Legal specialists do not like “logistics”. Just mention the term and noses tend to dive deeper into the legal work. Now try the words “Logistics for flexible legal learning” and you will not make many friends. Logistics is simply not…
Flexibility in legal education and training: lead and be specific
Learning involves change. But now legal training and education itself are undergoing a fundamental change: they are becoming more flexible. It is all around us, especially in the Anglo-Saxon legal organizations. The legal learning environment is, like the rest…
Legal training experiment: Talk less, act more (II)
In yesterday’s blog I suggested to replace the one in-class phase by using three training phases. Three phases: exploit merging of internet and instructional design expertise First phase: prepare and prime First, TrainWell designed an engaging pre-class phase: prospective…
Legal training experiment: Talk less, act more (I)
Providing effective, efficient and motivating legal training and teaching remains a challenge. Based on its field observations and instructional and legal expertise, TrainWell recently developed a framework to dramatically increase the quality of legal teaching and training. This framework includes,…
How to be a great legal lecturer?
Last week The Economist (June 11-17) addressed the issue of “quality of teaching”. Although the briefing focused on teaching children, it contained useful observations, truths and suggestions for improving teaching adult legal learners too. Legal lecturers work hard trying to expand…
Start making legal training worthwhile
Yes, it is fun to get invited to observe a legal lecturer “in the wild” i.e. instructing in class. The lecturer is sometimes a bit nervous feeling observed. I appreciate their trust in me. Increasingly, I learned to divide lecturers…
Why are legal expert often bad legal teachers?
The more you are a legal expert, the bigger the chance that you are a bad teacher. Really?! Yep. What is the reason? Legal teachers often complain why their students do not simply grasp, remember or apply what they are…
Strategies to correct inaccurate prior knowledge
How to ensure that the necessary prior knowledge, is used in the correct manner to ensure maximum learning can take place? At TrainWell we train legal teachers to do just that. There is wrong and there is WRONG We distinguish…
What can go wrong with the legal student’s prior knowledge?(2)
Now suppose your students enter your course or learning activity with both sufficient and correct prior knowledge related to what you want to teach them. Does this guarantee that your teaching results in achieving the learning goals? Activate to enable…
What can go wrong with the legal student’s prior knowledge? (1)
Not only students’ insufficient prior knowledge can prevent a legal course from achieving success (see yesterday’s blog). Much more difficult to identify, but at least as powerful, is inaccurate prior students’ knowledge preventing success in legal teaching. Many of our students come…