Over the last years, despite few exceptions, legal education has dropped behind in the use of digital game-based learning methods. Law schools essentially still resort to traditional lectures even though there are evidences that computer gaming simulations can represent an effective practice for both teaching theoretical concepts of law and for training students in acquiring legal skills. This chapter presents a research that is aimed at developing/trying out a new method for legal education based on the use of SGs. Simulex, a learning environment for the creation of on line role playing games simulating trials, will be presented. The main focus of the chapter will be on the analysis of the specific needs of legal education and on describing how these needs have been matched by the development of the project, from the design to the testing phase. Some user testing has been carried out in the specific case of an experimental class of civil procedure law, for undergraduate students. The second part of the work will describe the results of the testing from a didactical, methodological, and technical point of view, also sketching future developments of the experimentation.
Emerging Paradigms in Legal Education: A Learning Environment to Teach Law through Online Role Playing Games
DE CHIARA, ROSARIO;SCARANO, Vittorio
2011-01-01
Abstract
Over the last years, despite few exceptions, legal education has dropped behind in the use of digital game-based learning methods. Law schools essentially still resort to traditional lectures even though there are evidences that computer gaming simulations can represent an effective practice for both teaching theoretical concepts of law and for training students in acquiring legal skills. This chapter presents a research that is aimed at developing/trying out a new method for legal education based on the use of SGs. Simulex, a learning environment for the creation of on line role playing games simulating trials, will be presented. The main focus of the chapter will be on the analysis of the specific needs of legal education and on describing how these needs have been matched by the development of the project, from the design to the testing phase. Some user testing has been carried out in the specific case of an experimental class of civil procedure law, for undergraduate students. The second part of the work will describe the results of the testing from a didactical, methodological, and technical point of view, also sketching future developments of the experimentation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
