Stephen Colbran

The Role of Information Technology in Supporting Quality Teaching and Learning

This chapter reports the findings from a 2011 survey of university administrators, academics and students on the use of information technology in higher education in Saudi Arabia. The survey found that the key inhibitors for successful adoption of educational technology in Saudi Arabian universities include lack of and failures with infrastructure, blocked Websites and software issues and lack of training and support.

The impact of student-generated digital flashcards on student learning of constitutional law

ABSTRACT This article describes, evaluates and reflects upon student creation of cloud-based digital flashcards as an authentic formative and summative assessment task designed for the deep learning of constitutional law. The usefulness of digital flashcards in online legal education is explored. The undergraduate law student participants in the study responded differently to the assessment task depending upon the constitutional law topic they were assigned, the perceived relevance of constructing digital flashcards to professional practice and how they reacted to this creative task. Building digital flashcards provides a potentially powerful authentic assessment task for the study of constitutional law provided it is designed to support semester long creation, validation and sharing of digital flashcards that students perceive as professionally relevant and educationally useful. Student recommendations for designing an assessment task involving the creation of digital flashcards are evaluated.

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF JUDICIAL PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROGRAMMES

This article examines judicial performance evaluation in the United States, Nova Scotia, England, and Australia. There are three distinct categories of judicial performance evaluation: traditional forms of accountability, including the principle of ‘open justice’ and appellate review; analysis of judicial attributes; and court and administrative performance measurement. The first two categories relate to individual judges, the latter to the management and administration of a court in an aggregate sense. It is argued that the traditional approaches to judicial accountability are flawed measures by which to evaluate the performance of individual judges. The analysis of judicial attributes, including legal ability, temperament, communication and other generic skills, as conducted in the United States, Nova Scotia and planned in Australia, offers a viable method for Commonwealth judges to engage in judicial self‐improvement as part of judicial method. The application of the criteria to Commonwealth legal syst...

The Limits of Judicial Accountability: The Role of Judicial Performance Evaluation

The high standards of judicial performance Australia enjoys have been encouraged by the development of traditional checks and balances designed to promote “open justice” as a form of judicial accountability. The checks and balances include public scrutiny, media surveillance and reporting, appellate review, executive and parliamentary accountability, bar and law society opinion, academic commentary, legal publishing, and the supervisory role of the Chief Justice. Justice Thomas suggests, “These checks, balances and pressures have a powerful cumulative effect and are on the whole very effective”.1 This article critiques the concept of “open justice” as a form of judicial accountability and argues for judicial performance evaluation to promote judicial self-improvement.

An authentic constructionist approach to students’ visualisation of the law

ABSTRACT This study discusses student perspectives on visualisation used as a constructionist technique for learning the law in an authentic context. Student constructions of storyboards, comics, films and animation are explored as an authentic method for personalised learning of legal professional conduct and ethics. Undergraduate law students (n = 112) were asked to select a visual format for exploration of an ethical issue of their choice. The results of this study showed most students engaged with this highly creative visual task responding very positively to the exercise as a learning activity. This study discusses why students chose different forms of visualisation, what approach they took to developing their visualisation, the amount of effort devoted to visualisation versus legal elements of their artefacts and observations on the positive and negative aspects of their approach and how the technique could be improved. A video abstract is also available at https://doi.org/10.1080/03069400.2018.1496313 Video abstract Read the transcript Watch the video on Vimeo

From Phoenix Wright to Atticus Finch: Legal Simulation Games as an Aid to Self-Represented Litigants

This paper examines the feasibility of a courtroom simulation being used to assist self-represented litigants in learning basic advocacy skills. A review of legal and forensic mechanics in games, particularly the Phoenix Wright games, provides design roadmap for a courtroom learning simulation.

Animation and multiple-choice questions as a formative feedback tool for legal education

ABSTRACT Two-dimensional animation when combined with multiple-choice questions affords an interesting and innovative formative feedback tool for engaging law students in problem-based learning. This article investigates methods for making animation a more accessible medium for legal academics. The article also describes, evaluates and reflects upon the results of a focus group and a survey of online law student perceptions on the combined use of animation and multiple-choice questions as a formative feedback tool. Ethical issues involving delinquent and guilty clients were used as the context in which to describe an animation workflow and explore student attitudes to animation. A website was created within which animations created by academics were included to provide feedback to scaffold student understanding of legal ethics. Students viewed the animations as a very positive learning experience, in the sense of making the lesson more interesting to learn, assisting them to learn and help visualise the ethical problems. Student comments highlighted design features which, when refined, may improve the quality of both the animations and the student experience in studying law using animation.

Exploring legal ethics using student generated storyboards

This article describes, evaluates and reflects upon online team-based creation of a storyboard and script as an authentic method for learning legal ethics. The usefulness of storyboarding and script writing in legal education is explored. Undergraduate law students responded positively to the assessment task considering it as a creative activity that engaged them in analysis and conversations concerning ethical issues using an approach well outside their comfort zones and experience.