Undergraduate Law Research Articles

Study on the Experience of Integrating Agricultural Intellectual Property Content in the Teaching of the International Economic Law

International Economic Law is one of the compulsory courses for undergraduate law programmes in China. The Faculty of Law of the Beijing University of Agriculture implements the development of intellectual property rights in agriculture while integrating the relevant content into the international economic law programme as a special chapter. The aim is to expand the traditional international intellectual property rights chapter into an overview of international intellectual property rights treaties, international protection of geographical indications of agricultural products, and cases of agricultural gene security. At the same time, the Faculty of Law of fers a number of elective courses concerning agricultural intellectual property rights. It is also building a practical platform for intellectual property topics in the international economic law programme through the combination of law and agricultural science. By reforming the teaching of the international economic law programme, teaching resources have been further integrated. This has led to an increase in LLB admission scores, while also enhancing the practicality of teaching the international economic law programme.

EMI and DMI, an elitist language learning approach? An investigation of students’ socio-economic and language profiles

ABSTRACT Internationalisation of higher education has really taken off in recent decades, with universities increasingly organising all or parts of their study programmes in a language other than their traditional language of instruction. Usually, that language is English, which is referred to as English Medium Instruction (EMI), but there are also programmes in other foreign languages, such as Dutch Medium Instruction (DMI) in French-speaking Belgium. Previous research links EMI with access inequity. This study investigates whether this inequity also exists in French-speaking Belgium and whether it extends to DMI by examining the socio-economic and language profiles of students in unilingual programmes versus multilingual programmes with DMI and/or EMI courses. An online questionnaire was administered to undergraduate law, political sciences, and economics & management students at a French-speaking university in Belgium. The results indicate that multilingual programmes attract students of higher socio-economic status (SES) and those who benefited from Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) school education, extracurricular activities or more classes in Dutch or English at secondary level. Taken together, these findings suggest that multilingual higher education with DMI/EMI in French-speaking Belgium is closely linked with access inequity. The article ends with suggestions for institutions offering or considering multilingual higher education.

On the Reform and Development of Practice Teaching of Undergraduate Law—Taking the Mooot Court Course as an Example

Legal education has the dual attributes of academic and practical, and cracking the "paradox" between them is the basic problem facing legal education. Undergraduate law education is the basis of law education in China. To improve the quality of training legal personnel, it is necessary to continuously deepen the teaching reform of undergraduate law education. Since the implementation of the national and local excellent rule of law (legal) talent education and training plan, the education model based on the single transfer of theoretical knowledge has been challenged to a considerable degree. After a long period of exploration, the "moot court" has been widely recognized as a "standing course" in undergraduate law education, but problems such as the vague positioning of the "moot court" still exist. Under the situation of "encouraging universities to develop practical teaching courses", undergraduate law education must further improve the undergraduate law practice teaching system through effective measures to reform the undergraduate law practice teaching and promote the development of undergraduate law education in China.

Law Students and Literature: Uncovering Experiences and Overcoming Challenges

The benefits that literature offers have led many countries, including Malaysia, to integrate literature and literary texts into English education. In higher education, literature is not limited to English Language and Literature majors; students from various other degree programs also study literature as part of their curriculum. While numerous previous studies have explored students' perspectives and challenges in learning literature, most have focused on high school students and English major undergraduates. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the views of law undergraduate students on the subject. A survey was conducted with 103 students enrolled in an English for Literary Appreciation course at a public university in Malaysia. Quantitative data were collected and analysed using descriptive statistics. The results indicated that law undergraduates prefer drama as a genre. The research also showed that, like students in other disciplines, law students generally enjoy studying literature and recognize its importance in enhancing language skills, cultural awareness, and personal development. Moreover, the study found that law students see the relevance of literature to their future careers. Unlike earlier studies that highlighted the difficulty of texts and language as the main challenges, this study identifies rigorous assessments, the volume of these assessments, and time constraints as the primary challenges faced by law undergraduates.

