Yule, Jennifer; McNamara, Judith; Thomas, Mark --- "Mooting and Technology: To What Extent Does Using Technology Improve the Mooting Experience for Students?" [2010] LegEdRev 8; (2010) 20(1&2) Legal Education Review 137
[*] Lecturers, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The authors would like to thank Christina Surm, their research assistant for the project, for invaluable assistance with the trials and the focus groups. They would also like to thank Professor Des Butler for his assistance with the use of the Second Life courtroom and permission to use the photo; Chris Prosser and Jack Sandhu for all their IT support; and the students who participated in the trials as mooters and audience members.
[1] Michelle Sanson, Jennifer Ireland and Paul Rogers, ‘Fake It Till You Make It: Using Second Life to Teach Practical Legal Skills’ (2009) 2 Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association 245.
[2] Jennifer Yule, Judith McNamara and Mark Thomas, ‘Virtual Mooting: Using Technology To Enhance the Mooting Experience’ (2009) 2 Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association 231; Sanson, Ireland and Rogers, above n 1; Bobette Wolski, ‘Beyond Mooting: Designing an Advocacy, Ethics and Values Matrix for the Law School Curriculum’ [2009] LegEdRev 3; (2009) 19 Legal Education Review 41; Joel Butler and Rachel Mansted, ‘The Student as Apprentice: Bridging the Gap between Education, Skills and Practice’ (2008) 1 Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association 287.
[3] John Snape and Gary Watt, How to Moot: A Student Guide to Mooting (2004); Terry Gygar and Anthony Cassimatis, Mooting Manual (1997); Andrew Lynch, ‘Packing Them in the Aisles: Making Use of Moots as Part of Course Delivery’ [1999] LegEdRev 4; (1999) 10 Legal Education Review 83.
[4] David Pope and Dan Hill, Mooting and Advocacy Skills (2007); Michael Hernandez, ‘In Defense of Moot Court: A Response to “In Praise of Moot Court — Not!”’ (1998) 17 Review of Litigation 69; John Gaubatz, ‘Moot Court in the Modern Law School’ (1981) 31 Journal of Legal Education 87.
[5] Yule, McNamara and Thomas, above n 2, 232.
[6] Alex Kozinski, ‘In Praise of Moot Court — Not!’ (1997) 97 Columbia Law Review 178.
[7] Wolski, above n 2, 47–59.
[8] Yule, McNamara and Thomas, above n 2, 240.
[9] Yule, McNamara and Thomas, above n 2, 237; Bernadette Richards, ‘Alice Comes to Law School: The Internet as a Teaching Tool’ [2003] LegEdRev 7; (2003) 14(1) Legal Education Review 115, 116; Dan Hunter ‘Legal Teaching and Learning over the Web’ [2000] UTSLawRw 8; (2000) 2 University of Technology Sydney Law Review 124; John Goldring, ‘Coping with the Virtual Campus: Some Hints and Opportunities for Legal Education?’ [1995] LegEdRev 5; (1995) 6 Legal Education Review 91, 96.
[10] Des Butler, ‘Air Gondwanda: Teaching Basic Negotiation Skills Using Multimedia’ (2008) 1 Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association 14.
[11] Yule, McNamara and Thomas, above n 2, 237.
[12] ‘Avatar’ is a general term used in computing to refer to any representation of a person within a computing environment — ranging from the simplest usage as a username, through crude two-dimensional models or icons used in earlier computing environments, to the more realistic (although stilted and stylised) three-dimensional representations in Second Life. Ironically, the term avatar derives from the Sanskrit for a concept similar to ‘incarnation’ — usually of a deity in human form.
[13] A more detailed description of and general introduction to Second Life is available at Wikipedia, Second Life (6 December 2010) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life> .
[14] See Roberta Savera, Communications in an Immersive Digital Environment: Teaching and Learning in Second Life, Imparafacile, 70 nn 36–7 <http://www.imparafacile.it/sl/tesi/tesi-sl-roberta_savera.pdf> .
[15] Ibid 67.
[16] The unit description, in full, reads:
In this seminar we will do mock trials in Second Life. We will follow and further develop a format initially developed in my Evidence class. Students in the seminar will be the lawyers. Students will articulate core theory of each side of each case in opening and closing argument; will present and examine witnesses; will engage the strategic and entrepreneurial aspects of developing a workable, educationally useful, entertaining, and perhaps practical dispute resolution format in a new and exceedingly interesting medium. Witnesses and jurors will be drawn from Becca Nesson’s Extension School class in Virtual Worlds and from the at-large body of participants in Second Life. Students will write papers in conjunction with the seminar.
[17] Savera, above n 14, 71.
[18] See Benjamin Duranske, Real Josh Wolf Attends Harvard Law School’s ‘Josh Wolf Mock Trial’ in Second Life (30 April 2007) Virtually Blind <http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/04/30/josh-wolf-mock-trial-wrapup/> .
[19] Sanson, Ireland and Rogers, above n 1.
[20] The transmission of audio signals — either alone or as part of an audio-visual data stream — involves the filtering of the frequencies which are transmitted. This filtering generally excludes higher frequencies, and may involve the loss of some cues to the emotional state of the speaker which are carried in that frequency range: see Frederika De Wilde, ‘Courtroom Technology in Australian Courts: An Exploration into Its Availability, Use and Acceptance’ (2006) 26 Queensland Lawyer 303, 316.
[21] The QUT virtual court room had been previously created by Professor Des Butler.
[22] Savera, above n 14, 13.
[23] A fuller discussion of the difficulties likely to be encountered by Second Life users can be found in Charles Wankel and Jan Kingsley, Higher Education in Virtual Worlds: Teaching and Learning in Second Life (Emerald Group Publishing, 2009).
[24] See, eg, Diane Murley, ‘What Second Life Taught Me about Learning’ (2008) 100 Law Library Journal 787, 789.
[25] Ibid 788.
[26] Bandwidth in the context of computer communications refers to the capacity for a communications channel to transmit data (typically as the ‘maximum throughput’ or data communication resources of a system) — and hence its ability to send visual or sound communications across a computer network.
[27] Wankel and Kingsley, above n 23, 20.
[28] Ibid 23.
[29] See also White Papers: Elluminate (2010) Elluminate
<http://www.elluminate.com/Resources/White_Papers/?id=95/> .
[30] Yule, McNamara and Thomas, above n 2, 235.
[31] Ibid 234; De Wilde, above n 20, 303.
[32] Sanson, Ireland and Rogers, above n 1, 253.
[33] Yule, McNamara and Thomas, above n 2, 235.