Information Age to Interaction Age in Legal Education: How Far Have We Progressed?

Suriyakumari Lane^1,

¹School of Law, Birkbeck College University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX United Kingdom, Honorary Lecturer/Honorary Fellow/Dissertation Adviser University of Liverpool, School of Law, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, University of Liverpool, L69 7ZA United Kingdom

Cite this paper:
Suriyakumari Lane. Information Age to Interaction Age in Legal Education: How Far Have We Progressed?. American Journal of Educational Research. 2015; 3(12):1511-1518. doi: 10.12691/education-3-12-5

Abstract

This paper analyses undergraduate legal education in the United Kingdom (with some reference to other countries) in the last 50 years in relation to teaching methods. In the 1960s the emphasis was on the lecturer imparting legal information by means of face-to-face lectures. This was an Information Age with legal education being teacher-centred. The lecturer was the expert whose role was to ensure that students were taught the necessary legal content. The beginnings of the Interaction Age came with the setting up of tutorials/seminars. However, they were mainly teacher-centred, where the tutor gave a mini lecture. The interaction was mainly between the tutor and students. A development of the Interaction Age came with the recognition that in tutorials/seminars the teacher should be a facilitator of learning between students, interacting with each other. The early forms of computer-assisted learning consisted of imparting information to students. Initially, the internet was used mainly to develop websites and place lecture notes and powerpoint slides. Some websites contained interactive self-assessment tutorials, the interaction being only between the learner and the content, placed by the lecturer. The Interaction Age using technology only began when interactive devices such as online discussion forums, chat rooms, video conferencing were utilised to enable interaction between students and between students and lecturers, as co-participants in the learn in process. The literature review indicates that there is little effective use of interactive technological devices to assist learning in higher education institutions providing face-to-face teaching. The Interaction Age has made little progress, with pockets of innovation in a few institutions. The chief obstacles to progress are lecturers still in the Information Age and passive students who wish to be taught rather than to actively learn. In most face-to-face institutions (including those adopting blended learning) lecturers impart information. Students only engage in interaction to co-construct knowledge where the interaction is part of the assessment. The research methodology is to conduct a literature review on teaching methods from the sixties to the present day to investigate the extent to which the teaching is teacher-centred with little interaction between lecturer and students in traditional lectures. The methodology is theoretical and exploratory. The research perspective is historical. The literature was selected to throw light on the teaching methods in the Information Age and the methods in the Interaction Age.

Keywords:
teaching methods information Age interaction age progress obstacles to progress

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