Undergraduate Students’ Opinion on Digital Learning in a Post-pandemic Era: A Case Study

"The current article aims to investigate learners’ post-pandemic attitude towards digital learning in Higher Education with a specific focus on a group of undergraduate Law students at Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. To achieve its purpose, the article focuses on answering two research questions: Do post pandemic undergraduate students recognize the benefits of digital learning? Is e-learning currently a reasonable choice for them? The research is designed as an exploratory case study that uses three data collection tools: a questionnaire, an interview, and a classroom observation protocol. The article links information from literature related to the use of digital learning during the pandemic with results revealed by the data collected in the case study. The results suggest a steady trend towards a growing acceptance rate of digital learning by the targeted student population and a lower approval rate of e-learning. Keywords: higher education, digital learning, online learning, pandemic, good teaching practices."

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Volume II of the Undergraduate Law Review at UC San Diego

Analyzing the Construct Validity of Work Readiness Instruments for Indonesian Law Faculty Students Using the Rasch Model

Objective: The issue of undergraduate law students tends not to have clear work readiness, the data is obtained from several research results, the research findings have an indication of concern in interpreting the data which has an impact on inaccuracies in analyzing the data, the unclear construct of the instrument items studied, the measurements obtained depend on the characteristics of the test used, the item parameters depend on individual abilities, and measurement errors can only know for groups not individuals. Measuring instruments need to be tested for validity and reliability before being used on individuals to achieve valid and reliable goals. This study aims to test the validity and reliability of work readiness instruments based on the Work-Readiness Integrated Competence Model (WRICM) theory. Method: This research was conducted on 720 participants from several universities in Indonesia with a Cross Sectional Survey research design. The results of data collection were then analyzed through the Rasch model using the Winstep version 3.73 application. Results: The results showed a unidimensionality value of 36.1%, item reliability of 0.99. Of the 23 items created, there are 14 instrument items that have met the requirements of objective measurement. Conclusion: The Indonesian work readiness instrument obtained can be used to obtain data on work readiness needs as a foothold for determining the education strategy for law faculty students in Indonesia in terms of content, methods, and comprehensive evaluation.

A scaffolded speaking and writing ELP course for commercial lawyers: An action research case study from an undergraduate law school in Istanbul

The author used action research to implement significant changes to an English for Specific Legal Purposes (ELP) course at a private university in Istanbul to meet the professional discourse needs of Turkish law students. The previous syllabus was focused on American Supreme Court case reports; however most of the students would mainly use English to advise on contracts in commercial law practice. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and genre analytical methodologies were used to develop pedagogy for the new syllabus, which was scaffolded so that students began learning the functional organization and lexico-grammatical properties of a contract before participating in an oral advice role play activity and writing a letter of advice about it to a hypothetical client. In conjunction with discussion of the pedagogical rationales for syllabus design and instructional activities, observations of student participation in the oral advice activity and feedback on a student example of the letter assessment are presented to critically reflect on the utility of this ELP course designed to help undergraduate law students to discursively function as lawyers, especially those learners from non-English speaking backgrounds, who need to communicate in English as the primary lingua franca for international legal practice.

Supervising Undergraduate Law Students’ Dissertations: A Four-Step Review

The literature on supervision focuses primarily on postgraduate supervision. Whilst there is some scholarship on supervising undergraduates, there is essentially no scholarship on supervising undergraduate law students specifically. This article investigates undergraduate law students’ attitudes toward dissertation supervision. In 2020–2021, the lead author supervised 12 LLB(Hons) students’ 15,000-word dissertations at the University of Auckland. The supervision process was in four parts: reviewing the proposal; reviewing the introduction; reviewing the first draft (10,000 words); and reviewing the second draft (15,000 words). The authors invited the supervisees to complete a survey on their supervision experience. This article surveys the literature on the supervision of undergraduate students, describes the lead author’s supervision process, and presents and discusses the study results. Students reported that each step in the four-step review process was helpful for their dissertation progress and achieving their goals for the dissertation, and provided useful feedback that was more useful than anticipated for each step in the review process. Students also reported that they received sufficient and appropriate contact with their supervisor, and sufficient guidance from the supervisor — allowing sufficient autonomy. The article also identifies students’ perceived difficulties and reflects on ways the process could mitigate those difficulties.

