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BPP University Law School:

Law Conversion Course: Academic Framework Welcome to the Law Conversion Course. his short video is to introduce you to your programme. It is suitable for students who are studying both the Postgraduate Diploma in Law (known as the PGDL) and the LLM Law & Legal Practice (which we will call the LLM). We will briefly look at the difference between the two versions of the programme within this video but the focus will be on the core conversion course content, which is the same for both. What we will cover In this video we will be covering: - BPP’s Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy; - The Programme Aims and Learning Outcomes; and - The structure of the programme. The Law Conversion Course: PGDL and LLM First, let’s look at the broad structure of the programme and ensure that we understand the key terminology that we will be using in this video. Some of you will be studying for the PGDL. This is a 120 credit programme which gives rise to a diploma qualification. It is divided into two parts, each of which is worth 60 credits. For full time students, this means it runs across two terms. For part time students, it will run across four terms. Others will be studying for the LLM Law & Legal Practice. This is a 180 credit programme which gives rise to a full Masters’ qualification. It is divided into three parts, each of which is worth 60 credits. For full time students, it runs across three terms. For part time students, it is a six term programme. Stage 1 of the LLM is exactly the same as the PGDL. The difference is Stage 2, where you can select one of three different options to complete the Masters’ qualification. These are Part 1 of our Solicitor Training Course, Part 1 of our Barrister Training Course or a Professional Project. In this video we are looking predominantly at the PGDL. We do not consider Stage 2 of the LLM in any depth.

BPP Law School Learning, Teaching & Assessment Strategy As a BPP Law School Programme, The PGDL has been designed around the Law School’s overarching Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy. This strategy is applicable to all of our programmes so if you go on to study further programmes at BPP (such as the Solicitor Training Course or the Barrister Training

BPP University Law School: Course) you will find it very familiar. All our programmes are designed to prepare you for practice. During the Conversion Course you will not just learn about the law in a way that prepares you for an assessment, but in a way that prepares you for contemporary and future practice. The strategy has been informed not only by contemporary legal practice but also best practice from other professional contexts such as the medical professions. The PGDL, like all BPP Law School Programmes, has been designed as an integrated programme in which you develop knowledge, skills and behaviours together, promoting a deep approach to learning. We do this by teaching via case studies, in which you will be required to apply your knowledge of the law to real world problems, in a simulated practice environment. Crucial to this strategy is the principle of regular feedback and reflection. You are responsible for your own feedback and reflection but will be supported through this by your tutors. We use educational technology to enhance the teaching experience. You will have live workshops with your tutors, but will also have access to several core online platforms through which you will acquire your legal knowledge and practise your legal skills. PGDL Programme Aims The learning aims of the PGDL are aligned to this Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy. The aims of the programme are to: 1. Develop your knowledge and understanding of core legal principles 2. Give practical context and relevance to the core legal principles that are fundamental to legal practice 3. Develop your ability to apply relevant legal knowledge to realistic, client-based scenarios 4. Develop your skills in communicating legal analysis and argument clearly and succinctly 5. Help you build foundational, professional skills through the study of law from a contextual and practical perspective 6. Prepare you for later progression onto further professional legal education and to lay the foundations for your progression to practice as a legal professional in England and Wales Additional Programme Aims – LLM If you are studying the LLM, you will see that your programme has an additional aim, linked to the version of Stage 2 that you choose to complete: 1. Solicitor Training Course Part 1: Develop a solid and comprehensive grounding in the functioning legal knowledge and core practical legal skills that will be assessed by the SRA during the first stage of the centralised Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE).

BPP University Law School: 2. Barrister Training Course Part 1: Develop knowledge and understanding of civil litigation and evidence and criminal litigation, evidence and sentencing, such that you are prepared to complete the Bar Standards Board’s (BSB) centrally set assessments in each of civil and criminal litigation, as well as ethics and oral advocacy examinations. 3. Professional Project: Deepen your knowledge and conceptual understanding of particular complex legal concepts introduced in Stage 1, developing your legal research skills and your ability to working autonomously to create an original professional asset relevant to contemporary legal practice as well as a personal reflective statement.

Broadly, the aims of these different parts are to prepare you for the SRA and BSB centralised assessments or, in the case of the professional project, to develop your research skills. PGDL Learning Outcomes We will now briefly look at the PGDL learning outcomes. As with all BPP Law School Programmes, they are sub-divided into four different types of skills: Knowledge and Understanding, Cognitive Skills, Professional Skills and Attitudes and General Transferable Skills. All Module Learning Outcomes are mapped against these programme learning outcomes. The Module assessments are then mapped to the Learning Outcomes. You can find the full Programme Learning Outcomes in the Programme Handbook. You will find the Module Learning Outcomes for each of your modules in the Module Outlines. These can also be found in the Programme Handbook as well as the relevant Module page on The Hub.

PGDL Modules We’re now going to take a look at the PGDL Modules in more detail. The PGDL is comprised of 8 core modules, each of which is worth 15 credits. This equates to 150 notional learning hours. It is a modular programme which means that you will study and be assessed in Part 1 before you go on to study Part 2. Each Part consists of four modules In Part 1 you will study Public Law 1, Tort Law, Contract Law and Company Law. Full time students will cover all four modules in a single term. Part time students will do two modules at a time. So you will cover Public Law 1 and Contract in the first term. You will then do Tort and Company Law in the second term.

