An Instructional Environment for Learning to
Construct a Legal Case Description
e-See
Antoinette J. Muntjewerff
Department of General Legal
Theory
Faculty of Law
University of Amsterdam
Dorien J. DeTombe
Chair International Research
Society on Methodology of Societal Complexity
NL-1001
JC Amsterdam
Law students
experience difficulties in acquiring legal knowledge and in applying legal
knowledge when performing a legal task. To support law students in acquiring
legal knowledge and legal problem solving skills we develop e-materials for learning the law. In this paper we first describe
the general design methodology used in realizing these e-materials: HYPATIA. This is followed by describing the design of the
training tool e-See, an instructional
environment for learning the construction of the legal case description. The
construction of a legal case description from real life facts and events is an
essential part of legal case solving. Constructing a legal case description
involves the selection and the proof of facts and events from real life. There are
two major problems with selecting and proving facts from real life.
First there is
the problem of the complexity of real life where only certain facts are legally
relevant. The second problem is that it may be necessary to actually observe facts
in real life. For both problems we argue that integrating video in the
instructional environment is of help to the student in acquiring the skill of
constructing a legal case description.