Book Review: Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology

[Extract] Diana Laurillard’s Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology is an important book. At a time when questions of quality are coming to the fore in higher education, this book directly addresses how technology can be used to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. As in most fields of university teaching, legal educators are making increasing use of technology not only to overcome logistical problems, but to actually teach more students better. In my own country of Australia, workshops for law teachers now invariably include a component on the use of technology, and in this year alone two national legal education conferences have been held to consider educational technology and computer assisted legal education. This experience is no doubt echoed worldwide. Since much technology is applied in a theoretical vacuum, any work which promises a coherent educational framework for the use of technology is likely to represent a valuable contribution. Rethinking University Teaching consists of three distinct but tightly integrated parts in which Laurillard first establishes the underlying elements of student learning and hence of teaching, analyses a range of media according to these elements, and then, again on the basis of these elements, presents a systematic approach to media design.