Commercial Law Market Day Project

Written by Samantha Hardy, School of Law

The issue

Marking students' answers to problem-based assignments, I was struck by the fact that they seemed mostly to reproduce the law in an abstract and decontextualised way. They no longer treated the problem as a set of real-life facts, but as a clue to the type of law the assessor wanted regurgitated.

Introduction

The aim of the project was to create a contextualised simulation, of real life, in which students were involved in a marketplace. Here they would engage in consumer and retailer activity and then would identify and deal with legal problems that arose in the course of that activity.

This project aimed to develop students' functional, as well as content-based knowledge. It required students to "think like a lawyer", but it also allowed them to think like a client. This provided students with an important perspective on consumer-based disputes, as well as legal practice in general.

The teaching and learning process

Preparing for the activity

In the first seminar students were required to form groups of four and to remain in the same group for the duration of the project. Half the groups were given "Retailer" status and the other half "Consumer" status. The students were given readings in relation to working in groups, and each group had to fill in a questionnaire aimed at identifying potential problems in the group and at developing strategies for dealing with them.

Each group with Retailer status was instructed that they were responsible for marketing and selling an espresso coffee machine. They were given a statement from the marketing department about what kind of tactics they were allowed to use in their advertisement. Each retailer group was given different information. Students were at first concerned about the lack of direction about what they should put in their advertisement. As one student asked: "What if we put something in the ad that comes back to bite us?" and then realised that this was in fact the point of the exercise.

Each group with Consumer status was given a profile of their consumer and a set of unique shopping instructions.

Retailer groups had one week to prepare their advertisement and were instructed to be creative and add as much detail as they wished, so long as they complied with their marketing department's instructions. Consumer groups then had a week to review them and decide which retailer seemed most appealing to them.

The market day

Market Day occurred during the normal seminar time. Retailer groups set up their "shop" in the seminar room and identified themselves by displaying their advertisement. Consumers were told that they had to purchase a coffee machine during the seminar hour. They were at liberty to shop around between the retailers, or they could go directly to the retailer of their choice.

The dynamics of this activity were quite entertaining. One of the retailers had produced a very enticing advertisement, with a very low price for the coffee machine. A few consumers lined up to speak with this retailer, leaving one retailer without any potential customers. This led the latter to make more and more outrageous statements in order to encourage customers to come and shop with them.

Once every consumer had purchased (and every retailer had sold) a coffee machine, the consumers were allowed to open the sealed information attached to the coffee machine. For example, one consumer group received the following post-purchase information:

After a week of using the machine the motor blows up. Not only do you not have a working coffee machine, but you are losing a lot of money from coffee sales, because people don't want to buy instant coffee. Unless you get the coffee machine fixed or replaced in a hurry, you may risk losing your entire business. You have since discovered that this retailer was selling this exact coffee machine two weeks before you bought it for a price only 20% more than the price you paid for it on sale, although they represented to you that the price was 50% off normal sale price.

The aftermath

Consumer groups were then required to prepare a letter of complaint addressed to the retailer from whom they purchased their machine. They were to refer to the matters specified in their post-purchase information as well as any other matters that arose in the course of their negotiations with the retailer on market day.

The retailer groups were given their consumer's letter of complaint and required to draft a reply. They were informed that they needed to oppose the complaint and try to scare the consumer from taking the claim further, given that they were already in trouble with their boss.

In the next seminar each group had a copy of both the consumer's and retailer's letter and was required to sit down and try to work out a statement of relevant facts from which they could later identify the legal issues. They could obtain these facts from the advertisements, the letters themselves and from their recollection of what occurred during market day. Students were instructed to prepare a statement of facts as if they were to present the document to a barrister who was going to prepare an advice. Students were also able to meet with their opposing group to see whether they could agree on any facts in order to save time and effort in proving them.

This proved to be a fairly difficult task for the students, and confirmed my suspicions that they were too used to being given a sanitized and complete set of facts in exam and assignment questions. The task was rewarding though, particularly when one student suddenly announced "I finally understand why you're making us do all this stuff"! Each team was then required to write a letter of advice to their client.

The presentations

Finally, each group had to present a 10 minute reflective analysis of the project as a whole, including how they had worked in a group, what they had learnt about commercial law and what they had learnt about legal practice. Many of these presentations were innovative and demonstrated that students had really achieved a deep understanding over the course of the semester.

Assessment

The Market Day activities were worth 50% of the students' marks for the subject. 40% of this was a group mark, and 10% an individual mark (each student confidentially awarded a mark to each other member of their group and an average was taken).

Assessment criteria varied for each activity.

Reflections

Overall, I was very happy with the project. It was time consuming to prepare, but the results were rewarding. Students commented that they found the practical experience very interesting and that they found they incidentally retained much more content than they would have with a more traditional assessment method. Over 77% of the students reported in SETLs that they enjoyed the market day activities and found them to be a valuable learning experience.

One of the things that many students mentioned in their reflective presentations, but that wasn't a specific learning objective, was their new awareness of the policy behind the consumer protection legislation. This was an unanticipated but important development in their understanding of the law in this area.

References

Biggs, J (1999) "Teaching for Quality Learning at University", Chapter 2 and p.181-182 (assessing group work).

Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University , "Working in Groups: A note to faculty and a quick guide for students", http://bokcenter.fas.harvard.edu/docs/wigintro.html