Paul MahargGlasgow Graduate School of Law

simulation and OERs

patricia mckellarpaul maharg

1. Are sims good OERs? Does the cross-disciplinary approach work?

2. Case studies:– Personal Injury Negotiation transaction– Standardised Client

3. Simshare4. (in)conclusions regarding sustainability

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They:1.are often complex and difficult to build,

especially first time round2.are time-consuming to plan3.can be expensive to run4.can be difficult to embed alongside more

conventional forms of teaching and learning5.are disruptive of settled modes of feedback

why simulations…?

why simulations…?They…1. are close to the world of practice, but safe from the (possible) realities of

malpractice and negligent practice. 2. enable students to practise transactions, discuss the transactions with other

tutors, students, and use a variety of instruments or tools, online or textual, to help them understand the nature and consequences of their actions

3. facilitate a wide variety of assessment, from high-stakes assignments with automatic fail points, to coursework that can double as a learning zone and an assessment assignment

4. encourage collaborative learning. The guilds and groups of hunters/players in multi-player online games can be replicated for very different purposes in FE & HE.

5. students begin to see the potential for the C in ICT; and that technology is not merely a matter of word-processed essays, reports & quizzes, but a form of learning that changes quite fundamentally what and how they

learn.

simulation environments:results from the literature

• Sims can enable more engaged and deeper learning in students, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels

• Sims can be used to learn and assess conceptual and second-order symbolic knowledge, practice-based skills and personal achievement of integrated skills.

• Students adapt best to new learning environments when they are aware of the expectations of them in the new arena.

• Simulation is a disruptive heuristic and requires support.• Although initial workload is heavy there is payback in later years• There are serious and exciting implications for educational theory,

institutional change and innovation

sims affect modes of learning, practices, institutions

We must not confuse learning resources with learning design. Three key issues:

1. There is no such thing as experiential learning.Learning is distributed among expanded environments, tools, roles, tasks, social relations.

2. There is no spoon: curriculum is technology.Staff role-change vs conventional teaching/admin roles.

3. The role of the institution changes.The question is no longer why conventional learning environment vs sim, clinic, PBL, etc; but in an era where Wikipedia & SourceForge flourish against all odds, why are we not collaborating at all levels in teaching & learning?

aims of the simSHARE project?• Collation of simulation resources which are repurposed as open

educational content• Creation of guidelines for future publication of simulation projects• Help staff to use simulation more widely and effectively through staff

development.• Create methodologies that will help staff to see more clearly how

simulation OER can be interpreted and in particular how to:– Generate or re-purpose a simulation– Archive a simulation– Retrieve a simulation and analyse its component parts for educational value and

purpose

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• Start with a simple scenario for the first attempt.• Run a pilot before letting students loose on it. • Don’t underestimate the skills you might need to get things up

and running.• Begin the process of developing the scenario as early as

possible.• Think in advance about how sim responses will be managed ie

when/who/how often: set clear guidelines to students about how this will work.

• Plan & organise well in advance

staff advice from SIMPLE project…staff experiences on SIMPLE sims?

1. personal injury negotiation transaction

Administration:• 272 students, 68 firms, 8 anonymous information sources – PI

mentors• 68 document sets, 34 transactions• Each scenario has embedded variables, called from a document

server, making it similar, but also unique in critical ways• students have 12 weeks to achieve settlement• introductory & feedback lectures• discussion forums• FAQs & transaction guideline flowcharts• voluntary face-to-face surgeries with a PI solicitor

signature pedagogies (Lee Shulman)

Sullivan, W.M., Colby, A., Wegner, J.W., Bond, L., Shulman, L.S. (2007) Educating Lawyers. Preparation for the Profession of Law, Jossey-Bass, p. 24

Transforming Legal Education:four key themes

transactional learning & authenticity…

active learning through performance in authentic transactions involving reflection in & on learning, deep collaborative learning, and holistic or process learning, with relevant professional assessment that includes ethical standards

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PI project: assessment criteria

We require from each student firm a body of evidence consisting of:

• fact-finding – from information sources in the virtual community)

• professional legal research – using WestLaw + paperworld sources

• formation of negotiation strategy – extending range of Foundation Course learning

• performance of strategy – correspondence + optional f2f meeting, recorded

PI project: (some of) what students learned

• extended team working• real legal fact-finding• real legal research• process thinking in the project• setting out negotiation strategies in the context of (un)known

information• writing to specific audiences• handling project alongside other work commitments• structuring the argument of a case from start to finish• keeping cool in face-to-face negotiations• more effective delegation• keeping files• taking notes on the process...

key issue: simulation tempo & complexity

Does the PI project make a good OER?

Pros Cons

Can be used as a whole or in parts But how to implement? Even with a userguide it can be complicated

Complexity of sim-building solved at a stroke

Needs time for staff to understand & implement. Also NIH approach…?