Quiz design as assessment in non-STEM undergraduate law courses

ABSTRACT In 2020, the author introduced an assessment at the University of Auckland, Faculty of Law in which students design a multiple-choice question (MCQ) quiz on a course reading. The assessment was inspired by the PeerWise tool (primarily used and studied in STEM subjects) and informed by contributing student pedagogy. The assessment was offered in three courses, each time requiring less workload (questions to write) relative to course points, and students were surveyed in each instance. This article surveys the literature on quiz design as assessment, describes how the assessment works, presents and discusses the students’ responses to it, and recommends how other law teachers could use the assessment. The survey findings include that: the assessment increased student interest in the content of their assigned reading; the assessment increased student engagement with the course materials generally; the assessment was more enjoyable than working on a typical research essay or problem question; the time required was similar to or less than that required for a typical law assessment; and the assessment was valuable for their learning. The study endorses a five-MCQ quiz for 10% on a reading, comprising multiple sources or a varied source, in a course requiring 150 hours of learning.

Analyzing the Construct Validity of Work Readiness Instruments for Indonesian Law Faculty Students Using the Rasch Model

Objective: The issue of undergraduate law students tends not to have clear work readiness, the data is obtained from several research results, the research findings have an indication of concern in interpreting the data which has an impact on inaccuracies in analyzing the data, the unclear construct of the instrument items studied, the measurements obtained depend on the characteristics of the test used, the item parameters depend on individual abilities, and measurement errors can only know for groups not individuals. Measuring instruments need to be tested for validity and reliability before being used on individuals to achieve valid and reliable goals. This study aims to test the validity and reliability of work readiness instruments based on the Work-Readiness Integrated Competence Model (WRICM) theory. Method: This research was conducted on 720 participants from several universities in Indonesia with a Cross Sectional Survey research design. The results of data collection were then analyzed through the Rasch model using the Winstep version 3.73 application. Results: The results showed a unidimensionality value of 36.1%, item reliability of 0.99. Of the 23 items created, there are 14 instrument items that have met the requirements of objective measurement. Conclusion: The Indonesian work readiness instrument obtained can be used to obtain data on work readiness needs as a foothold for determining the education strategy for law faculty students in Indonesia in terms of content, methods, and comprehensive evaluation.

Student Perceptions of English Courses in The Law Department: A Case Study at Nurul Jadid University

The focus of this study is on how students perceive their prior English-language learning experiences. The study intends to carefully investigate these perceptions in order to provide useful information to university administration and academics. The outcomes are anticipated to act as a basis for well-informed decision-making, helping the institution to raise the standard of English instruction as a whole. This research has the potential to help educators better personalize English learning programs to meet the various requirements and expectations of the students. This study examined the complex web of students' views related to the English learning process using a quantitative descriptive method and survey techniques. The research incorporated a wide range of opinions by polling students enrolled in the Undergraduate Law Study Program at the University of Nurul Jadid who had taken English courses. The third, fifth, and seventh semesters of the law undergraduate study program were the focus of the data collecting, which took place between October 7 and 15, 2023. The findings, revealed in-depth tables, revealed the subtleties of students' perspectives, concentrating on cognitive, affection, and conation aspects inside the English courses of the Nurul Jadid University Law Study Program. Among 21 respondents, 23.8% perceived their understanding as poor, with 33.3% feeling sufficient and another 33.3% considering their understanding good. Only 9.5% felt very good about their grasp of the subject matter, indicating varying levels of comprehension. Regarding affection, 9.5% felt poor, 42.9% felt sufficient, 19.0% felt good, and 28.6% felt very good. Additionally, 9.5% had weak conation, 38.1% had sufficient, and 42.9% had good conation. Identifying factors influencing these aspects is crucial to enhancing student motivation and engagement in English courses.

