Interaction Due to Enhancement of IT Skills - Essay Example

Effective Legal Study Prepared by Submitted to Word count 1518 words (excluding the content and reference pages) Contents Introduction 3 2. Development of Interaction due to Enhancement of IT Skills 4 3. Advantages of IT in Law Study and Research 4 3.1 Design of the online guide 5 4. The Future of the Interactive Guide 6 5.Importance of Communicating Effectively 6 5.1 Importance of incorporating EU law to enhance effective comminication 7 6. References 8 Effective Legal Study 1. Introduction One cannot specify a particular path for educating him self. Similar is the case of legal education. The individuals who are successful in Law schools are poised to become professionals. They come to law schools from many walks of life and their educational backgrounds will be different. Whatever may be the walk of life or educational background, the usage of IT in the present day law study and practice cannot be undermined. It is capable of speeding up the research and analysis. By storing insights and perspectives of different cases and instances an understanding can be developed and a method can be evolved using IT skills. The exchange of ideas can be done online in the course of legal study and research. 1 The purpose of a legal study and research will ensure the students the skills and knowledge required for a barrister. The assistance of IT in learning will enable the law students and researchers to speed up their study. According to Claire of University of West of England, web based guide can enhance the legal research skills in tutoring the law students. The guide must be useful to campus based and distance learners. The use of multimedia to enhance law teaching cannot be ignored. This results in growth of institutional repositories and open access journals will take place expanding the scope of knowledge reach. Every University and Law school can develop a web interactive guide for law students. This can enable not only campus based students to study law but also the distance learners can fulfil their quest for studying the law. This can even help the researchers who research for a particular project or assignment regarding Law. 2. Development of Interaction due to Enhancement of IT Skills The project officer who monitors the development of interactive guide and its updating must monitor atleast for 2 to 3 days a week. The universities and law schools must consider the lack of budget for enhancing IT skills and web interaction for their students. The lack of budget problems can be addressed by the management and this interaction can make inter university discussion possible. The staff shortages due to lack IT skills must be addressed by the appropriate training for the present staff or by recruiting new staff who are IT savvy. 2 The librarians in the law faculty must be made involved in the development of web interactive guide for law students. This guide must be useful to law practitioners also if it is upgraded in a timely manner. The academic standards will improve if the web interactive guide was upgraded according to the time. The teaching hours can be increased by making teaching possible in leisure hours and holidays by online teaching and interacting methods. The personal contact programmes can be used for advanced research if the lessons and guidance was given online. The assignments correction and receiving can be done online and the evaluation of the student can be done in personal interaction at the end of the module. This type of approach is more sustainable to attract more students and making them successful in their law study and research. 3. Advantages of IT in Law Study and Research The complex nature of legal research can be made simpler by applying search IT skills for the research purposes. This can enhance efficiency and speed of the research. The IT skills and online presentations can address the staffing constraints in Law schools and Universities. The lack of enquiry on law floor can be addressed by online enquiry. Making Law study IT savvy and online is capable of assisting part time and distance learning students. This will be a flexible approach to deliver information skills in teaching. It is not possible to depend on library teaching as it has become unviable due to increase of number of law students. The necessity is opposite in nature. The Law schools and Universities are finding large groups and group sessions to be addressed. This can be solved and the teaching needs can be supported by presence of online IT savvy Librarian. 3.1 Design of the online guide The next important topic in making law study IT savvy and online is the design of online guide. The online and web interactive guide should support legal practice course and vocational courses in law schools and universities. This will enable the Law schools to impart education and study on distance learners equal to that of campus based learners. The usage of web pages for different PCs in different learning centres must be asserted. All the PCs that are meant for study purpose in learning centres of the Law schools must have access to web pages in interactive online guide. This guide should be according to the schedule of the syllabus and teaching of the law school. Various interactive floor plans, audio enabled database demonstrations with added text and animation, video, quiz questions and photographs can be used to enhance the look of the web pages in online guide. The learning centres and class rooms in Law schools must have student PC ratio of 1:5 to ensure that all the students can have web access and time table for all the five students for each PC can be mentioned. The interactive floor plans in legal study can be planned by Adobe illustrator. The spots that are meant for each floor link to resources within the guide according to their physical location. If there are any audio and video enabled demonstrations present, they can be stored in a compressed mode and students can expand them on their PC when they need them. To make user get instant feedback a series of multiple choice questions can be incorporated in the guide. The Library services of a law school and university must be made accessible to all students to provide them with the required information and resources. This will allow the students to get easy access to the guide regardless of the courses they are enrolled for. 4. The Future of the Interactive Guide The work and upgrading of the interactive guide cannot be considered as completed at any instance. The interactive guide in the first phase may not be available to undergraduate library skills. In the next stage it must be made available for the undergraduate library also. This can be made possible by linking the quiz questions to the seminar preparations in the modules. As any body know that the facility of seats in a library is limited, by incorporating the online interactive guide the ambit of law education can be increased resulting in more number of law students finding their research easy. 5. Importance of Communicating Effectively It is everybody's knowledge that it is important to communicate effectively in law study and research. The importnace of communication is crucial for any study and it was as important in law research. The virtual learning programmes of the law schools and universities must increase the communiction skills of the students. When there is personal interaction there will be a chance of interacting for only a few number of students and the interacting capabilities of few students only can be tested. In the case of virtual learning every student will be given opprotunity to exhibit his/her communication and interactive skills using specially designed tests for that purpose. This can be made possible by investigating of a virtual learning environment to deliver legar research skills. This can be done on a trial basis using some group of learners and any lapses in the desing can be addressed in this trail programme. After that the virutal learning envirionment (VLE) will make the law students to be equipped with necessary skills to reasearch a legal problem. This makes a legal student competent in his research and practice after that as information is available online and the time for search is decreased.3 As the UK students study not only UK law but also the EU law the interactive guides and VLE must be equippped with both demostic and EU laws. 5.1 Importance of incorporating EU law to enhance effective comminication After UK joind EU the sovereignty of the parliament over the law structure was undermined up to some extent. For this purpose the Law students must be aware of Eurponean Union Law also along with domestic law. Though the domestic law resembles EU in many aspects, the aspects that are not addressed by domestic law can be found addressed in EU. So, when there is no mention about a topic in domestic law of UK, the student or a practitioner can consider what EU law says about the topic. This system of accessing both domestic and EU laws by the students through virtual learning programme is capable of increasing their reserch skills. This happens because the practitioners and students learn to search for appropriate sections in EU law where there is no mention of those topics in the domestic law. This increases the scope of study and knowledge management. In the course of time the online learning, virtutal learning programmes can replace all the primary and secondary sources 6. References The references are given in the following format Author, year, title, publisher, edition, date retrieved, website address. If any information regarding above format was not available it is mentioned or a gap is left. 1. Pre-Law Committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, 2007, Preparing for law school, American Bar Association, ,electronic, 10-1-07, http://www.abanet.org/legaled/prelaw/prep.html 2. BVC, 2006, Course format and assessment, legaleducation.org.uk, ,electronic, 10-1-07, http://www.legaleducation.org.uk/BVC/thebvc.php 3. Claire Tylee, 2006, Developing an interactive multimedia guide to enhance legal research skills, UK centre for Legal Education, ,electronic, 10-01-07, http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/biall/tylee.html 4. Sarah Spells, 2005, A Framework for delivering legal research skills training online via a Virtual Learning Environment to be implemented at the School of Oriental and African Studies, City University, ,electronic, 10-10-07, http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/archive/00000099/01/Dissertation.pdf, Read More