LTI Small Scale Innovation Award Final Report
Host School: School of Law; Project Title: Streetlaw; Project Lead: Maria Angus.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
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To assess the effectiveness of Streetlaw as a learning tool.
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To provide students with a unique and powerful professional development opportunity.
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To widen participation in work-based learning
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To give the students insight into their own learning strategies by obliging them to consider the optimum means of disseminating information to a given audience
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To enable students to develop independent research skills
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To increase and enhance the legal knowledge of the students
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To create and strengthen links with the wider community
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To expose law students to cooperation with other professionals.
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To allow students to assume responsibility for their own learning
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To facilitate learning through self-reflection and peer review
WORK UNDERTAKEN AND OUTCOMES ACHIEVED
The theory behind Streetlaw is very simple. Law students contact schools and community organisations within the locality to ascertain which areas of law are of interest to them. The students then independently research this area and construct a presentation on the subject, the format of which is dictated by the needs of the recipient. Before the presentation is delivered to the school/organisation the students verify their legal information by first making the presentation to law lecturers with relevant expertise.
In the academic year 2009-2010 we delivered 26 Streetlaw presentations involving 94 students.
In order to assess the effectiveness of Streetlaw as a learning tool I provided students with handheld video cameras to enable them to provide self-reflective feedback. Initially the feedback was somewhat unfocussed so I drafted a list of questions aimed at enabling the students to examine whether they had learned the substantive law that formed the subject matter of their Streetlaw project in addition to the necessary research, writing and presentation skills.
Of course this was, of necessity, a study of a small sample of students and their responses were anecdotal. In addition their responses, like those in any student survey, may have been contaminated by a desire to produce the response the lecturer wanted to hear. I attempted to minimise this effect by not taking part in the filming but still, on being given the questions, one student earnestly asked if there were also some suggested answers!
Clear trends present in the data collected in the video responses and in written responses from those students who preferred not to be filmed were:
 70 students filled in questionnaires or gave filmed feedback

 Video feedback from female students lasted, on average, twice as long as that of male students and contained more and longer pauses for reflection.
 All of those surveyed expressed experiencing positive emotions on completion of the project
 Students made realistic estimates of how much of the content of the presentation they would be able to recall
 Those who were motivated by a pre-existing interest in the subject matter and audience retained the most information
 Those who were motivated chiefly by a wish to use Streetlaw as an opportunity to improve their knowledge and skills retained slightly less but more than
 Those who wished simply to improve their CVs
 With 1 notable exception (a particularly gifted student who provided, by his own admission, very unreliable feedback).
From this I was able to draw the following conclusions:
 My students believed they learned more when they were involved in and enjoying the learning process
 They had a realistic idea of how well they had learned the substantive contents of their projects
 Motivation had a significant influence on learning
 This was probably due to greater engagement with the subject matter by those who were motivated by an pre-existing interest in the audience and/or subject matter
 Student feedback is not 100% reliable!
TRANSFER TO OTHER AREAS
The essential elements of Streetlaw (research, construction of a presentation and delivery of that presentation in an audience-appropriate style) are transferable to many subject areas. I have found that
VI form colleges are particularly enthusiastic about these projects and would probably welcome similar presentations in a wide range of subjects.
EVALUATION
I think the project mostly ran as planned. Not as much of the budget as I had anticipated was spent on
HPL teaching cover because I arranged the majority of presentations outside of my teaching time.
DISSEMINATION OF THE PROJECT OUTCOMES
I presented my findings at the UH LTI Conference.
I also ran a 1 hour workshop session at the Association of Law Teachers Conference (29 th -31 st March
2010) on the subject of using Streetlaw as a learning tool.
With the remaining funding I will be giving a paper, written jointly with a colleague who has conducted similar research into mooting, at the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation in
Madrid 15 th -17 th November 2010 .