Moving the law school into the twenty-first century - embedding technology into teaching and learning

Over the past twenty years phenomenal developments in technology have changed the nature of education. Students now have access to a vast range of resources 24/7. This instant access has created a certain expectation on the part of the student and there must now be very few, if any, courses taught in higher education where the lecturer does not maintain a virtual learning environment (VLE). This VLE will be used to communicate with the students and will commonly provide access to significant resources supporting teaching. A review of teaching and learning at Coventry Law School indicated that, although all staff used the VLE in this way, the extent to which technology was embedded into our pedagogy was limited and consisted, primarily, of a small number of online quizzes. As a Law School we had not taken the step of moving from using technology to deliver resources to embedding technology-enhanced learning into our pedagogy. A recent JISC Report (2009) defines technology-enhanced learning and provides examples of some excellent projects that have integrated technology into learning and teaching. This paper looks to evaluate our experience in further embedding technology into our pedagogy with specific reference to the use of multiple-choice questions, clickers and peer review.