Empirical research in the undergraduate curriculum

by caroline hunter ~ January 15, 2010

Following on from the Nuffield report “Law in the real world”, the Nuffield Foundation, with support from UKCLE, funded a further small piece of research into modules in the undergraduate curriculum where empirical research was taught or otherwise encountered. A copy of the full report is now available here. 

The report includes a number of examples of modules and extra-curricular projects from different Law Schools where students are asked to directly engage with empirical research.  It also indicates a number of barriers to introducing empirical research in the undergraduate curriculum. These include:

• resistance from other faculty members

• resistance from students, particularly to unknown forms of assessment

• lack of suitable textbooks

The idea of the project was to find examples which could be learned from and built on by colleagues in order to encourage undergraduate law students to take an interest in empirical research and also hopefully to inspire a few to take this futher into postgraduate studies. There are undoubtedly more examples than were uncovered by the research. We are interested in these too, so do post any in response to this which you feel will add to the debate. In particular, there seems to be very little use of empirical research in qualifying law degree modules or in the first year, so it would be good to find out if there are indeed examples from QLD and first year modules. We are also keen to find out your experiences of including empirical research in assessment.  What innovations have you used and how did students react to them? What materials and text books do you draw on?

Please do add any ideas which may contribute to an on-going debate.