Serby, T --- "Willing suspension of disbelief: a study in online learning through simulation, and its potential for deeper learning in higher education" [2012] LegEdDig 31; (2012) 20(2) Legal Education Digest 51

• Willing suspension of disbelief: a study in online learning through simulation, and its potential for deeper learning in higher education

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Willing suspension of disbelief: a study in online learning through simulation, and its potential for deeper learning in higher education

T Serby

Liverpool Law Review, Vol 32, No. 2, 2011, pp 181-195

The method of research chosen for this study into the efficacy of the Transactional Learning Program (TLP) and student opinion on it, was a survey. The questions asked in the surveys related to student satisfaction with the teaching methods employed in the TLP. The response rate in both years that the survey questions were asked was slightly in excess of 50 per cent from a total of 86 students. The survey was commissioned principally to uncover any manifest dissatisfaction among the student body that might exist, so that the Project could be modified accordingly for subsequent academic years.

Forty students on Anglia Ruskin University’s Legal Practice Course (‘the LPC’) participated in the TLP for the first time in 2009. The LPC is a one year full-time (or two year part-time) professional postgraduate vocational course whose successful completion is a prerequisite for starting a two year training contract as a trainee solicitor.

The rationale of the TLP was to measure what benefits, if any, exist in terms of improved learning by moving students away from compulsory attendance at lectures and workshops in favour of engaging them in an online exercise based on transactional learning using simulation and collaboration. Transactional learning can be defined as active learning based on the practical process of doing realistic transactions.

The simulation aspect of the TLP, which along with the online interaction, is its novel quality, is the attempt to foster role play throughout an extended period based on a virtual environment using realistic props such as websites and newspapers and a scenario that a trainee solicitor might experience in legal practice involving taking instructions from a ‘pretend’ client who has suffered a bereavement and who needs advice in probate law. The 40 strong cohort of students are arranged at the outset into seven teams each comprising five or six individuals. Each team collectively played the role of a trainee solicitor charged by their principal (played by the Tutor, referred to hereafter as the Principal Solicitor/tutor) with taking the fictional client through the death of a spouse and the administration and execution of the deceased’s estate.

In their ‘traditional’ LPC workshops our students become adept at dealing with discrete legal transactions; but we wanted to add an element to the subject whereby they practised (in teams) dealing with a larger transaction that spanned across several weeks. An essential skill a trainee must have in this regard is the ability to plan ahead and to link what they are doing now to what they did at the outset of the case and what they plan to achieve to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

The so-called core skills the LPC assesses students in include traditional ‘lawyerly’ skills such as writing, interviewing, advocacy etc., but there is no teaching of, and assessment in, that softest of skills, teamwork. Invariably ‘teamwork’ appears prominently in the websites of the most illustrious law firms as the skill most valued by employers in their employees. Another emphasis of the TLP (and all simulation based learning) is the art of students making choices about how to engage with their client and other parties. The correct ethical code of behaviour can only be learned through exposure to an actual transaction, during which students will begin to ask themselves about the correct fashion and order in which to progress a particular legal transaction.

Because the TLP is done entirely online (except for an introductory lecture) it prepares students to work in an online environment which increasingly the modern workplace now is. Many students have a resistance to teaching methods where there is a high degree of online learning and where students are expected to engage in online discussion groups where the lecturer is absent for long periods from the discussion. Yet, in their professional lives trainee solicitors have of course to work on their own, largely independently, in a technological environment where they are reliant on the internet for legal research and materials, and where online communication has become the norm.

Collaborative learning means students sharing their knowledge and peer reviewing their work. By the use of online transactional collaborative learning using simulation and role play students are forced to think for themselves by themselves, then to transmit their ideas in written form to their peers for possible revision/comment/enhancement, the essence of team work. One of the intangible skills we want the students to learn through their collaborative work together on the TLP is ‘trust’; trusting one another to contribute individual parts, which when added together form an overall team solution to the practical problem before the team. One of the biggest issues we have had to overcome on the TLP relates to the difficulty in formally assessing students where a module has been taught as an online, collaborative, transactional exercise involving simulation. Unless there is an element of assessment many students find it difficult to motivate themselves to engage. One of the issues that came out forcefully from the student feedback on the TLP was their objection to working on it while at the same time preparing for assessments in other subjects. In legal practice trainee solicitors, like their qualified colleagues, will of course be handling a number of files, and they must learn to prioritise their work and plan their time efficiently.

In 2009 the probate module was the only LPC module which was not assessable and probate was therefore considered suitable as a pilot for the new online teaching method this article describes. The TLP is supported by a series of pages built into the University’s online Virtual Learning Environment (‘VLE’). Although the TLP is designed to be capable of being studied by students working online remotely from one another; there was nothing preventing individual groups of students choosing to supplement their online discussions with face to face meetings. However outside of the initial two hour lecture student interaction with the principal solicitor/tutor was online only.

The first file, the Instruction Manual, speaks for itself, and describes the logistics and learning outcomes of the TLP to the students, basically an introduction to students to the TLP. The timesheet file, the timesheet/costs spreadsheet is a highly innovative aspect of the TLP. The spreadsheet file (one for each team) simulates the practising lawyer’s time-recording (the essential component of legal bills).

