SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
LLM – INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE AND COMMERCIAL
LAW (2012-13)
STUDENT GUIDE TO PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL)
The Purpose of this Guide
This guide provides a summary of the key stages of the Problem Based Learning
process (PBL) as it is used at York Law School (YLS). PBL is used extensively on
both the undergraduate programme and on the LLM; although at post-graduate
level there are certain key differences. There is a more detailed guide for
undergraduates including the theoretical underpinning of this learning/teaching
method available at: http://www.york.ac.uk/law/ugrad/current.htm
On the LLM, PBL is part of the YLS approach to “learning by doing” and it aims to
provide you with important skills and to assist you in your personal development.
It should help you to improve your research skills, to gain confidence in
independent learning and to improve your communication skills.
If you do not understand anything in this guide, then please do speak to the PBL
Tutor who will explain it to you.
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
The Eight Key Stages of PBL on the LLM – Summary
First Element: Group Work with PBL Tutor (Approximately 1 hour)
Stage 1 – Clarify Unclear Terms and Concepts and Collate Key Information
a. Read the problem
b. Clarify any unclear terms
c. Gather key information
 Identify key parties – and what their legal issues are
 Identify key facts/chronology
Stage 2 – Define the Problem
a. Summarise the key issues
b. Name the Problem
Stage 3 – Analyse the Problem
a. Free Brainstorm
Stage 4 – Arrange the Brainstorming systematically/thematically
Stage 5 – Define Learning Outcomes
Second Element: Self-Directed Study (Approximately 17.5 hours per Module
per week)
Stage 6 – Undertake Research and Use Resources for Self-Directed Study
Stage 7 – Share the Results of Self Directed Study with the Rest of the Firm (via Wiki
and Blog on VLE)
Third Element: Group Work with PBL Tutor (Approximately 1 hour)
Stage 8 – General Feedback to the Group from the PBL Tutor
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
Introduction
The starting point of all PBL is the PBL Problem. You will be given this approximately one
week before the first PBL Session. The PBL Problem is a legal scenario related to the LLM
Module that you are studying. Those receiving support from CELT will be given the
opportunity to read through it and discuss and practice understanding the meaning of
the language (not legal content) with CELT.
Example:
The Managing Director of Santa Clause Toys Ltd1 is coming to see you next week
regarding the attached extract from a sales catalogue he picked up at a recent trade fair
in Paris. He wants to order some toys to sell in the UK. It is the first time that the toy
company has purchased any goods from China. The managing director wants to make
sure he understands the legal terms used and their importance commercially before he
places the order. He is also worried about how he can ensure that the terms of any
contract are those he is familiar with and are printed on the back of his own firm’s order
form, rather than those of the seller2.
Extract from Sales Catalogue
Your purchase order must be based on our quotation. Upon receipt of your purchase order
we will issue a Pro-forma Invoice within 3 working days from receipt as acknowledgement of
your order. In case you have not heard from us within the time stipulated, please contact
us immediately. Please send your purchase order to our Shenzhen address as mentioned in
