Lessons learnt: Virtual teaching and learning of transactional law courses – the Hong Kong experience

Abstract

The universities in Hong Kong had switched to virtual learning towards the end of 2019 due to the social movements. And soon after, there came the Covid-19 pandemic and all teaching and learning activities continued to be conducted online until the end of the 2020-2021 academic year. Valuable lessons can be learnt from this prolonged virtual teaching and learning experience which we can build on for planning future e-learning activities for law courses. This paper seeks to evaluate the students’ and the teachers’ experience in virtual teaching and learning of transactional law courses to see what has worked and what has not, including the effectiveness in engaging and interacting with the students using the different online formats and features. Transactional law courses, like contract drafting, corporate finance courses, generally focus more on practical skills training for the students, including problem solving, drafting and communications skills, which often involve more interactive discussions and practical in-class exercises. In order to adapt to virtual learning, different formats and features have been used, including pre-recorded lectures and different features on the Zoom platform for small group tutorials, to make virtual classes more engaging and interactive to help students acquire these practical skills. The paper reports on the findings of a research on both students’ and teachers’ perceptions of virtual versus physical classes, the reasons for any preference and the different features that they find most helpful in engaging students in class, which was conducted in the context of a few post-graduate level transactional law courses at The University of Hong Kong. Data was collected using online survey distributed to the students who were enrolled in, and the tutors who taught, these transactional law courses in the 2020-21 academic year. The findings are divided into 2 parts: one part will describe the students’ perceptions and preference of the different features of pre-recorded lectures and small group tutorials via Zoom and their general virtual learning experience; while the other part will describe the tutors’ perceptions and preference of the different features of Zoom classes and their general virtual teaching experience. The findings of this research will inform us of the lessons learnt from this virtual learning experience from both the perspective of the students and the teachers, which will help with our future planning of e-learning activities.