Exploring Staff–Student Partnership in Curriculum Design

Collaboration between staff and students for improved curriculum design is presented as highly beneficial in many contexts. In particular, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is seen as facilitating co-design and collaboration. However, students tend not to be actively involved in curriculum change, especially in whole programme design or review. Furthermore, few studies consider partnership with students in the context of ESD inclusion, which was the focus for this collaboration. The aim of this study was to explore staff and student perceptions of participating in a collaborative approach to the review and development of the undergraduate law curriculum in a university in the UK. A developmental evaluation using mixed methods was used to study the expectations and experiences of students and staff through a process of curriculum review and change to incorporate ESD. Our findings demonstrate the rewards of a collaborative process incorporating diverse perspectives. However, they also highlight barriers for students and staff, including perceptions of risk associated with student involvement in the process, and we offer reflections on navigating these potential risks.

Quiz Design as Assessment in Non-STEM Undergraduate Law Courses

Quiz Design as Assessment in Non-STEM Undergraduate Law Courses

Effects of Using Telegram on Iranian Undergraduate Law Students’ Vocabulary Learning: Gender in Focus

This study generally aims to examine the effectiveness of Telegram mobile application on vocabulary learning among Iranian law students. The study also specifically aims to explore the moderating effect of gender on vocabulary learning and to investigate the participants’ attitudes towards using Telegram for vocabulary learning. To achieve these aims, from among 100 law students in Islamic Azad University of Meymeh, Isfahan, Iran, 60 homogeneous students were selected based on their scores on Oxford Placement Test (OPT). A vocabulary pretest was administered to examine their level of vocabulary knowledge prior to the treatment. Then, 400 law specific words were taught to the participants within 10 weeks, two sessions of 60 minutes per week via Telegram. After the treatment, a vocabulary posttest was conducted. The findings showed that the students’ vocabulary knowledge improved and they had positive attitudes toward using Telegram mobile application based on the responses given to the questionnaire. Other findings suggest that female participants outperformed their male ones. Findings have implications for language learners and teachers as well as materials developers.

Research on the Change of Talent Cultivation Mode of Undergraduate Law Program of Open University in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract In the era of artificial intelligence, this paper uses big data analysis to construct a data model of the knowledge system of law, with the help of clustering analysis, cluster students and resources to form a structured knowledge system of law. Combined with the natural language model, which accurately extracts important information, it provides personalized learning resources for students. Eventually, the teaching content is dynamically adjusted according to students’ characteristics, resulting in the integrated design of a personalized teaching mode. The comparison found that the achievement improvement of students using the traditional teaching mode only ranged from 1.8% to 12.6%, and the achievement improvement interval was from 1.9 to 12.6 points. After applying the AI model-based instructional model, the relative improvement in student performance ranged from 19.2% to 19.8%, with an improvement interval of 14.2 to 15.7 points. The students showed a significant teaching effect by demonstrating a 25-point increase in their communication skills performance compared to the control class.

Padlet App uses in Tesl: A Sri Lankan Experience

Digital technology is found capable of playing a vital role in efforts to change from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness in classroom management for TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) by introducing autonomous learning strategies into the methodology followed. Therefore, integrating technology into TESL mechanisms is considered of paramount significance. In that context, Padlet is found usable as an efficient online app that can be used to boost active learning among students. Based on the results achieved in an experiment with a random group of 48 first-year Law undergraduates and 20 Computing freshmen at General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University who had been engaged in Padlet-based online learning activities in ESL for a period of four weeks, this paper analyses using SPSS 23.0 the data gathered in an online survey. Overall, the perceptions of the study population regarding the use of Padlet have been reported as positive. As revealed by the results, most of the participants (88.2%) were new to the use of Padlet app by the time it was introduced. Nearly, 79.4% of them identified that Padlet can make learning collaborative. In the meantime, 92.6% were convinced that Padlet is very influential in the process of knowledge sharing and 82.4% that it is a form of good motivation. Padlet has thus proven to be a very efficient tool in TESL. Hence, it is suggested here that it is important to include activities based on Padlet when designing curricula for teaching English as a second language.

