Teaching Business Law To Undergraduate Social Science Students

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Teaching Business Law To Undergraduate Social
Science Students

• A Presentation by Dr. Roger Rickwood
• (Visiting Professor of Political Science, FGS
  Arts) to TEL_at_YORK
• Conference on Teaching, Learning Research Using
  Technology,
• April 25 and 26,2006

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Teaching Business Law

• The purpose of this presentation is to
  demonstrate and suggest how technology can be
  used to address different learning needs in a
  large enrollment course where undergraduate
  social science students have little prior
  knowledge of the subject and conflicting learning
  goals.

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Teaching Business Law

• Effective teaching of Business Law to
  undergraduate social science students requires
  effective management of their widely different
  expectations about what they hope to gain by
  enrolling in this course. My experience this year
  has shown me that there are three distinct
  consumer groups.

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Teaching Business Law

• Group One is composed of students already
  involved in a small business or expecting to go
  into a small business on graduation. They
  perceive the course as a means of acquiring and
  applying practical legal concepts to immediate
  concrete business problems. They see the course
  as a paralegal tool kit.

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Teaching Business Law

• Group Two members are using business law to test
  out their feelings as to whether they should go
  to law school. They are interested in scoring
  high marks to maximize their chances of getting
  into law school. While they are somewhat
  interested in understanding legal concepts, their
  primary interest is in mark accumulation and not
  in distracting analytical and or theoretical
  discussions

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Teaching Business Law

• Group Three members are interested in
  understanding legal concepts from analytical,
  historical, ethical, and theoretical points of
  view. They want to engage in critical problem
  solving and fully discuss relevant options and
  evidence from the vantage point of competing
  parties, counsel, judges and policy makers.