CLeaR Fellows 2020 – Jayden Houghton

Redesigning Land and Law: a blended, flipped classroom approach

Jayden Houghton

I reviewed and redesigned teaching and assessment in LAW 301 Land Law, which is a 20-point compulsory full-year course in the LLB degree. The redesign used Canvas to allow blended learning and “flipped classroom” approaches, and to shift 15% of the course assessment to active Canvas-based activities. The redesign also required to ensure Land Law complies with the new policy on assessment.

The two specific projects I worked on are:

Web-based tools. I would explore how web-based tools, such as Peerwise and Badgr, can be incorporated into Canvas to enhance teaching and assessment in Land Law. While these web-based tools are commonly used in Business, Engineering and Science courses, they are rarely used in Law courses. The project would examine why this is so, consider challenges to their implementation, and implement them into teaching and assessment for Land Law in 2020.

Pre-quizzes. My proposed assessment structure required students to take short Canvas quizzes before tutorials. My preliminary research suggested that students who do pre-quizzes come to tutorials with higher base-level knowledge, which enables them to better engage with the problem set for the tutorial. Each quiz would be worth something small and test a general understanding of the content discussed in the tutorial. The quizzes would need to be designed in a way that is sustainable in the long term.

I also took the opportunity to liaise with other disciplines — such as Business, who often use pre-quizzes in their courses — learn from their experiences, and consider how we can implement them successfully in the Law disciplinary context.

Although similar projects have been implemented to varying degrees in other disciplines, they would be highly innovative in the Law disciplinary context. In addition, I would collect data on students’ perceptions about the new approaches to teaching and learning, and assessment, and would aim to publish the results as two articles.

I also offered to run a seminar with my Law colleagues to share my findings and discuss the implications for teaching and learning in the Law disciplinary context.