Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
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which students do and do not make the cut. Students must receive a passing grade of "competency demonstrated" in order to continue on and eventually complete the bar ad- mission program. Sheila Redel, the director of professional education and competence at the Law Society of Manitoba, was highly involved in the creation of the CPLED program. "It came from the idea of national mobility," says Redel. After real- izing the regions could work together successfully on joint endeavours, they began to look for the next area to im- prove. Admission to the bar, a common element between all of the societies, was an obvious choice. "We decided that, in looking into that, there were all sorts of new education technologies available and new approaches to education." With this in mind, and shared funding from the three pro- vincial law societies, the CPLED program was developed over a two-year period. The program has its strengths. For one, the length allows students to delve further into the subject areas. "It enables us to teach skills more intensively than we were able to in the past," says Redel. The program director in Saskatch- ewan, Corina Farbacher, agrees that CPLED provides an invaluable experience for students through contact with high-profile teachers and presenters. "We offer access to judges, justices, and to some of the most experienced prac- titioners in the province. It is a fabulous opportunity to network, to learn, and to take advantage of their knowl- edge and experience." Technology is critical to the success of the program. Since five of the eight modules are completed online, the creators tried to find a system that would be easy to use and also allow for a sense of community. The Blackboard online course-management system was chosen. (For those not familiar, Blackboard Inc. acquired the WebCT system in 2006, which may be more widely known by university students). The site allows for chat and message boards, along with the ability to submit assignments through the web portal. There are concerns, however, that students are losing valuable opportunities for social interaction with so much of the course being online. "It varies from group to group," says Redel. "We have message boards available, and some of our learning groups — there are small pods of a dozen people — won't have anything to say to each other dur- ing the year." Other groups, she says, will use the boards for general information and even to set up social events between peers. Not everyone agrees with the sense of community found in the online environment. Season Bowers, a lawyer with "Law does not operate in a vacuum, and to force students to not communicate questions or discuss ideas with peers is entirely an artificial construction on the part of CPLED." — Christopher Bruce D'Arcy & Deacon LLP in Winnipeg, says she enjoyed the program and its many strengths, but would prefer more personal interaction. "The computer-based component of the program served to remove much of the interaction common to the conventional classroom learning style," says Bowers. She says it's difficult to communicate with the learning-group facilitators due to the lack of face-to-face contact. Trevor Clarke is on a mission to fix that. Clarke has re- cently been appointed as the deputy director of the CPLED program in Alberta. He brings a fresh set of eyes to the curriculum, and hopes to use that to his advantage. "When I first started, luckily there was a face-to-face, and so I was able to hold feedback sessions with the students in Edmon- ton and the students in Calgary and I was in a very unique position," says Clarke. It let him gather anonymous student feedback, since he had never had contact with any of the students before and didn't know their names. Anonymity tends to lead to the most honest feedback. Clarke notes he felt some negativity and even anger from the students he talked to. He says he welcomed the criticism, though, and is taking it quite seri- ously with several plans to improve the administration of the program in Alberta, including the improvement of the online portal. After 15 years in the education field, he has plenty of experience in providing students with effective learning environments. Clarke taught the business law course at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, where he used the Blackboard system with about 600 students each year. He plans on tailoring the CPLED site to better meet the needs of those going through the program, with enhanced feedback mechanisms and improved communication ca- pabilities. "I know that we can change our Blackboard site quite significantly . . . in a way that will allow the students more communication, more feedback, and therefore more C ANADIAN Lawyer 4STUDENTS S EPTEMBER 2008 19