Piloting the use of the YouTube genre as teaching aids in law

Michelle Sanson, Faculty of Law

 

In their spare time, recent school leavers seek out music downloads, webcam shots, amateur movies, and podcast recordings for their personal amusement, and it is possible that adopting the genre of sites such as YouTube may be an effective tool for teaching law. The YouTube genre refers to the famous website www.youtube.com, where amateur footage is posted online on a range of subjects. It is essentially about an unstructured, unregulated, unpolished broadcasting of anything a person wants, from the exhibitionist to the educational. At present the range of educational videos in teaching law content and legal skills is limited, and those that exist tend to date quite quickly. Adopting a YouTube genre may be a low cost, flexible, effective solution to teaching videos. Using a handycam, Microsoft Moviemaker, and a laptop with a DVD burner, videos may be designed and created for specific teaching tasks, and may be edited and updated quite easily for future use. The 'videos' may be used in face-to-face teaching, or posted on WebCT or even YouTube itself. The presenter is presently piloting the use of YouTube-style audio-visual recordings teaching and learning both content and skills in law, and will present her experience to date as well as an example video.

Teaching aim and goals

To understand Generation Y students, and adapt my teaching practices to take into account their different preferences for learning. Also I believe that Law faculties will have difficulty embedding graduate attributes in the curriculum, and what is needed is a web portal where students can go to learn about each attribute, watch videos of their peers who have the attribute, and do exercises to develop the desired attribute themselves. This approach would support independent learning, a graduate attribute in itself. We just need to make it cutting edge and attractive, and I believe the YouTube genre offers a potential pathway.

Source of the idea

Three separate things occurred that resulted in the idea.

First, last semester I was unable to find a teaching video on native title that was short enough to show in my first year law lecture (10 mins or so). I ended up using a vignette from a longer video, but I could see there is a gap in teaching materials. I know from experience how much students appreciate the use of video/DVD material as a teaching aid, and it is also sound from a teaching point of view in extending the adult concentration span through regular variation in teaching activity.

Second, I had been pondering ways to get senior students to connect with the new law students, because I know from my reading of the research literature how powerful peer learning can be. Thus far I have applied peer learning within subjects but I wanted a way to apply it across subjects, without taking up too much time or effort for the senior students involved.

Third, students tell me I should 'be on facebook', I should 'check out YouTube', have I seen X, Y, or Z that is in some obscure place on the internet, and 'have you seen that cool video on the Donoghue and Stevenson case?'. So one day I looked at it, and I searched for the topic of my PhD thesis, global governance. I found a video by a man in his 70s, with his views, and I saw it had been viewed hundreds of times. I couldn't believe it - it was so amateur, and yet it was effective, and I felt a connection with his thoughts and ideas, and there was a tool for me to make a comment there.

I realised the YouTube genre could be used as teaching aids - both during class, and online, be it on UTSOnline or actually on YouTube itself. And now we have our first one there, and it has had about 200 views in a month! I had someone in the US email saying he is starting law next year and it will help 'heaps'. So I want to explore using it, and raise the idea amongst others. I have presented on this at the Australasian Law Teachers Association conference in Perth last week, and it was very well received.

Evaluation

It is still in the early stages of the pilot - one video only, and without funding I am limited in what I can do. Without doing a formal evaluation, we have received positive feedback from students involved, from students who saw it on DVD in their seminars this semester, and from the number of views in the first month on YouTube (200).

Michelle Sanson is a lecturer in the UTS Law Faculty who is passionate about teaching and learning. In 2005 she was highly commended in the individual category of the UTS Teaching Award. She has completed a Master of Education in Adult Education in addition to her degrees in business and law, and has a PhD thesis in international law currently under examination. Michelle currently teaches three postgraduate electives in international law.