Case study with Professor Elaine Fahey (City Law School)
The significant expansion in the kinds of tools and practices available for online education presented by the pandemic has left City, University of London with more means for enabling and supporting different types of initiatives that were not available pre-pandemic. In this example we find out how Professor Elaine Fahey worked with LEaD to develop a new initiative around a Law school module, what was done to ensure its success and what lessons were learnt.
Background
Elaine talks about the EU and the Global Legal module that had to go fully online because of COVID. This popular module had been running successfully for several years and students really enjoyed the opportunity to work with their peers in groups. Therefore, Elaine’s main challenge was how to replicate the learning experience online that students had previously enjoyed so much in a face to face context.
LEaD Support
With support from LEaD, Elaine chose to set up a Microsoft Teams space to support active learning and peer collaboration. Furthermore, Teams is a technology that is used in many work places so could be a key aspect in developing students’ employability and digital skills. In the video Elaine talks about what lessons were learnt and how LEaD offered some really valuable support though the use of feedback, critical questions as well as helping with reviewing the learning outcomes.
Conclusion
Elaine’s recommendation to her colleagues, who are planning similar approaches, is to get as much support as possible from LEaD. Teams worked well as a platform for facilitating student collaboration but effective planning and preparation was key to the project’s success. So even though academics will probably need to invest a lot, in terms of understanding what works best in their teaching context; the payback, according to Elaine, will be quite rich for both students and teacher.