the contact section. Further details contact: sales@naturaltoys@sina.com
Minimum Order
The minimum order depends on the size of the toy: small/ 500 units; medium/ 300 units,
large/ 250 units.
Production Time
Lead-time usually is 45 days, however, depending on the size of order it may vary.
Export Documents
We normally offer following documents with export shipments:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Pro-forma Invoice & Sales Confirmation
Packing List
Standard Certificate of Origin or GSP Form A Certificate of Origin
Bill of Lading or Air Way Bill
Any additional Document(s) and/or Certificate(s) should be requested with your purchase
order. We normally ship FAS 2010, Port of Shenzhen, but can offer CIF 2010 please
stipulate for a quote.
Contractual Provisions
We may require you to supply us with a Letter of Credit through an approved bank in
Shenzhen, China
The contract terms including payment terms, and guarantees are printed on our standard
Pro-forma Invoice – this is available on request.
1
2
One of the parties (“buyer”) – see Stage 1 – Part (3)
The other party (Natural Toys, Shenzhen, China)
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
The First PBL Session – Group Session with the PBL Tutor –
Approximately 1 hour
The main purpose of the PBL Problem is to give you a ‘commercial’ context within which
you study the law. It should also give you the skills to help you to tackle unfamiliar real
life problems that you will be faced with in the future when you have left YLS. We
analyse the Problem in a structured way over 8 Key Stages.
In the first PBL Session you work through the first 5 stages with the rest of your student
group (Student Law Firm) in the presence of a PBL Tutor. This is the first of 2 PBL
Sessions the group has with a PBL Tutor on each problem.
Stage 1 – Clarify Unclear Terms and Concepts & Collate Key Information
1. Read the Problem & Clarify Terms
 The Chair arranges for the Problem to be read out loud to the group
 The group identifies any terms which are: unclear/not understood
 The group members assist each other to understand the unclear terms by sharing
their existing knowledge
 Everyone confirms they understand the Problem?
 (Any words that remain unclear may become a Learning Outcome.
2. Gather Key Information
a. Key Parties
 Identify the key parties
 What are their interests (what do they want from their lawyer)?
 Are there any other parties/interests that need to be considered?
b. Key Facts
 Scribe sets out the key facts on the Smart Board – chronology is usually best but not
always
Stage 1 – Comments
Two members of the group are nominated as Chair and Scribe respectively. These roles
change from PBL session to PBL session and therefore everyone undertakes the roles.
The Chair (with the help of the PBL Tutor) manages the PBL session and the Scribe
records the collective findings of the group.
First, the group will consider any unknown or unclear terms. In this Problem a number of
potentially unclear terms are included in the example. Whether or not you find a term
to be unclear may depend on your undergraduate degree or your practical experience
before coming to YLS. Students will share their knowledge to assist the group in
understanding the Problem and its solution. This is just how lawyers work in practice –
major commercial/corporate deals involve teams of lawyers that share their expertise.
Sharing your expertise verbally with others helps develop your communication skills.
Let us suppose the group knows the terms:

