipated, but hopefully this will be the start of a process to engage the two disciplines and offer some introductions to each other’s worlds.

Not wishing to pre-empt the joint report that Carole and John will prepare (with the assistance of all those who attended – no easy task!) for the HEA subject centres, I shall simply leave you with a few recently published resources (by no means exhaustive) that were briefly noted:

Merlino et al (2008) Science in the Law School Curriculum: A Snapshot of the Legal Education Landscape, Journal of Legal Education, 58(2) 190-213

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS)(2009) Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, in particular chapter 8.

Law Commission (2009) Expert Evidence in Criminal Trials

Time for some Google (and others) Bashing?

Heidi Schuster from the Max Planck Institute spoke about the use of Google in academic institutions (but also equally applicable to any corporate employer or government agency).Outsourcing of often undertaken by both the employer and the employee if software or services are not available in-house, so to speak.  However, this means that data is then transferred and stored on external servers – sometimes for free, but the real price that’s paid can be seen in Google’s terms of service that grant extensive rights for Google to ‘use’ this data.  Heidi pointed out that this is not unique to Google, but the services offered by Google are increasingly taken-up by academics and their institutions.  Many universities outsource their student email (although not usually staff email) if only to save on server space and bandwidth.  The presentation also looked at the issue of Google Inc having their headquarters in the US – i.e. outwith the EU and beyond the jurisdiction of the data protection legislation applicable to member states.  The EU’s Safe Harbour List offers some solace for Google users, but may not for users of other services.

The presentation made me think about my own use of Google – with echoes of the keynote speaker’s comments on the convergence of several great (or not quite so great, but certainly useful) functions and services.

Gmail – an alternative email address (but I’d stop short of having my university mail forwarded there).

Google Docs – collaborating with co-applicants and authors; and as (yet another!) obsessive-compulsive back-up, which probably isn’t such a good idea, but goes alongside the USB, CD, email a copy (to gmail? duh!) versions of anything I think I might accidentally delete or lose somehow.

Blogger – used for teaching and as a dissemination portal for some projects.

Google Analytics – let’s me know who’s reading this (and my other) blogs.

Google Talk – not used this for teaching (yet), but might be useful.

Google Groups – I tend to use the VLE rather than this for teaching, but it can offer some benefits.

Google Calendar – again, I don’t use it for teaching, but it’s great for collaboration with other institutions and for research projects.

Google Scholar – quite useful when I don’t really know what I’m looking for, and for when I’ve forgotten my Athens credentials!

Desktop search – this data doesn’t leave your machine, but it will if you wish to link multiple machines and perform only one search when all the indexing goes off to a Google server.

YouTube  – somewhere to stash various clips and other stuff so I can access them from anywhere (usually for a last minute conference presentation alteration).

Picassa – Similar to Flickr in the sense of somewhere to stash photos for last minute conference presentation alterations!

A cautionary tale, but nevertheless reminded me of how much I use one service provider.  My only defence is that I was using other service providers until Google bought them, that some services are specialised and I don’t have alternative choices, and finally the lazy option of the convenience – I don’t need to register elsewhere for a similar service.

Let’s all blog (and bring down a government)!

Jaspal Kaur gave an interesting presentation within the ‘Internet Content’ stream, just before lunch.  Her PhD research at Aberystwyth is looking at citizen written media and ‘amateur’ investigative journalism conducted through the use of blogs and other social networking tools in Malaysia.  This country has a highly regulated and controlled official media – it also has a good level of information technology infrastructure: 3G and broadband are increasingly common in households.  The denial of the 2/3 majority government in the March 2008 elections was widely reported as caused by an increase in the use of new media and ‘cyberdissidents’ who spoke out against the previous government and who carried increasing credence.

Some of the resources mentioned by Jaspal might well be useful for academic blogs – the New York blog Huffington Post promotes citizen written blogs, and Reporters Without Borders is almost a handbook for blogging and avoiding censorship (maybe not quite what Digital Directions needs), but nevertheless a useful resource for hints and tips on style, content, how to target your audience etc.

There appears to be a large number of citizens using new media in Malaysia.  Over 500 thousand use LiveJournal within a population of 27 million.  Their website illustrates that just short of 20 million LiveJournal accounts have been created since 1999, although many will be unused.

BILETA 2009 Conference

Host to BILETA 2009 was the relatively new Winchester University, with their fledgling first year intake of LLB students.  Organised by Helen James, it was well attended, with a good number of both old and new faces, and with over 50 papers , the main problem was deciding which parallel stream to go to!  The weather was also very obliging, especially for the dinner reception and tour of the cathedral grounds.

