THREE EXPERIENCES OF INNOVATION BASED ON THE USE

OF ICT IN LABOUR AND SOCIAL SECURITY LAW

Autores:Mª Belén Fernández Collados, Francisco

A. González Díaz y Carmen Sánchez Trigueros.

The use of ICT in legal disciplines

• Lecturing is not only the prototypical teaching method of the previous university system to the EHEA (European Higher Education Area). It is also the most used in the transmission of knowledge in legal disciplines, among other reasons because of its usefulness in those subjects with a broad theoretical content. However, lecturing as the sole method of teaching in the university suffers from certain limitations

The use of ICT in legal disciplines

• The establishment of the EHEA leads to the reformulation of the role of the teacher and their involvement in teaching tasks. Teachers are no longer a mere transmitter of knowledge from a position of magisterial authority. Instead, teachers become a learning guide.

• The main obstacle for the use of ICT is still the fact that there are not enough resources, which implies certain problems of organization and coordination, more workload and dedication for the faculty to prepare teaching materials, a simplistic adaptation of complex theoretical and practical contents, and even the lack of training in the use of ICT by both the faculty and students

Theory of Collective Negotiation in the Open Course Ware site

• The University of Murcia first experienced publishing content on the OCW University of Murcia in 2007-2008.

• Given the interest in incorporating ICT in teaching courses of Labour Law, it was presented an open publishing content on the Site OCW from the University of Murcia for the course Theory of Collective Negotiation, course that is part of the Degree in Work Sciences. Once the scholarship was granted, the content was published in accordance with the parameters and standards established in this regard, as can be seen in the site OCW from the University of Murcia http://ocw.um.es/cc.-juridicas/teoria-de-la-negociacion-colectiva

Theory of Collective Negotiation in the Open Course Ware site

• Just designing a course for a Degree following the outline for publishing in the OCW site meant great reflection and adaptation of the course to new teaching techniques specific to the EHEA. It also involved the need to use ICT by both the teacher and the students. One may think that the publication of a course on the OCW means that it becomes a virtual course, but it is not so.

• The course is not designed as a form of online education, among other reasons because online education simply involves the publication of content of the course but has no posts, email or other means of interaction between teacher and student.

Theory of Collective Negotiation in the Open Course Ware site

• Once the course Theory of Collective Negotiation was published in the OCW in the academic year 2008-2009, the delivery of the course was performed using the site. This didn’t mean that lecturing was not used as the main tool in the teaching- learning of the course. In fact it was another instrument for teaching (along with other instruments, such as regulations, forms, examples, or case studies) to stimulate learning and create a climate of debate. Students could first have a look at the teaching materials that lectures would be about. The result was an interesting experience halfway between on-line teaching and classroom teaching, which facilitated learning to both students who could and could not attend regular classes.

Text-Guide as a new teaching resource for new methodological

needs• Text-Guide is a teaching resource halfway between a

manual and a teaching guide. Participation in a series of teaching innovation projects with the goal of publishing a text-guide is not in itself an experience of teaching innovation based on the use of ICT. But designing a text-guide that is oriented towards planning, organizing and coordinating the course based on the use of ICT, and preparing practical activities in which the use of new technologies (with virtual tutorials, information search on the Internet and databases, etc.) is a must, is definitely a way of teaching based on the use of ICT.

Text-Guide as a new teaching resource for new methodological

needs• The teaching of the course Social Security I with

the text-guide, first in Labour Relations and later in Labor Relations and Human Resources, has led to the possibility of following a more flexible model of education, to the development of self-directed learning techniques and to the merge of traditional classroom teaching with the use of new technologies. Therefore, and thanks to the text-guide, students and teachers have to use the Virtual Campus of the University and the virtual tutorials to complete many activities that require the use of ICT.

Text-Guide as a new teaching resource for new methodological

needs• The result has been quite good because there

is substantial improvement in the successful learning of the course if we compare the results with former years. Students agreed on the importance of using ICT in a legal course, especially when they have to work with the Social Security Website, contribution programs, legal databases, and carry on information search on the net.

Text-Guide as a new teaching resource for new methodological needs

• However, among the weaknesses of the text-guide it should be mentioned that not all students understand the meaning of the text-guide as a teaching resource that enhances self-directed learning. Instead, some students consider the text-guide closer to a syllabus than to a manual, and thus demand greater content which decreases the possibility of having true autonomous learning on the part of the students.

Video-guides in the course Fundamentals of Technical Improvement of Working Conditions

• The University of Murcia offered financial aid for production of digital educational materials for the academic year 2012-2013 to promote the design, production and publication of digital material for teaching in the Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in its various forms (in-person class, a blend of in-person and on-line class, or virtual learning).

Video-guides in the course Fundamentals of Technical Improvement of Working Conditions• Taking advantage of this call, the research team

requested a project for the course in the Masters in Risk Prevention at Work: Technical Basis for Improvement of Working Conditions. For this course, a set of materials of different nature were created: all the contents of the course in PDF, which also includes some of the practices, the corresponding PowerPoint presentations for each unit to support the lectures, and a video-guide for each course unit. These contents have been published in the Portal OCW from the University of Murcia with the invaluable help of the Support Group for “Tele-enseñanza” (ATTICA).

Video-guides in the course Fundamentals of Technical Improvement of Working Conditions

• Thanks to the elaboration of these materials, students not only become a very important part in a course that is quite relevant for the prevention of occupational hazards, but also get interested in the academic contents from an educational perspective. Besides, students have the chance to familiarize with practical issues that will permit an adequate competence in the professional performance.

Video-guides in the course Fundamentals of Technical Improvement of Working Conditions

• In the academic year 2013-2014 this course has been taught using all material produced after the call for aid for the production of digital educational materials for the academic year 2012-2013: the syllabus with practical cases, transparencies and video-guides. The experience has been very positive because, for the first time since the Masters is taught at the University of Murcia, students have had all learning materials in advance.

Video-guides in the course Fundamentals of Technical Improvement of Working Conditions• The video-guides produced by the research team have worked as

an introduction to each of the units and have managed, together with additional content-related videos, to make classes more attractive. Thus, the classes of this course (which take four hours in the afternoon and are somehow too long for students who come from more technical degrees) have not been limited to oral presentations on the matter or to the reading and discussion of case studies, but to the projection of video-guides and other videos as well. Consequently, classes are more dynamic and give a new image of legal disciplines in a degree in which the number of students from technical degrees is very significant. In fact, the academic results of the January exams support this positive experience because students have obtained good academic results.

Conclusions

• Legal disciplines may seem to have little to do with the incorporation of ICT in the teaching-learning process, but we have seen that this is not so anymore. In fact, students need to acquire competencies related to ICT for an effective performance of their profession.

Conclusions

• Although lecturing has been the most useful teaching methodology for legal-related science, that does not mean that lecturing itself is not compatible with the use of ICT, which actually add a greater dynamism to the classes and increase the level of student attention. We should not, however, overuse ICT in the classroom because students may end up paying more attention to the way in which the course is taught than to the actual content of it.

Conclusions

• In this regard, along with the mainstream media (i.e., PowerPoint presentations) it is very satisfying the experience of combining the actual lecturing of a course with other methodologies, such as publishing content from class lectures on sites like the OCW, using video-guides, or exploring case studies with self-created videos. Such videos should provide the fundamental contents and have a particular duration that suits the educational needs of the course