Standard Certificate of Origin or GSP Form A Certificate of Origin (if you do
not then please Google it) – e.g. see for example:
http://www.chinaimportexport.org/generalized-system-of-preferences-certificateof-origingsp-form-a/

FAS and CIF – see for example:
http://www.iccwbo.org/products-and-services/trade-facilitation/incoterms2010/the-incoterms-rules/
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
However, some members of the group may not know:

‘What is a Bill of Lading/Air Way Bill’? Or ‘What is a Letter of Credit’?
If this is the case, another member of the group may know the definition of these terms,
and can share that knowledge. If not, this may become a learning outcome.
Secondly, the group will look at the parties and their interest. We know the parties (see
FN 1 & 2) and can make a sensible assumption about their interests.
This is a deliberately simple problem with only two parties (a buyer and a seller); there
is no conflict between them (yet!) but already we can identify that they have different
interests because the buyer: “… is also worried about how he can ensure that the terms of
any contract are those he is familiar with and are printed on the back of his own firm’s
order form, rather than those of the seller”. Presumably the seller wants his/her own
terms of contract instead.
Thirdly, the group will walk through the facts of the case. Chronologically the problem is
also simple here – the parties have not yet entered into a contract, they are still
discussing terms. The Scribe records these findings on the Smart Board.
Stage 2 - Define the Problem
a. Summarise
 Summarise the core problem in 1 or 2 sentences – be careful not to analyse yet
 (This is about getting a preliminary idea about what the problem is about, what lies at
the root of it and the subject areas it covers. How do the facts and various interests
relate to one another?)
b. Name the Problem
 Make it something fun and memorable that encapsulates the focus of the problem
 Get several suggestions and get group to decide on one
 If there are no suggestions, the Chair should ask each member of the group to write
one down, so suggestions are anonymous. Then read them out and they can decide.
Stage 2 – Comments
Again with this deliberately simple Problem, a summary is straightforward: It is about
“whose contractual terms will govern a particular sale?”
Students should try and give it a memorable name so the group starts to identify with
the Problem and can remember it. Here we can call it: “A Christmas Contract” picking up
that one of the parties is called “Santa Clause Toys” (if you do not know who Santa
Clause was/is then Google him).
Stage 3 - Analyse the Problem - Effective Brainstorming
 “Brainstorm” to get the ideas out – the Scribe will make a rough mind map on the
Smart Board
 Draw on existing knowledge
 Discuss concepts of law & how they relate to the facts of the problem
 Encourage deeper thinking by analysing & incorporating recalled knowledge
 Allow anything that may be relevant don’t be inhibited by right or wrong answers
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
Stage 3 – Comments
Here the problem is about: “Whose contractual terms will govern a particular sale?”
A brainstorm is a free-for-all activity (see the definition in the Glossary below) to which
all the students will contribute. The Scribe records this on the Smart Board normally in
the form of a “spider diagram”.3
What does the student group know about this collectively? Students can, for example,
identify that one issue is which law will govern the contract. You cannot automatically
assume it is English or indeed Chinese. Assuming it is one of these (although the parties
could choose a ‘neutral’ national law) then they will probably be different rules about
governing law in the absence of any express contractual provisions to that effect and
also different rules about how and when contracts are formed.
The governing law issue is only one of many!
Stage 4 – Organise the Ideas
 Scrutinise the ideas in greater depth if necessary
 The Scribe will organise the ideas in a systematic way – main areas/themes/links
between concepts (e.g. by drawing around particular words with a particular colour)
 Irrelevant areas can be ignored and discarded
Stage 4 - Comments
Here the group takes the comments and ideas from the Smart Board and arranges them
into a few key areas of research that we would need to know to be able to answer the
type of questions that our client (The Managing Director of Santa Clause Toys Ltd) may
ask us. The Scribe does the actual writing on the Smart Board. Here we will suppose that
there are three ideas arising from this Problem:
-
Are there any particular benefits in this arrangement being made subject to
English law?
Are there any particular benefits in this arrangement being made subject to
Chinese law?
Can he (the MD) impose a choice of contractual terms by the manner in which he
places the order (e.g. by including his own terms on the sales order form)?
Stage 5 - Define Learning Outcomes (L/Os)
 This determines the areas of law the group is you going to choose to research in SelfDirected Study
 These need to be in the form of specific questions that relate to the ideas from the
Problem but they need not “solve” the Problem (this is not “problem solving” but PBL!)

The L/Os need to be sufficiently precise that you can research them to a reasonable
depth within a reasonable time period