The third file on the TLP home page is the Resource links file. This is a portal to the wide variety of websites that the students would need to access whilst undertaking the work on the project, such as the website of the Probate Service, (part of Her Majesty’s Court Service) which contains the forms required by a solicitor acting for a client in a probate transaction. The presence of a Resource links file is a clue to the students of the whereabouts of certain forms or information which they would require to carry out successfully the client’s instructions. Crucially however there are decoy sites and the students must critically engage with the materials and ask themselves which is the appropriate resource/information.

The final file on the TLP VLE home page was the Discussion Tool. Each team of five students had their own private e-mail forum, so that they could collaborate together on the tasks required of them. One of the side-effects of the TLP is enhancement of students’ IT skills generally. Skills in communication, presentation and negotiation are enhanced by collaborative learning.

The simulation consists of a scenario based on the recent death of an individual and the request by that person’s widow for legal advice in relation to their dead husband’s estate. The TLP is delivered over a 10 week timespan and milestones are set, comprising deadlines for the various tasks to be accomplished by the teams, from the initial letter of advice to the client through to completion of the project (ie satisfactory execution of all the client’s instructions, that is, distribution to the beneficiaries of the deceased of their various entitlements). In all, over the 10 weeks, there were six discrete activities each team had to undertake.

Each of the six activities is presaged by a memorandum from the principal solicitor/tutor, which is similar to how a trainee would work in ‘real life’. This modus operandi allows the principal solicitor/tutor to initiate each of the six separate tasks and to report back at the end of each milestone to each team (separately). The principal solicitor/tutor has access to each group’s discussion forum enabling her to monitor the students’ progress. Where their discussions/progress were flawed, the principal solicitor/tutor could step in by posting a message to the team, putting them back on track. This situation again replicates ‘real life’ where a principal in a firm of solicitors would have to monitor a trainee solicitor’s work, and would review the file from time to time to that end.

The six separate activities collectively represented a typical probate transaction, i.e (1) taking instructions from the widow; (2) advising on the overall length and cost of the probate transaction and explaining the law on entitlements under the deceased’s will; (3) getting a grant of probate (two discrete activities); (4) distribution of the estate (two activities).

Group work emerged as a particular issue, and was raised in several written submissions. Others found that the group dynamics had not worked effectively. In Salmon’s evocative word, ‘lurkers’ are characterised by their lack of contribution to the (online) debate; and they can be a source of frustration to more active students for whom the lurkers devalue the process and act as a de-motivator. On the other hand it has been remarked by others in relation to collaborative group work that some conflict within the group has the potential to energise debate and improve the learning process, as compared to a group where relations are cordial but there is little energy and consequently not much achieved. We introduced a reform in our second year of the TLP, whereby we had a rotating team leader, and the incoming team leader was appointed by the outgoing one. Over the course of the TLP everyone had a go at leadership. We found that this enhanced ‘collaborative collegiality’.

Another issue raised by students was the problem of doing the (non-assessed) TLP alongside the other LPC modules which are all assessable. Student feedback was quite pronounced in this regard and as a result in the TLP’s second year we introduced a prize (sponsored by a local enterprise) for the top performing team. We also introduced a certificate of competence, which while successful passage through the LPC did not depend on it, clearly vitiated students’ disdain for a non-assessed subject. There is no reason why a TLP style of teaching cannot lead to a traditional assessment, and we are considering introducing elements of the TLP into assessed modules also.

A perennial issue with collaborative work is the danger that students concentrate exclusively on their own part of the overall group task and learn very little in relation to the input from their colleagues on the other parts, which they take at face value.

The introduction of rotating leaders in the second year of the TLP led to greater overall participation as each student made sure all the others were contributing.

The tutor’s main role is reviewing the documentation produced by the student teams. The students have to draft letters of advice and to fill in forms required during the probate process. Because they do not receive lectures in probate law, the students have to carry out research in the texts provided and to look online, sometimes on the websites of government agencies, to produce the required documentation.

The TLP represents a fresh approach to the teaching on the Legal Practice Course. The Tutor dictated the ‘what’ (ie. the learning and product outcomes) and the self-managing group of students the ‘how’ (ie. the best means of collaborating). The TLP emphasises teamwork (because students work in groups) and self-reliance (because they cannot consult with a Tutor) among students. Lizzio and Wilson characterise the twin potential benefits of autonomous collaborative student learning groups such as the TLP as ‘pragmatic (eg. cost and time effective), or educational (eg. student-centred learning, self-directed learning)’. In terms of the ‘pragmatic’, the TLP required a capital outlay in tutor time to write the materials in its first year but this can be recovered in probably three academic years, given the saving in tutor time represented when face to face workshops are removed. In terms of the educational benefit, none of the groups failed to achieve the learning outcome of the TLP, which was successful completion of a probate transaction on behalf of the fictional client.

But the real ‘educational’ measure of the TLP is that it goes beyond teaching probate law; it inculcates the ‘softer’ skills such as teamwork and time management. It also introduces students in a practical way to a fundamental aspect of the practising lawyer’s life which is not taught elsewhere in the LPC: time recording and billing of clients.