The BILETA AGM saw a number of new faces elected to the executive committee, but more excitingly, the 2010 conference was announced as being in Vienna, to be organised by Erich Schweighofer in association with the Wiener Zentrum für Rechtsinformatik  and the OCG Austrian Computer Society.  The date will most likely be 29-30 March 2010, the week before the Easter weekend holidays.

The first keynote was given by Jeremy Phillips, an Intellectual Property Consultant with Olswang Solicitors and Research Director of the Intellectual Property Institute.  His apt title ‘Apples, Oranges and BlackBerries’ made for an early morning fruit salad – although I’m sure the final slide contained blueberries and was devoid of any blackberries!  I’m certainly too young to remember the BBC acorn, Cherry, Tangerine or Apricot Computers, but Jeremy suggested that the use of fruit resonates with the cycle of development, maturity, decay and rebirth that both plant life and technology endure.

His slides will, apparently, be available at the IPKat blog along with extensive coverage of other IP issues and, of course, some feline friends!

In sum, the main points were:

Example	Format	Fruitflies (i.e. blocks)	Issues
Apples	Convergence	Brick wall – cannot expand into a patented area	Apple computers v Apple Corp – neither foresaw the convergence of computers and music
Oranges	Specialising	Eggs in one basket – vulnerable to a narrow market	Orange Mobile v EasyMobile – does a similar corporate colour suggest franchising?
Blackberries	Delayed Entry	‘Trolling’ by patent holders who want a profit slice	Patents on handheld keyboards and other gadgety things

CLC – The Dynamics of Law in a Rapidly Changing World

The Commonwealth Law Conference is also held every two years, primarily for lawyers and judges.  Again in Hong Kong, it was attended by seventeen Chief Justices and numerous other senior judges, advocates and lawyers from around the Commonwealth.  The CLEA conference chooses to host its own conference in the same city in order to benefit from any overlapping delegates, and also to take advantage of the visiting judiciary to judge the biennial Commonwealth Moot.  I was pleased to see Hertfordshire students representing the UK – the WINNERS were judged by three Chief Justices, a daunting task for any lawyer, let alone a student I’ve no doubt!

I was honoured to be able to give a presentation in the legal and judicial education stream, alongside Mark Bishop (ILEX) and Edward Chan SC (Hong Kong bar).  Mark gave a reminder that legal education is not just HE – it is also FE and post-qualification in terms of CPD for lawyers and training for judges.  Addressing competency standards and training, Mark gave insights into the registered status available to legal executives in Hong Kong, also mentioning comparative approaches in New Zealand as well as within the UK.  He also addressed non-legally qualified tribunal appointments whereby knowledge and values must also be accompanied by robust and objective decision making in line with the Latimer House guidelines.

Edward Chan is the chair of specialist education for the Hong Kong bar association.  He gave a historical summary of how lawyers qualified in Hong Kong.  Prior to 1969, no legal education was available until the establishment of a 3 year LLB by the University of Hong Kong.  Their first graduates saw the creation of a 1 year postgraduate certificate in law (PCLL), also devised by the university.  A report commissioned by the government recommended that the LLB change to a 4 year course, which commenced in 2004.  Their first cohort are now embarking on one of 3 PCLL courses run by different universities, but which have a substantial steer from the bar and law society.  Interestingly, the PCLL typically has more overseas students than it does Hong Kong LLB graduates.  It is possible to undertake a conversion examination in three particular modules: HK constitutional law, the HK legal system and HK land law (where certain peculiarities exist in relation to co-ownership which is possible without the use of trusts).

Discussion took place in relation to the current economic climate, and that some students would perhaps opt for the shorter 1 year bar pupillage rather than 2 years articling, as both are unpaid.  That current UK graduates are being paid to delay starting their traineeships was also mentioned as the audience included the presidents of both the Scottish and England & Wales law societies.

The second Legal Education stream “Teaching Commonlaw Principles to non-English Mother Tongue Students” at CLC featured an inspiring talk from Joanne St Lewis (Ottawa).  I expected this session to address the francophone province of Quebec, and possibly the dual primacy of the constitution in two languages (which it did, in part), but it also addressed the aboriginal customs and practices in Upper Canada.  Because there is no cultural Inuit word or concept of ‘guilt’, then these persons are likely to plead guilty when asked, as a natural response with no understanding of their actions or meaning.  Joanne gave good examples of how commonlaw principles and values have been mixed with local traditional values and customs in Upper Canada.  Law was often used to eviscerate cultural practices during colonisation, yet Canada appears to have retained and integrated many of these.