Generally two or three L/Os will be enough

The Scribe writes them down and circulates them to all group members (e.g. by
posting them on the VLE or sending them by group e-mail)
3
Also known as “mind-map”- see http://www.tonybuzan.com/ It is a way of recording ideas visually using links
rather than presenting ideas in a list format.
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
Stage 5 – Comments
Building on the brainstorm and the thematic arrangement of ideas, students will finally
formulate a number of learning outcomes, or research questions. The Tutor will help you
with developing Learning Outcomes that are not too broad or that require you to use
research materials that YLS simply does not have easily available. In this example we
are going to choose two main L/Os but also research the unclear terms from Stage 1.
1) In English law, which law governs a contract if the parties do not specifically
choose a jurisdiction within their contract?
2) In English law, is it possible to force a party to contract on your terms by stating
that those terms will apply on the order form sent to order goods?
3) What do the terms: Bill of Lading/Air Way Bill and Letter of Credit mean?
In this example, the potential research into Chinese law was not supported by the PBL
Tutor because of the absence of easily accessible library materials on that subject.
The Second Element of PBL – Self-Directed Learning –
Approximately 17.5 hours per week per Module
Stage 6 – Undertake Research and use Resources for Self-Directed Study
 Students should use a range of resources to undertake individual research on the
agreed learning outcomes. These resources will initially be text books and other
materials referred to in seminars but soon you will be using the electronic resources
available via the Law Library
 You may find that the Seminars have pointed you in the right direction or given
background/extra reading that will help you
 It is important to keep a note of all the resources used – see Stage 7.
 Generally it is helpful to ‘layer’ research, that is start to understand it from a basic
student text-book then undertake deeper research electronically based on any cases
referred to in that text book or any journal articles mentioned in the text book/seminars
 Once you have learned how to use them; it is often best to use one of the major data
bases that the Library subscribes to (e.g. See the “Quick Links” on the Library page
and access – Metalib gateway; then Law; then Westlaw UK for “Chitty on Contracts”
or Lexis Library for Halsbury’s Laws of England.
Stage 6 - Comments:
There will be at least a week between the first group session (Stages 1-5) and the
feedback session (Stage 8).
Stage 6 provides the main opportunity for you to develop and practice research skills
that will be useful later in the programme (particularly in researching and writing the
Dissertation) and is also a key skill for any practising lawyer. Training sessions on legal
research are given on the LLM Programme; and you will learn by “doing” and by
observing what other students have done. The research is summarised on the Wiki and
Blog parts of the VLE as identified in Stage 7.
Students will undertake their legal research with reference to primary legal sources
(such as statutes and case law) as well as secondary sources and academic commentary
(such as text books or journal articles). In this Problem, if you enter the search term:
“Bill of Lading” into the search box in Halsbury’s Laws of England you find 368 entries
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
but you do also find a good definition in half a page. This shows the strengths and
weaknesses of electronic data bases. Alternatively, using one of the suggested text
books (Goode on Commercial Law) gives about 20 references in the index but these
refer to an example: (p983-987) and the text places it in the context of “A Typical
Export Transaction” – pp952+. Reading Goode will therefore give much more context
and allow you to understand more of the overall Problem scenario and help you with the
other Learning Outcomes exampled here. Together, the primary and secondary sources
should give you a comprehensive understanding of the law, as well as an appreciation of
the key academic debates surrounding the legal topics you are studying.
Stage 7 – Sharing Results of Self Directed Study with the Rest of the Group (Wiki and Blog).
a. Wiki
 The Wiki is a space on the VLE reserved for each PBL Session; upon which individual
students should place any learning that they think is relevant to the Learning Outcomes
and will help other students in the group
 It is an “evolving” picture as while early contributions are likely to be purely knowledge
based (e.g. the relevant pages in the standard text book) the later entries from other
students in the group should react to and comment on earlier entries
 This is aimed at developing the overall knowledge of the group (by elaborating, explaining
and enhancing/critiquing the legal knowledge offered)
 It gives the opportunity for students to develop legal skills (by challenging and critiquing
the work of others, reviewing and responding to critiques of one’s own work)
 It develops the discipline of citing & criticising resources & evaluating the strength of
evidence offered to support a particular proposition
b. Blog
 The Blog is the group’s summary of their individual work, presented as a summary answer
to each Learning Outcome
 This is joint work, co-ordinated by the Chair/Scribe of the particular PBL Session
Stage 7 - Comments:
This Stage is also part of the Self-Directed Study. It provides you with the main
opportunity to develop and practice key legal skills of a practical/practitioner nature. The
emphasis here is on the overall aim of each student collaborating with others to provide
a better legal answer than would be possible by working alone. Each student is both a
‘learner’ and a ‘teacher’ within the group.
The individual work of a particular student is recorded by a series of individual Wiki
contributions on the VLE. Each student is able to make their own contributions and
respond to the contributions of other students. Wiki contributions are kept fairly short
(under 500 words) and will vary in content as the group reaches a conclusion about the
learning outcomes. The contributions should include elements of substantive law (e.g. a
legal view supported by authorities), an engagement with academic debate about the
substantive law, and also of legal commentary on other contributions (e.g.
agreeing/disagreeing with an earlier contribution, with reference to primary and/or
secondary sources). This approach promotes positive learning behaviour and the
development of key legal (and practical skills), among these are:

