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Common Law I: WWW-based Negotiation Exercises

Sefton Bloxham , Teaching Fellow, Law Department, Lancaster University.

Context

1. Content

As the course title - the common law of obligations - implies, Contract and Tort are taught as a single subject rather than (as is more normal) separately. If students are to engage with practical problems in this field, they will rapidly discover that many of these problems raise issues of both contractual and tortious liability. Moreover, from a theoretical perspective contract and tort law share a range of common features which distinguish this field from (in private law) the law of property. European jurisdictions generally distinguish more sharply than English law between obligations law and property law, so that this approach facilitates comparative treatment of the subject and the involvement of Erasmus/ Socrates exchange students.

2. Learning Environment

The essential feature of the learning environment of the course is that students should develop the ability to learn independently, rather than through (over) reliance on lectures or textbooks. However, such independent student learning is not an isolated individual activity. On the contrary, one of the key characteristics of the course is collaborative learning. Students are organised into teams of 5/6. Seminar Groups consist of 4 teams. Seminar (fortnightly) preparation work is conducted within this collaborative environment. The seminars involve active participation by students, either individually or in teams. Throughout the course a range of skills, both general and specifically legal, are developed through the seminar activities.

Student Teams are responsible for organising the preparation of work for the seminars and the presentation of the completed work. Teams are supported by regular consultation sessions with the course tutors (one of whom takes primary responsibility for each seminar group and the component teams). The Teams support four elements of the course design. Firstly, the development of team-working skills (with both written guidance and tutor support). Secondly, the creation of a framework for facilitating greater social integration of students from diverse backgrounds in the year cohort. Thirdly, the creation of a basic learning support structure through peer discussion. Fourthly, the creation of a motivational factor - students are less willing to let down their team-mates than to let down the lecturers or a standard seminar group by failing to attend or to prepare work.

3. Structure

The subject matter of the course is divided into four sections. Each of the four sections is approached by way of a different type of seminar task and assessment task - in each case repeated twice. This variation supports student development of a variety of skills, appropriate to the particular task. It also promotes student motivation by providing a varied and interesting diet of seminar activities and assessment tasks.

Section One involves the presentation of an analysis of a case or an element of statutory material (selected at random by the tutors from a list provided to students. The skills developed are specifically legal research skills, together with the use of IT research tools (Iolis; Law Reports and bibliographical materials on CD-ROM).

Section Two involves pairs of teams in the presentation of a formal Debate. Outline arguments have to be posted on appropriate WWW pages accessible to opposing teams in advance of the seminars. The skills developed include oral presentational skills, team-working skills, and independent research.

Section Three involves pairs of teams in (short) Moot presentations. Outline arguments have to be posted on appropriate WWW pages accessible to opposing teams in advance of the seminars. Again, the skills developed include oral presentational and advocacy skills, team-working skills and independent research.

Section Four involves all teams in a (four-cornered) negotiation of a settlement of a fictitious dispute conducted entirely through the WWW discussion pages. The skills developed are negotiating skills, IT skills, team-working skills and independent research.

4. Assessment Structure

As with all features of this course, the design is backed by the assessment design. 50% of the overall assessment is based on coursework assessment (CWA). 50% of the CWA (25% of overall assessment) is based on team submissions, the other 50% being based on individual submissions. The remaining 50% of the overall assessment is a standard 3 hour examination. Individual marks for team submissions are varied by peer evaluation of contributions, subject to tutor moderation.

Assessment is directly linked to the performance of seminar tasks. The assessment task (CWA) normally consists of a written version or report of material presented orally at the preceding seminar. CWAs are submitted one week after the seminar and returned at the following seminar. This assessment pattern greatly strengthens student motivation to attend seminars and to work for them, and provides much more rapid feedback to the student on progress and weaknesses than the standard end of term assignment. Written presentational skills are explicitly assessed (10% of each written CWA) and the ability to write clearly presented work to short deadlines is developed. Additionally, individual oral presentations are video-recorded and assessed (10% of the course).

As indicated above, each seminar activity is repeated for 2 seminars. Thus two CWAs are submitted which relate to the same type of activity. Students are permitted to discard the lower of the two marks awarded (usually the earlier one) for the purposes of their final assessment.

5. Negotiation Exercises

This year (1997-98), for the first time, student teams have conducted four-cornered negotiations entirely by means of asynchronous conferencing. Two separate negotiation exercises were undertaken over a period of 5 weeks at the end of the second term. In previous years preliminary negotiations were conducted by this means, but the concluding sessions were "face-to-face" in seminars of 2-hour duration. These had proved to be difficult to manage (for the tutors) and, on occasion, had verged on the chaotic due to a combination of over-enthusiasm and inflexible negotiating strategies on the part of the student teams! This year the seminar sessions were abandoned in favour of full negotiations on the WWW. Strict deadlines were set for the notional "serving of writs" and for "contractually binding" settlements to be reached, culminating in a "plenary" session for the full course in a lecture theatre. At the plenary session the tutors provided a comparison of the settlements reached (or not, in some cases) by each Seminar Group together with an outline of a range of acceptable outcomes which should have been reached, based on the tutors' assessment of the legal position of the teams' clients and the commercial realities of the fictional factual situation.

Students were provided with printed guidelines for the conferencing facilities and one introductory "training" session was provided at a lecture. Students had already been required to use the conferencing pages to post outline arguments for the Debate and Moot presentations at earlier seminars, so they were (or should have been) familiar with the medium. Students living off-campus who had remote access to the University server were able to participate from home using most standard web browsers. Each team was provided with its own private conferencing page as well as access to inter-team conferencing pages within its seminar group. The facts for the negotiation problem were provided only on the electronic "noticeboard" (read-only access to students).

Student reaction to the exercise was, on the whole, extremely enthusiastic. The quality of the discussions posted on the conferencing pages was certainly higher than had previously been achieved in the "face-to-face" sessions. The extent of independent research conducted by the more diligent teams was formidable (excessive in some cases!). There were some technical problems experienced, all of which were resolved with the support of the Learning Technology Officer. Some teams experienced problems of participation (lack of it) by some members, but in general this was not a widespread phenomenon. In order to combat this, it is planned to either adjust the assessment structure so that the written reports are team-based, with peer evaluation of the individual contributions incorporated to determine the individual marks, or to directly assess the individual contributions as evidenced on the conferencing pages.