Excellence in teaching

Paula Baron is a Senior Lecturer in Law School. She was named in the 1996 Campus Review Independent Survey as one of Australia's most respected teachers of law. She received the UWA Excellence in Teaching award in 1998. This award represents a joint effort by the Guild and the University to recognise and reward exemplary teaching.

I came to the UWA Law School in February of 1998 from the University of Tasmania Law School, where I taught Contract Law, amongst other subjects. Contract, a first year compulsory law subject, was taught in a traditional lecture/tutorial format to 240 students. I had been concerned for some time about the limitations of this method of teaching and learning: It took little account of the diversity of student learning styles or the need for students, whatever their particular learning preferences, to engage actively with the material. It also contributed to the strong sense of social isolation experienced by many law students, particularly in their first year of law school.

My first year at UWA coincided with the introduction of small group teaching in the first year compulsory subjects in law: Contract, Legal Process, Torts and Criminal Law. This was a considerable change in the culture of the Law School.

As a teacher, I have found that one of the great benefits of small group teaching is the flexibility the method offers in terms of the achievement learning objectives. Last year, my primary objective in teaching Contract Law was to encourage active and cooperative learning. To this end, exercises were largely structured around 'law firms' created by students in the second week of the first semester. These 'firms', generally of around 3-5 students, submitted various written exercises. These exercises were formative only and distinct from the students' formal individual assessment. Each piece of work received a mark and comments. Thus students had considerable experience of written work (and had the opportunity to have feedback on that work) before they completed a piece of formal assessment.

However, by the end of the year, it was clear that many students were too reliant upon summaries of case law. There is now a considerable amount of secondary material on the market of this nature. This material is obviously very attractive to students. Relying too heavily upon it, however, can be detrimental to the students' understanding of particular decisions (many of which cannot meaningfully be reduced to one or two lines) and to students' ability to construct their own legal arguments. Therefore, this year in Contract Law, my primary objective has been to encourage students to read the cases carefully. Once a week, we have had an 'intensive case reading' class. Students read the decision prior to the class, and then form small groups in class to answer a series of around 10 questions posed on the decision.

This year, small group teaching has been extended to second year subjects in law. The introduction of small group teaching has not been without its teething problems, but its benefits have been many. From the outset it has been clear to me that small group learning had much to offer the students: their interest in the subject matter, their engagement with the material, and the development of their written and oral skills have been greatly facilitated. As a teacher, small group teaching, the flexibility it offers, and the opportunities it presents to engage more meaningfully with individual students, has been most rewarding.