Mentoring First-Year Distance Education Students in Taxation Studies

Abstract

This article introduces and reviews the experience of video-conference teaching in a comparative Indigenous law course taught by a team of legal colleagues. This teaching team delivers an internationally comparative Indigenous rights course to law students in Canada, the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia simultaneously via fully interactive live video-conferencing technology. The international universities currently involved include: University of Ottawa, University of Saskatchewan, University of Oklahoma, University of Auckland, Monash University and the University of Queensland. Situated in six sites in different parts of the globe and in various time zones, this team teaches together to discover just how much their countries have in common in relation to Indigenous issues. Not only does the course explore similarities and differences in the experiences of the four jurisdictions but it also challenges both students and teachers to understand why those differences have occurred. The article focuses on two significant aspects of this course: first, the dynamics and logistics of teaching and delivering a course through video-conferencing to a number of global sites; and secondly, an analysis of the benefits and advantages of an internationally comparative Indigenous law course. It aims to enable other law teachers to consider the suitability of video-conferencing for international and comparative areas of legal study and for others to learn from the experiences of this team in relation to the benefits and difficulties involved in this teaching mode.