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Learning is complex for any number of reasons. One of these is that it doesn’t take place in a laboratory: it happens in real places, within and between real people, and as a consequence it takes place in multi-factorial environments. At every stage of learning in Higher Education (HE), from student choice of institution and programme, to the transfer of learning from theory to practice, to a single institution’s or a teacher’s evaluation of teaching and learning, there are many causal factors that affect educational process and outcome. The complexities and variables created by the interaction of such multiple factors, well known in the field of education, make learning a highly complex phenomenon to analyse and understand.

The LETR Report on legal services education and training (LSET), published in June 2013, is the most recent of a series of reports dealing with legal education in England and Wales. Earlier reports do not deal directly with technology theory and use in legal education, though the use of technology has increased exponentially in recent decades in all areas of social activity, not just in legal education and the administration of justice. LETR does deal with technology use and theory, however, and its position is comparable with at least two reports from other jurisdictions internationally, with the findings of two large-scale projects in legal education and has parallels with the regulation of the quality of legal education in another jurisdiction in these isles. In this article I set out that position and contrast it with regulatory positions and statements on technology and legal education in England and Wales going back to the 1971 Ormrod Report. Based on a review not just of technological implementations but of the theoretical educational and regulatory literatures, I shall argue that the concept of multi-modal regulation and ‘shared space’ outlined in the Report is a valuable tool for the development of technology in education and for the direction of educational theory, but particularly for the development of regulation of technology in legal education at every level.

[EN] This article is a case-study of simulation as a way of learning values and ethics, an approach implemented curriculumwide within a postgraduate, professional legal educational programme, the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice, in Scotland. It involves learning faceto-face using conventional print resources, and also involves online digital resources. While the use of the web to simulate a professional environment is nothing new in itself, the implementation of it (first in the Glasgow Graduate School of Law and then Strathclyde Law School) and on this scale is fairly unique. The article explores the genesis of this approach, its interdisciplinary bases, and its use in various law schools, its effects in building learning communities and facilitating ethical self-revelation., [ES] Este artículo es un estudio de caso sobre la simulación como vía para el aprendizaje de valores y ética, un enfoque aplicado a lo largo de todo el currículo en un programa de postgrado de formación profesional en Derecho, el Diploma en Práctica Profesional, en Escocia. Comprende aprendizaje presencial con el uso tanto de recursos convencionales impresos como de recursos digitales en línea. Aunque el uso de la web para simular un entorno profesional no es nuevo en si mismo, es la primera vez que se lleva a cabo íntegramente su implementación en una escuela de Derecho (primero en la Glasgow Graduate School of Law y posteriormente en la Strathclyde Law School). El artículo explora la génesis del enfoque, sus bases interdisciplinares, y su uso en distintas escuelas de Derecho, así como sus efectos en la creación de comunidades de aprendizaje y en la tarea de facilitar la autorevelación ética.

Fragmentation and convergence are two discoursal lenses that have been used to view changes that have taken place in the domains of legal services, the legal profession, regulation and legal education. While they may appear orthogonal, the relationships between them are intimate, sophisticated, constantly shifting and require much more analysis.In this paper I shall argue that law schools need to engage with both processes for they are powerful actants upon the way we perceive our schools and our roles within them. They are also powerful forces upon what and how we teach, and the nature of the knowledge that is the focus of our heuristics. To exemplify this argument and to begin to examine its strength as a tool for analysis I shall focus on one area of legal education, namely the three fields of legal information literacies, legal informatics and legal writing. I shall argue that the sum of the convergence of all three would significantly improve the educational effects of the parts in our curricula. I shall explore how studies in New Media on media convergence give us models for such convergence, and can reveal the educational effects that the process may bring about.

While clearly the use of games for supporting education is not new, the use of digital games is comparatively recent. with the emergence of web-based services, increased broadband and the growth of online communities, the use of digital games presents us with a unique set of engaging tools and techniques, based upon game mechanics such as competition, narrative, missions and quests.

Slides to accompany draft chapter 6 of Genealogies of Legal Education, presented to Melbourne Law School, October 2014.