| This study examined how first-year law students used an open-ended interactive videodisc to develop a civil rights case. The Litigation Strategies videodisc uses a visual and textual database to complement traditional curriculum by simulating the experience of a junior partner in a law firm. Using a set of desktop tools (e.g., a telephone to contact the client and 28 witnesses in the case; an intercom to communicate with the senior partner, investigative, and legal assistants; and a file system to review and revise documents relating to the case), students gain practical experiences in establishing an attorney/client relationship, interviewing witnesses, evaluating evidence, and interpreting legal documents.;An implementation evaluation examined the use of two types of orienting instruction provided students using Litigation Strategies: unguided (i.e., general instructions and a statement of the task) and guided (i.e., instructions, task statement, and a list of case development strategies). Twenty pairs of second-semester Harvard Law School students, all from the same "Legal Methods" course, volunteered to participate in the study. Student pairs were randomly assigned to guided or unguided orienting instruction to develop the case. After 90 minutes, they specified three criteria for a legal complaint: plaintiff(s), defendant(s), and cause(s) of action.;Data collection involved: (a) direct observation, (b) online tracking of usage patterns, (c) post-use completion of the legal complaint, (d) an individual post-use questionnaire, and (e) a paired post-use structured interview. Data analysis addressed: (a) students' pathways through the case, (b) the relationship between mode of use and performance on the complaint, and (c) the relationship between mode of use and student perceptions of their experience.;Results included: (1) Guided and unguided student pairs used a variety of effective case development strategies, with unguided pairs intuiting many of the suggestions developed for the guided orienting instruction. (2) Guided student pairs were more likely to produce superior legal complaints than unguided pairs, and guided pairs with no prior legal experience before law school were more likely to produce superior complaints than unguided inexperienced pairs. (3) Additional orienting instruction was desired by 70% of unguided pairs as well as by 40% of guided pairs in the study, and 10% of guided pairs desired less orienting instruction.;The goal of this study was to further our knowledge of the use of videodisc simulations for learning by documenting two modes of use, and by analyzing the resulting student performance and self-perceptions. These results underscore the importance of learning more about developing orienting instruction in cognitively-demanding environments. |