Can be easily adapted Will the adaptation change the original for the better?

All documentation open to staff And to students…?

No hidden costs But sims need careful thought re implementation

Better educational outcomes … if implementation is well-designed.

2. standardised client initiative

Training lay people to simulate clients, and doing two things well:– Discussing their case with the (trainee) lawyer in a way that is

standard across the cohort of students that the SC meets– Assessing the client-facing skills of the lawyer

• Large body of research literature criticised oral exams beginning in 1960s

• ‘A test that is not reliable cannot be valid’ e.g. NBME (USA) studies exams of 10,000 medical examiners over 3 years and found correlations between 2 examiners in one encounter <0.25

• Use of Standardised Patients since 1963• Now used in high-stakes competency examination for

licensure in USA and Canada • Extensively used in final exam ‘OSCE’ stations in UK medical

schools

evidence from medical education

SC project aims• develop a practical and cost-effective method to assess the

effectiveness of lawyer-client communication which correlates assessment with the degree of client satisfaction.

• ie answer the following questions…

– Is our current system of teaching and assessing interviewing skills sufficiently reliable and valid?

– Can the Standardised Patient method be translated successfully to the legal domain?

– Is the method of Standardised Client training and assessment cost-effective?

– Is the method of Standardised Client training and assessment more reliable, valid and cost-effective than the current system?

SC project concluded…• Use of SCs is as reliable and valid as tutor assessments• We make what the client thinks important in the most

salient way for the student: a high-stakes assessment where most of the grade is given by the client

• We do not conclude that all aspects of client interviewing can be assessed by SCs– We focused the assessment instrument on aspects we believe

could be accurately evaluated by non-lawyers– Focused the assessment on initial interview

• This has changed the way we enable students to learn interviewing…

How was the sim created?

Creation of validated documents + training of SCs:‘The best way to learn how to do standardized patients is to do it along side of someone who has already done it before. It’s [the] apprenticeship system.’

Wallace, P. (1997) Following the threads of an innovation: the history of standardized patients in medical education, Caduceus, A Humanities Journal for Medicine and the Health Sciences, Department of Medical Humanities, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, 13, 2, 5-28.

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Eg, there’s a need for the SCs to calibrate:– Body language– Tone of voice– Attitudinal swings– Dealing with the lawyer’s open questions…– Improvising on closed questions…– Performance analysis: ‘What prompted you to say…?’ ‘How did you feel…?’

Documents include:– Specialist templates for training and individual memory work– Behavioural descriptors– Guidance documents and metadata on process and procedures

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o Documentation on training of SCs

Does the SC initiative make a good OER?

Pros Cons

Effective, cost-effective educational solution

Still requires major upfront commitment of time and resources

Complexity of sim-building solved at a stroke

Needs time for staff to understand & implement. Less NIH because adapted from another discipline

Can be easily adapted Will the adaptation change the original for the better?

All documentation open to staff, except scenarios

No hidden costs But SCs need regular refreshing and recruiting

Better educational outcomes … if implementation is well-conducted.

future plans

• Collation of as many interdisciplinary sims as we can get• We’re about to enter upload & then dissemination phases of project• simSHARE adds value to

open-source SIMPLE, by disseminating SIMPLE blueprints as open resources

• next step is to add further value to the Open sim environment by adding an open-source e-portfolio, eg Mahara.

sustainability is not the main issue…

1. Simshare is not an organisation (Microsoft), it’s an ecosystem (Linux).

2. Like all Open ecosystems, it’s remarkably tolerant of failure3. Cheap failure enables the creation of multiple possibilities4. It best operates on a publish-then-filter model5. This model requires very minimal infrastructure (Wikipedia

vs Encarta)

… it’s the type of CoP we need …

Re social capital, do we want – 1. Bonding capital?

– Increase in trust & connections within a homogeneous group, eg a disciplinary group or even sub-group interested in sims

– Relatively exclusive– People support each other’s worldviews

2. Bridging capital?– Increase in connections among heterogeneous groups, eg different

disciplinary groups interested in sims– Relatively inclusive– Puts people at great risk of having good ideas…

Thanx to Shirky, C. (2008) Here Com

es Everybody, London, p.222

… and how we go about achieving it.

1. Construe Simshare as ‘commons-based peer production’ (Benkler)2. Bring together heterogeneous groups, ie use bridging capital3. Build from the most local levels up, where there’s opportunity to

host & bridge4. Accept power law distribution of effort, sharing & use.5. Reconceptualise OER not as harmonious sharing but as peer

improvement and adaptation – sometimes with bittersweet results6. Link research to practice; radicalise practice by using Simshare as a

ZPD, a safe zone for experimentation