Lastly, Nic Swart (director of the Law Society of South Africa) noted the 11 official languages of South Africa (a number only exceeded by India).  Here, problems exist not only in interpretation, access to justice and an individual’s right for a court case to be conducted in a language that the person understands; but, there is also an issue for the courts.  When giving judgment, the decision must be widely understood, not just by the parties but also by other equivalent and superior courts.  Discussion ensued as to whether cultural education is required for both law student and the profession in terms of varying values and meanings – and whether it is acceptable or even ethical to chose one particular language in court due to, perhaps, a benefit in the interpretation or meaning that might not be available in other tongues.

For interest, the next CLEA and CLC will take place in Hyderabad in India, April 2011.

A CLEA view from Hong Kong

The Commonwealth Legal Education Association’s conference takes place every two years, and this year CLEA was in Hong Kong at the City University.  The weather wasn’t particularly clear, but the conference certainly was!  The Dean of the Law School opened with a quote that ‘to educate a student is to educate an individual; educate a teacher and you educate a community’.  The Chief Judge of the High Court (Justice Geoffrey Ma) then spoke about how a legal education should be akin to the ‘pursuit of the unattainable’ in the sense that when the law is not clear, predictable or easily applied, then a lawyer should have a guiding instinct.  The source of his presentation arises from a House of Lords judgment by Lord Goff in Spiliada Maritime Corporation v. Cansulex Ltd:

‘‘[J]urists are pilgrims with us on the endless road to unattainable perfection; and we have it on the excellent authority of Geoffrey Chaucer that conversations among pilgrims can be most rewarding”.

Following my own presentation about online learning in a commonwealth context, I was pleased and surprised to see a Second Life presentation from Angel Adrian (Bournemouth) and Clare Chambers (UWE).  They have been using virtual worlds to support their teaching and label their students as the X-Box generation – a term subsequently adopted by the conference whole-heartedly as much interest was sparked in the field of alternative delivery methods.  The attributes (which I failed to note all) of this x-box generation include arrogance, competitiveness, and other qualities not necessarily seen in abundance for previous generations.

Michael Furmston (Singapore Management Univ) presented ‘some problems with assessment’ and brought up the topic of cricket (again, a recurrent conference theme!) players, chess masters, American presidents and judges – the reason being, how can we rate their skills and can we apply such a method to students?

Categorisation is a rather easy task – most academics can quite easily spot an essay worth a first, 2.1, 2.2 and a third.  Many will also be able to say whether an essay is a good or weak example of each category, but when we take a greater number of categories (i.e. 1 to 100) it is less of an easy task.  Whilst Michael was speaking, I was reminded of a SWAP workshop last year run by the HEA with Richard Kimbell (see a previous blog post) who discussed a comparative pairs methodology.  Indeed, Michael went on to discuss a similar method being used to grade American presidents – Lincoln came top of the list consistently in a variety of different polls.  However, Washington and G. Roosevelt varied as to whether they came second or third.  A comparative pairs methodology would give more than just an ordinal ranking – it would indicate just how far ahead Lincoln is above the contestants for second and third place, who are almost on a par.  The best, and the worse US Supreme Court Justices were easily identified by a team of voters with knowledge of the legal system – the ones in the middle were less easily and more inconsistently delineated by individuals.  For those who need to know, the top cricketer was consistently named as Donald Bradman.

The take-home message, I suppose, is does it matter that the standard in one year is different to the next?  Or, whether one university differs to another or even subjects differ in standards?  If it does matter – what can we do, and what are we doing about it?

Swethaa Ballakrishnen (Harvard) offered some interesting points from her research into the evolution of South Asian legal education.  The relatively recent National Law Schools (5 year degrees with highly competitive entry) are embarking on a reversal of previously defective rote learning and weak legal education.    Swethaa noted that pre-independence, many lawyers educated in India were taught by professors educated in Britain, and indeed, many post independence statesmen held law degrees, although may not have practiced.  Arguably unfair, this new five year degree does promote a competitive edge for candidates early in their educational career.  It creates an elite degree, which is perhaps warranted in a legal system that offers automatic entry to the bar once qualified: there is no differentiation between solicitors/lawyers and advocates/barristers.  The presentation also covered issues regarding the syllabus; it appears that it is not perhaps what law to teach, but rather teaching law differently that is required.

