Gamification enters legal education

The National Law school of India has introduced an interesting approach for learning law: cyber laboratory activities. This introduces gamification into legal education. I am a great fan of using gamification in legal learning.

One does not yet see much gamification in legal training. This supportive learning technique can be very effective. It can substantially increase learning motivation as shown in other professional fields. Its effectiveness derives from the immersive effects that games can have on learners.

Good gamification allows players to enter a “state of flow”. In such stage learners’ concentration is focused on the learning activity. Distractions of thoughts or from the environment have less influence on the learning process: Such focused attention is ideal to facilitate learning. It often trumps books or frontal teaching in providing pervasive learning experiences.

Serious and respectable lawyers should not worry: Gamification is not debasing legal learning into a game. Heavens, no. Gamification is a serious learning technique. It uses game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts like a legal learning environment.

Examples of learning facilitating game elements are features like giving learners the power to interact, giving and receiving instant feedback, winning and losing, exploring, receiving badges, striving towards goals. The element of  “fun” that results fromgamification fulfills an important function in sustaining learning motivation.

The National Law school of India set up the Advanced Centre for Research, Development and Training in Cyber Laws and Forensics.

This centre provides training for legal practitioners, teachers and students in cyber law. It will be used to train personnel involved in preventing, detecting, adjudicating, prosecuting and policing cyber crimes.

The centre focuses on the technical issues with legal consequences. It allows legal professionals and students to get practical exposure dealing with events in cyberspace with possible legal consequences. The practical exposure contains gamification elements like challenge, goals, (social) interaction, exploration, discovery and rewards.

This way of legal learning is the first of its kind in an academic setting. Obviously, this is not the end of this development. Various experiments and expansions are foreseen by this promising approach of legal learning.

I predict gamification in legal learning will become an important determinator of a legal instruction’s success.

Want to know more about gamification? Take the excellent course of prof. Kevin Werbach of Penn State Universtiy and Wharton on Coursera. Or read his book: For the win: how game thinking can revolutionize your business.