Paul Maharg Glasgow Graduate School of Law

1. simulation and OERs patriciamckellarpaulmaharg Paul MahargGlasgow Graduate School of Law

2. preview • Sims in general… • Case studies: • Personal Injury Negotiation transaction • Standardised Client • Simshare • (in)conclusions regarding sustainability

3. why simulations…? They… are close to the world of practice, but safe from the (possible) realities of malpractice and negligent practice. enable students to practise transactions, discuss the transactions with other tutors, students, and use a variety of instruments or tools, online or textual, to help them understand the nature and consequences of their actions facilitate a wide variety of assessment, from high-stakes assignments with automatic fail points, to coursework that can double as a learning zone and an assessment assignment encourage collaborative learning. The guilds and groups of hunters/players in multi-player online games can be replicated for very different purposes in FE & HE. students begin to see the potential for the C in ICT; and that technology is not merely a matter of word-processed essays, reports & quizzes, but a form of learning that changes quite fundamentally what and how they learn.

4. why simulations…? They: • are often complex and difficult to build, especially first time round • are time-consuming to plan • can be expensive to run • can be difficult to embed alongside more conventional forms of teaching and learning • are disruptive of settled modes of feedback

5. simulation environments:results from the literature • Sims can enable more engaged and deeper learning in students, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels • Sims can be used to learn and assess conceptual and second-order symbolic knowledge, practice-based skills and personal achievement of integrated skills. • Students adapt best to new learning environments when they are aware of the expectations of them in the new arena. • Simulation is a disruptive heuristic and requires support. • Although initial workload is heavy there is payback in later years • There are serious implications for educational theory, institutional change and innovation

6. sims affect learning, institutions, practices • There is no such thing as experiential learning. Learning is distributed among expanded environments, tools, roles, tasks, social relations. • There is no spoon: curriculum is technology. Staff role-change vs conventional teaching/admin roles. 3. The role of the institution changes. The question is no longer why conventional learning environment vs sim, clinic, PBL, etc; but in an era where Wikipedia & SourceForge flourish against all odds, why are we not collaborating at all levels in teaching & learning?

8. authenticity as transactional learning… active learning through performance in authentic transactions involving reflection in & on learning, deep collaborative learning, and holistic or process learning, with relevant professional assessment that includes ethical standards

9. signature pedagogies (Lee Shulman) Sullivan, W.M., Colby, A., Wegner, J.W., Bond, L., Shulman, L.S. (2007) Educating Lawyers. Preparation for the Profession of Law, Jossey-Bass, p. 24

10. Transforming Legal Education:four key themes

11. 1. personal injury negotiation transaction Administration: 272 students, 68 firms, 8 anonymous information sources – PI mentors 68 document sets, 34 transactions Each scenario has embedded variables, called from a document server, making it similar, but also unique in critical ways students have 12 weeks to achieve settlement introductory & feedback lectures discussion forums FAQs & transaction guideline flowcharts voluntary face-to-face surgeries with a PI solicitor

12. correspondence file

13. Ardcalloch directory

14. map of Ardcalloch

15. PI project: assessment criteria We require from each student firm a body of evidence consisting of: fact-finding – from information sources in the virtual community) professional legal research – using WestLaw + paperworld sources formation of negotiation strategy – extending range of Foundation Course learning performance of strategy – correspondence + optional f2f meeting, recorded

19. PI project: (some of) what students learned extended team working real legal fact-finding real legal research process thinking in the project setting out negotiation strategies in the context of (un)known information writing to specific audiences handling project alongside other work commitments structuring the argument of a case from start to finish keeping cool in face-to-face negotiations more effective delegation keeping files taking notes on the process...

