OER10 Simshare Slides

Paul Maharg Glasgow Graduate School of Law simulation and OERs patricia mckellar paul maharg

Sims in general…
Case studies:
Personal Injury Negotiation transaction
Standardised Client
Simshare
(in)conclusions regarding sustainability
preview

why s imulations …?
They…
are close to the world of practice , but safe from the (possible) realities of malpractice and negligent practice.
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
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
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.
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 .

They:
are often complex and difficult to build , especially first time round
are time-consuming to plan
can be expensive to run
can be difficult to embed alongside more conventional forms of teaching and learning
are disruptive of settled modes of feedback
why s imulations…?

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
T here are serious implications for educational theory, institutional change and innovation

sims affect learning, institutions, practices
T here is no such thing as experiential learning.
Learning is distributed among expanded environments, tools, roles, tasks, social relations.
T here 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?

authenticity as transactional learning…
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

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

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

correspondence file

Ardcalloch directory

map of Ardcalloch

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

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?

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.
phase two

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…?’
And to:
Be aware of orientation towards lawyer at first sight
Respond congruently to the lawyer
Consult the internal ‘invigilator’…
phase two How was the sim created? -- training of SCs

conclusions
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…

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

my profile

Sample resource in a Simshare role play

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?

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.

1. sustainability is not the main issue…
Simshare is not an organisation (Microsoft), it’s an ecosystem (Linux).
Like all Open ecosystems, it’s remarkably tolerant of failure
Cheap failure enables the creation of multiple possibilities
It best operates on a publish-then-filter model
This model requires very minimal infrastructure (Wikipedia vs Encarta)

… it’s the type of CoP we need …
Re social capital, do we want –
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
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 Comes Everybody , London, p.222

… and how we go about achieving it.
Construe Simshare as ‘commons-based peer production’ (Benkler)
Bring together heterogeneous groups, ie use bridging capital
Build from the most local levels up, where there’s opportunity to host & bridge
Accept power law distribution of effort, sharing & use.
Reconceptualise OER not as harmonious sharing but as peer improvement and adaptation – sometimes with bittersweet results
Link research to practice; radicalise practice by using Simshare as a ZPD, a safe zone for experimentation

OER10 Simshare Slides

by Paul Maharg on Mar 22, 2010

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