Identifying primary and secondary legal sources relevant to the learning
outcomes;

Adding practical examples or building on the work of others;
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT

Supporting, critiquing and challenging the positions that others have taken by
offering alternative views and new legal resources.
When the group has reached its conclusions, then the overall findings (effectively a
summary of the collective work of the group) are recorded in the Blog site on the VLE.
This requires the Chair and the Scribe to summarise (up to 750 words) the group work
before the feed-back session. The summary will include key issues, key cases/statutes,
and key articles and note any significant academic debate on the subject area – as well
as any significant debates that took place between the group members on the Wiki.
Third and Final Element:
(Approximately 1 hour)
Group
Work
with
PBL
Tutor
Stage 8 – Feedback with PBL Tutor (Group Session)




The PBL Tutor comments on the overall Blog answers and any significant errors or
omissions
Students are given the opportunity to discuss the original PBL Problem with the PBL Tutor
and any areas of difficulty in researching the Learning Outcomes and understanding the
relevant area of law
Provides the opportunity to consolidate knowledge
Aim is deepen understanding of the areas researched
Stage 8 - Comments:
The overall PBL process, when undertaken properly, blends the acquisition of knowledge
with developing key legal skills and positive learning attitudes. Self-directed learning,
plus the PBL Group Sessions with the PBL Tutor will help those students that participate
fully to build up their transferable skills and help them in personal development.
It does require you as a student to participate actively in your own learning.
It is best understood by doing it – rather than reading about it but why not start by
doing some self-directed learning – Google: “problem based learning”
It is also fun!
John Bennett
Programme Leader LLM
September 2012
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SEPT 2012 – JOHN BENNETT
Glossary of Terms
Brainstorm
Blog
CELT
Chair Person
Google
(Also known as Thought Showers)
A technique or process that helps a group generate creative
solutions. It encourages all group members to come up with lots
of ideas and thoughts; without stopping to evaluate each
individual idea. Sometimes these ideas are not very relevant. But,
even these may spark still more ideas and once all the ideas are
collected together they can be evaluated and the sensible ones
retained.
The area of the VLE reserved for the consolidated/group answer
(in summary form) to the Learning Outcomes.
The Centre for English Language Teaching at York University: see
http://www.york.ac.uk/celt/
(Also known as “the Chair”)
The student from within the group that undertakes the role in
Stages 1-5 of leading the group through the PBL Process, paying
attention to time constraints. This student manages the group and
ensuring that the Key Stages are followed and that students
participate in the PBL process. This role changes from week to
week; so all students are given the opportunity to undertake it.
A well-known search engine - http://www.Google.co.uk but also used
as a verb (“to Google”).
Learning Outcomes
or L/Os
Mind Map
PBL Tutor
Scribe
Smart Board
Wiki
VLE
The questions that the group determines should be researched and
studied – see Text particularly Stage 5.
(Also known as Spider Diagrams)
"Mind Map" is a trademark of the Buzan Organization – see
http://www.tonybuzan.com/ It is a way of recording ideas visually
using links rather than presenting ideas in a list format.
A member of the academic staff of YLS, and part of the Module
Team. His/her role is to guide you in your own learning, not to tell
you the answers.
The student from within the group that undertakes the role (in
Stages 1-5) of recording student ideas on the Smart Board and
circulating the agreed LOs. This role changes from week to week;
so all students are given the opportunity to undertake it.
This is the large physical screen in the PBL rooms upon which the
Scribe writes and the discussions may be recorded in electronic
form. It replaces conventional blackboards/white boards
The area of the VLE where students will post their individual
contributions to the research.
The Virtual Learning Environment or intranet used by YLS and
other parts of the University (“Yorkshare”).
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