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Web, Social Media and Online Communities for those Studying for Professions: Embraced or Tolerated?

Authors:
Emily Allbon

Keywords: social media; online communities; portal; content generation; information retrieval; legal education

Abstract:
At a time of much debate on the subject of legal education within the UK, universities are having to look carefully at the content of their courses, their methods of delivery and ultimately whether this process is meaningfully shaping and future-proofing legal professionals or leaving them ill-prepared for practice. This paper seeks broadly to gain an understanding of the online tools law students use to support their studies and career progression. It focuses in on the use of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, alongside the ways in which law students both seek and manage their information for learning. The online community aspect also formed a part of this research. Observations were made on the basis of two focus groups at The City Law School, City University London with students on academic law programmes. Students at City University have access to a custom-built online law portal: Lawbore, which acts as a one-stop shop, with community and social media elements as well as learning objects and multimedia guides. Lawbore has been in existence since 2002, and although constantly evolving it has never been formally evaluated; this research was prompted by needing to dig deeper into what students require from a resource such as this.

Pages: 37 to 43

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: March 23, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4367

ISBN: 978-1-61208-328-5

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from March 23, 2014 to March 27, 2014