Relationship between gamer profiles, gaming behavior, sociodemographic characteristics, and big five personality traits among French law students

BackgroundOver the past 10 years, gamer profiles have been developed to understand the reason underlying players’ intrinsic motivation. While the research undertaken has led to the creation of distinct models (e.g., BrainHex and Hexad typologies), there is a lack of studies on the prevalence of these profiles among a specific population and the association between the target population’s profiles and their personality traits, gaming behavior, and sociodemographic characteristics.MethodsThus, the present study aimed to (a) establish the gamer profiles of French undergraduate law students, (b) examine the relationships between the participants’ profiles and their personality traits, gaming behavior, and sociodemographic characteristics, with a view to the development of serious games specifically intended for this population. In total, 753 French undergraduate students participated in the study, completing an online questionnaire. Data were analyzed using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), chi-square, and ANOVA.ResultsThe main findings show that among participants, the two most prevalent gamers’ profiles are Mastermind (45%) and Seeker (22.7%); followed by three less represented archetypes: Conqueror (12.9%), Daredevil (9.7%), and Achiever (9.7%). These archetypes are associated with the participants’ Big Five personality traits. Specifically, Daredevils, Masterminds, and Seekers have high mean scores on Extraversion (p < .001); Achievers and Seekers have high mean scores on Agreeableness (p < .001); Seekers and Achievers have high mean scores on Neuroticism (p < .001); and Seekers, Masterminds, and Achievers have high mean scores on Openness (p < .001). The unveiled profiles are also significantly associated with the participants’ gaming behavior including their playing frequency (p < .001), game types (p = .031), and sociodemographic characteristics (p < .001). For example, Masterminds are more likely to be female than the other four profiles (p < .001), while Conquerors and Daredevils are more likely to have a low socio-economic status compared to those with intermediate and high socio-economic status (p = .49).ConclusionThese findings can be used to design serious/educational games tailored to the studied population.

Keep it Real: The Case for Introducing Authentic Tasks in the Undergraduate Law Degree

Authentic learning and assessment, which refers to tasks and assessment practices that reflect complex, real-world situations, are a radical departure from the traditional methods of learning and assessment in Higher Education. This article considers feedback from a primary, small-scale empirical study of students taking an optional Civil Litigation and Dispute Resolution module which uses authentic learning and assessment practices. Evaluating student feedback from the module, and drawing on the existing literature, the paper concludes that introducing authentic learning and assessment opportunities in the undergraduate law degree has the potential to increase student employability, engagement, and skills development. Finally, the paper examines some of the barriers to incorporating authentic tasks in the law degree, and some “light touch” ways to introduce authentic “moments” in existing modules are explored.

Exploring Bibliotherapy as Psychological intervention for law undergraduates: A look at Autobiographies in a Library setting

Undergraduate Law Students training is organized in such a way that they can multi-task through diverse activities ranging from classroom discussions, understanding the principles of law and mastering legal arguments, participating in mock and moot trial, clinical legal education and studying. These activities make them become better lawyers after graduation however they have also become challenges documented to lead to psychological trauma for some students. Extensive literature review, content analysis as well as interview methods were used. The conceptual framework of the study was based on analysis of 3 Autobiographies and literature review. Autobiographies by Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie were selected. They are: “Where is your Wrapper”, “Speaking above a whisper” and “We should all be Feminist”. Texts from these autobiographies that answered the research questions were selected for annotations; they providence research evidence showing that autobiographies can be used as bibliotherapy intervention in handling psychological trauma that could arouse from activities in law faculty environment. A structured interview carried out on a medical doctor (director) in a government hospital, when placed in juxtaposition with results of literature review, showed that law environment is not the only stressor to undergraduate law students. Background factors to each student were also found to contribute to psychological trauma in law environment. Hence it was concluded that bibliotherapy was essential intervention technique for undergraduate law students. It was further shown that academic law libraries can be a medium of bibliotherapy intervention for law undergraduates.