The unrecognised uses of legal education in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

POSTAL CORRESPONDENCE courses were for many years the traditional means to acquire qualifications, gain promotion or change one's career, and thus to get on in life. Radio and television came to play their respective parts in the process, and these in turn have been supplemented although not supplanted by a variety of on‐and off‐line electronic delivery modes. However, the means to learn are delivered, students must study and be assessed, and it is likely to remain necessary to retain a variety of traditional learning, teaching and assessment modes and methods, whilst building on them for the future.

In an era when the process of globalisation operates in a variety of spheres, not least in respect of education and communication, the importance of distance learning is bound to be of continuing and probably increasing importance, and the quality of the teaching delivered and the learning absorbed is crucial.

This paper, based on recent research undertaken by members of the School of Legal Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, set out to investigate some aspects of the effectiveness of law students’ distance learning with particular reference to how they acquire legal knowledge and the extent to which they take a deep or surface approach to that learning.¹