Michael Sayers, the secretary-general of the Commonwealth Association of Law Reform Agencies (www.calras.org) spoke about the work of this association in over sixty different jurisdictions.  Current broad topics being addressed or reviewed across the Commonwealth include issues relating to science and technology, climate and ecology, and aging.  Many other types of reviews exist of course, but these appear to be a global trend.  Michael suggested that academics not only fit the bill for potential law commissioners, but they are equally well equipped in relation to four other ‘C’s:

Consultees – this is relatively common, especially for green papers.  Positive (as opposed to just negative) comments are equally desirable and of use to commissions, yet often forgotten about.

Communicators – academics are, apparently, good at getting the point across.  I’m pleased that commissions think so!  They naturally do so in both teaching and research.

Consultants – often commissions are in need of either paid or unpaid specialist input.  Academics may often have the time and resources to assist, and this form of external engagement is of benefit to the law schools and universities in general.

                Commitment – teaching a curriculum keeps an academic up-to-date.

This presentation reminded me of someone’s suggestion (my apologies for forgetting who!) at a UKCLE event.  Michael asked at the start of his presentation, who had responded to various types of consultation documents as an academic.  I recall a suggestion that current consultations (or even old ones) could be used as a class exercise to draft a response: it could even (and perhaps should) be sent as a response.  The only draw-back is that I doubt, even with sixty jurisdictions, that there would be a convenient consultation every semester A to coincide with land law (for example).  Indeed, older ones could be used repeatedly and might even be worth assessing, but a constitutional law module could make use of any consultation in terms of process and the right to respond etc.  Student law societies could even do so outwith the curriculum.

My final review is a presentation from Selina Goulbourne (Holborn College) who spoke about a review of Islamic law teaching in conjunction with the UKCLE (see link and also here).  As with Swethaa’s presentation, Selina criticised the use of rote learning as it does not encourage the student to see the law in context, or perhaps fully understand the principles of the law.  Selina is looking at undergraduate and professional education and making comparative analysis of jurisdictions with and without an Islamic tradition.  Also mentioned was the potential difficulty with the translation of Arabic texts in non-Arabic speaking states such as Malaysia.

Axing lectures, and April fools...

At first, I was highly tempted to reproduce this as a timely, seasonal shaggy-dog story - Law Students Demonstrate For More Lectures !  Given that SolicitR is self-defined as 'supriously legal' I did have my doubts - Julie Henry (education correspondent) also ran with this on the same date in the Telegraph - the Mirror was a full day early, but I was less cynical when the Manchester Evening News ran a u-turn story a few days later!

"With all the demonstrations going on in the run up to the G20, this one might just have slipped a little under the radar. Manchester law students recently marched on the office of Professor Alan Gilbert, president of Manchester University, to protest about cuts to their law degree course after being told that their lectures will be reduced from 30 hours a term to just 20 hours from next year."

Google News was excedingly unhelpful in my quest to seek whether "I'd been 'ad" or not.
Eitherway, given that cut-backs and other factors may be drivers for reduced contact time, can e-learning and blended learning assist?  Many argue that e-learning is time intensive to set-up (and I agree), and depepnding on how it is delivered, it may even be intensive to manage at various or all parts of the teaching period.  But, I have made cuts to contact time and now that my e-learning projects are reasonably established, I'm not spending all of the 'time saved' on the PC.  Students, on the otherhand, have mixed responses although in general they fare well.  Instead of using the term 'digital natives' I think that 'digitally naive' might be more apt as they are not incapable but perhaps less able to just pick-up and run with new technologies as one might expect with the class-bsaed lecture/seminar model.
Perhaps this is more of an issue for the law curriculum...
Google News was more helpful in finding reports of Second Life and other such things in higher education, with neighbouring MMU film and media students enjoying all bar two lectures for a particular module being delivered online.  This appears to be both substantive issues and practical skills (opening a business and advertising), yet perhaps the stakes aren't so high compared to a professsional degree where marks count for access to level two training and accreditiation.  But, I don't want to use that as an argument for not using alternative learning methods, it's merely reason to ensure that the student is able to engage and that supports are in place.  That isn't easy either!
I should also point out that Manchester's response is that any lectures cut would be replaced by tutorials and other teacher-led activities.

"In the case of law, we'd want more face-to-face time with tutors or in a training court room, rather than the `talking head' environment of a lecture."

Perhaps this will be more effective (although more reliant on physical spaces) than a Second Life courtroom...