Session 4A
14.30 – 15.30 Parallel Session 4A
"Integrating Legal Research Skills Into the Curriculum and Into Life"
Alison Pope – Staffordshire University
Alison Pope is a Senior Subject and Learning Support Librarian working in Information Services at Staffordshire University. She currently supports the Schools of Law and Business. Alison holds an LLB and has worked closely with Staffordshire University Law School since 1992. In 2005 she became a Learning and Teaching Fellow at the University. This is an honorary position which will continue until the end of April 2009.
In the context of the fellowship Alison has undertaken a project which has seen information literacy integrated into Staffordshire University’s Learning and Teaching strategy. Her research interests lie taking a strategic approach to information literacy and its successful embedding within the learning environment via meaningful integration in the student curriculum. She is the project leader responsible for the team which developed ASK: the Assignment Survival Kit. This software won the CILIP UC and R award for innovation in June 2007.
Outline:
Staffordshire University Law School is responding to the UK Government’s skills agenda and trying to integrate practical skills into the first year undergraduate experience. In doing so, we are aiming to persuade students that the skills which they learn as part of the module "Skills for Knowledge In Learning and Law" (SKILLs) are transferable and will help them to be successful throughout their university years and in life as practising lawyers: importantly, legal research skills is one of these skills. Teaching practical legal skills as a separate stand-alone module was not successful. Students were reluctant to see any transferability and to apply what they learned within a discrete module to their work in other modules. Sometimes skills learnt were viewed as disposable rather than crucial strategies for enriching learning throughout the whole degree course and transferable skills for life.
Alison Pope worked with the Law School to re-design the module so that, instead of being a rag-bag of skills taught fairly randomly across the year to suit timetable, it would become much more focused, directed and timely. For example, instead of covering case interpretation after Christmas, this topic was moved to the first week of term when students first needed to read law reports. Liaison with academic staff ensured that colleagues were given a draft timetable indicating when particular topics would be covered and then asked to reinforce them in the context of their core modules. Likewise, if particular methods of assessment were being used, then the SKILLs team was told when this would happen so that this could be reflected in the scheduling of topics within the module. We re-designed the course so that topics were studied at relevant and timely points in order to try to emphasise both their immediate and lasting importance to students.
This re-design of the Skills module is in line with the University’s Statement of Good Practice on Information Literacy and also echoes the University’s Learning Teaching and Assessment Strategy 2006-9 which specifically highlights the importance of embedding information literacy at the heart of the students’ learning experience. The text of the Statement seeks to emphasise the need for approaches to information literacy to be embedded, integrated, interstitial and subject flavoured; reflecting the intertwined framework approach to information literacy, using "hot topics" and reflective learning used by Bordinaro and Richardson (2004). The Statement also stresses that the inclusion of information literacy should be iterative and incremental, using a “just in time” approach where possible. Research has shown that the timeliness of any integrated sessions is important, for example the “just–in-time” work done by Walker and Engel (2003). Above all, as articulated by Webber and Johnston (2006), information literacy should be regarded as a graduate attribute and should be assessed by credit bearing work. Research skills are is now an assessed element of the new module and the re-design of the SKILLs module at Staffordshire University will allow us to evaluate the effectiveness of this integrated approach.
