An authentic constructionist approach to student’s visualisation of the law

This study discusses student perspectives on visualisation used as a constructionist technique for learning the law in an authentic context. Student constructions of story- boards, comics, films and animation are explored as an authentic method for persona- lised learning of legal professional conduct and ethics. Undergraduate law students (n = 112) were asked to select a visual format for exploration of an ethical issue of their choice. The results of this study showed most students engaged with this highly creative visual task responding very positively to the exercise as a learning activity. This study discusses why students chose different forms of visualisation, what approach they took to developing their visualisation, the amount of effort devoted to visualisation versus legal elements of their artefacts and observations on the positive and negative aspects of their approach and how the technique could be improved.