Law school giant teams up with AI specialist to create new tech learning tools
BPP University Law School is launching a number of new AI-powered teaching tools to help prepare its would-be lawyers for life in practice.
The law school giant has created a “virtual practice environment” that aims to replicate a typical law firm or chambers’ intranet system.
The new online environment, which BPP says “emulates real-world practice”, allows students to apply their new-found legal knowledge to the typical tasks of a future trainee solicitor or pupil barrister, such as document handling and case management.
To compliment its new virtual firm, the law school has also teamed-up with education developer CENTURY Tech to launch “machine learning-driven” study platform BPP Adapt. This features a range of online resources including recorded presentations, online texts and “primary and secondary sources of law that will help embed and build up knowledge with regular testing and instant feedback”.
BPP says Adapt creates a “personalised learning path” that allows students to move through the course material at their own pace, while also providing tutors with insights on study patterns that may be impacting their mental wellbeing. Tutors will be able to work with individual students to review their study plans and, where required, coach them through a more sustainable approach to their studies.
The new tech, which has cost BPP over £1.5 million to develop, will intially be available to students studying for the new Barrister Training Course (BTC) and Law Conversion Course (PGDL) from this September.
“The BPP Adapt platform will generate a personalised learning plan for every student to ensure that each individual is presented with the right resources, in the right way, at the right time,” Andrew Chadwick, dean of BPP Law School, said. “This, along with tutor guidance, will help every student to build, apply and consolidate their knowledge and be better prepared for the centralised assessments and for practice.”
He continued: “We believe that both our new learning platform and our virtual practice environment are unique in legal vocational education. This is not about shiny tech that just offers a dry ‘drill and test’ approach where content is learned, regurgitated in an assessment and then forgotten. Our investments will underpin every stage of a student’s learning and help them achieve long-term, deep learning which will both prepare them better for assessment and for practice through applying new knowledge to realistic, simulated, case-based experiences.”