20. key issue: simulation tempo & complexity

22. 2. standardised client initiative • Training lay people to simulate clients, and doing two things well: • Discussing their case with the (trainee) lawyer in a way that is standard across the cohort of students that the SC meets • Assessing the client-facing skills of the lawyer

23. Large body of research literature criticised oral exams beginning in 1960s ‘A test that is not reliable cannot be valid’ e.g. NBME (USA) studies exams of 10,000 medical examiners over 3 years and found correlations between 2 examiners in one encounter <0.25 Use of Standardised Patients since 1963 Now used in high-stakes competency examination for licensure in USA and Canada Extensively used in final exam ‘OSCE’ stations in UK medical schools evidence from medical education

24. develop a practical and cost-effective method to assess the effectiveness of lawyer-client communication which correlates assessment with the degree of client satisfaction. ie answer the following questions… Is our current system of teaching and assessing interviewing skills sufficiently reliable and valid? Can the Standardised Patient method be translated successfully to the legal domain? Is the method of Standardised Client training and assessment cost-effective? Is the method of Standardised Client training and assessment more reliable, valid and cost-effective than the current system? SC project aims

25. ‘The best way to learn how to do standardized patients is to do it along side of someone who has already done it before. It’s [the] apprenticeship system.’ Wallace, P. (1997) Following the threads of an innovation: the history of standardized patients in medical education, Caduceus, A Humanities Journal for Medicine and the Health Sciences, Department of Medical Humanities, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 13, 2, 5-28. phasetwo How was the sim created?-- creation of validated documents + training of SCs

26. There’s a need for the SCs to calibrate: Body language Tone of voice Attitudinal swings Dealing with the lawyer’s open questions… Improvising on closed questions… Performance analysis: ‘What prompted you to say…?’ ‘How did you feel…?’ And to: Be aware of orientation towards lawyer at first sight Respond congruently to the lawyer Consult the internal ‘invigilator’… phasetwo How was the sim created?-- training of SCs

27. Use of SCs is asreliable and valid as tutor assessments We make what the client thinks important in the most salient way for the student: a high-stakes assessment where most of the grade is given by the client We do not conclude that all aspects of client interviewing can be assessed by SCs We focused the assessment instrument on aspects we believe could be accurately evaluated by non-lawyers Focused the assessment on initial interview This has changed the way we enable students to learn interviewing… conclusions

30. aims of the simSHARE project? • Collation of simulation resources which are repurposed as open educational content • Creation of guidelines for future publication of simulation projects • Help staff to use simulation more widely and effectively through staff development. • Create methodologies that will help staff to see more clearly how simulation OER can be interpreted and in particular how to: • Generate or re-purpose a simulation • Archive a simulation • Retrieve a simulation and analyse its component parts for educational value and purpose

33. my profile

36. Sample resource in aSimshare role play

37. staff experiences on SIMPLE sims? staff advice from SIMPLE project… • Start with a simple scenario for the first attempt. • Run a pilot before letting students loose on it. • Don’t underestimate the skills you might need to get things up and running. • Begin the process of developing the scenario as early as possible. • Think in advance about how sim responses will be managed ie when/who/how often: set clear guidelines to students about how this will work. • Plan & organise well in advance

42. future plans • Collation of as many interdisciplinary sims as we can get • We’re about to enter upload & then dissemination phases of project • simSHARE adds value to open-source SIMPLE, by disseminating SIMPLE blueprints as open resources • next step is to add further value to the Open sim environment by adding an open-source e-portfolio, eg Mahara.

43. 1. sustainability is not the main issue… • Simshare is not an organisation (Microsoft), it’s an ecosystem (Linux). • Like all Open ecosystems, it’s remarkably tolerant of failure • Cheap failure enables the creation of multiple possibilities • It best operates on a publish-then-filter model • This model requires very minimal infrastructure (Wikipedia vs Encarta)

44. … it’s the type of CoP we need … Re social capital, do we want – • Bonding capital? • Increase in trust & connections within a homogeneous group, eg a disciplinary group or even sub-group interested in sims • Relatively exclusive • People support each other’s worldviews • Bridging capital? • Increase in connections among heterogeneous groups, eg differentdisciplinary groups interested in sims • Relatively inclusive • Puts people at great risk of having good ideas… Thanx to Shirky, C. (2008) Here Comes Everybody, London, p.222

45. … and how we go about achieving it. • Construe Simshare as ‘commons-based peer production’ (Benkler) • Bring together heterogeneous groups, ie use bridging capital • Build from the most local levels up, where there’s opportunity to host & bridge • Accept power law distribution of effort, sharing & use. • Reconceptualise OER not as harmonious sharing but as peer improvement and adaptation – sometimes with bittersweet results • Link research to practice; radicalise practice by using Simshare as a ZPD, a safe zone for experimentation