BPP University Law School: In Part 2 you will study Public Law 2, Crime, Land Law and Trusts. Again, part time students cover these modules two at a time. You cover Public Law 2 and Crime together. Then Land and Trusts in the following term. There is also a pervasive module called Foundational Legal Skills. This module is noncredit bearing but complements and is assessed in each of the 8 core modules that you are studying. It runs alongside those modules, focusing on the key legal skills that you will need to develop during the PGDL and to become an effective legal practitioner. Broadly, those skills are written and oral communication and legal problem-solving. These skills are assessed in different ways in your different core modules. The Foundational Legal Skills module is designed to ensure that you will always be focusing on the skills that complement the core modules you are currently studying (whether you are a full time or part time student). The marking criteria for the core modules include marks for the relevant skills. PGDL Term Structure Now let’s look at the course structure in a bit more detail. As we have already seen, the PGDL is a modular course. It is broken down into 15 week terms. That’s two 15 week terms for full time students and four 15 week terms for part time students. Full time students cover 60 credits per term, equating to 600 learning hours. Part time students cover 30 credits per term, equating to 300 learning hours. Every term follows the same broad structure: The first week of every term is an induction week. In your first term of study, your induction week will include a live personal tutor workshop and 4 substantive workshops for Public Law 1. These workshops will introduce you to the English Legal System. In every other term, you will still have personal tutor session but there will be no core module workshops. The next five weeks of term are teaching weeks. Each core module is taught via a case study which spans the five week block. Over the course of the five weeks, you will have five two hour workshops for each of those modules. (So full time students will have four weekly workshops and part time students will have two weekly workshops.) Foundational legal skills also has weekly workshops. Some of them are live sessions. Others are asynchronous sessions which means you must work through the materials in your own time. After the first five teaching weeks there is a consolidation week, which includes an online consolidation session and the formative assessment for the modules you are studying that term. Following the consolidation week, you will start the second case study for each core module. Again, the case studies will be taught over a five week block, with five two hour workshops

BPP University Law School: per module. Again, Foundational Legal Skills will be taught by a mixture of live and asynchronous workshops. For most study modes, you will have weekly workshops for each module. The Part Time Saturday mode is slightly different. You will study different modules on alternate weekends, meaning that you will have – for example- two Public Law workshops one week and then two contract workshops the following week. This also means that your formative assessments will be spread across two weeks, instead of both taking place in the Consolidation Week. If you are studying on this mode, you should refer to your Study Planner for more details. PGDL Case Studies: Employer Contexts The PGDL case studies are set in the context of four different legal employers, giving you exposure to a range of different contexts in which you might practise law in the future. For each case study you will be allocated a supervisor in one of the four legal employers. They will set you tasks via the virtual practice environment. Several of the case studies are set in Price Prior LLP, which is a fictional general practice firm. This employer context is also used on our Solicitor Training Course. Two of the case studies are set in Kingsgate Chambers which is the fictional Barristers’ Chambers that provides the setting for the Barrister Training Course. We also use two other employer contexts on the PGDL, allowing us to cover a wider range of legal work. The first is an international law firm called Brierley Khan LLP, in which you will cover larger commercial case studies. There is also a Public Law case study set in the fictional National Legal Department, an internal government department. By immersing yourself in the work of these different legal employers we hope you get a good all-round feel for the different types of work that lawyers do in practice. We believe that this will benefit you, whether you are still trying to work out what kind of lawyer you want to be, or if you already have a good sense of the work you may want to do in future. Common Structure: Student Learning Journey All modules on the PGDL will follow the BPP common structure to learning. For each week of each module, you will be expected to prepare, apply your learning, collaborate in your workshop and then consolidate your understanding. In preparing for a workshop, you will be building your knowledge of a topic area in BPP Adapt. By completing a series of elements in the online platform, you will be introduced to a topic and then develop your knowledge further at your own pace. The Hub may direct you to further knowledge building activities too for a topic, you may be asked to read a case, piece of statute or an article for example. Once you have built your knowledge of a topic, you will need to apply it. Through the context of the realistic case studies, you will be asked to complete different tasks in the

BPP University Law School: Virtual Practice Environment. Prior to each workshop, you will be asked by your supervisor to complete a task. You will be required to respond to your supervisor and submit the apply task prior to your workshop. Though you will not necessarily receive individualised feedback on each submissions, this will enable your tutor to monitor your progress over the module. On occasion, your tutor will give feedback by sharing good examples of submissions in the workshop for you to discuss as a group and for you to use to reflect on your own work. Other times, you may receive an exemplar of the task your submitted for you to use as feedback to reflect on your own work. You will always receive feedback on the task you submit, it is just this may be as a group or through an exemplar you receive back. On occasion, there may be an ‘apply’ task that sits outside of the case study. Follow any instructions in The Hub ensuring you have prepared this task prior to your online workshop. In total, you can expect to spend five hours on the Prepare and Apply stages for each module. This will not always be evenly divided between Prepare and Apply but you will typically spend two to three hours on each. In the workshop, you will be expected to collaborate with your fellow learners to undertake further tasks related to the knowledge area in the context of the case study. The workshop will be an opportunity to review the apply tasks you will have prepared in advance of the session and then undertake further unseen tasks related to the topic and case study. All learners are expected to come to the workshop prepared and willing to contribute. The workshop will last two hours. In order to consolidate your knowledge of a topic area, you will be asked to do different tasks. These may be in BPP Adapt, The Hub or the VPE. It is essential you do these to cement your knowledge of a topic. In each week, often as part of consolidation, there will be 5 assessment style formative MCQs for you to do. These replicate the style and format of the MCQs in the exam. Therefore, these MCQ are important as a means of formative assessment. In addition to preparing you for the exam they are also a means for you to assess your progress, identify any gaps of knowledge and/ or misunderstanding in a topic area. BPP will also use these MCQs to track your progression over a module. You can expect to spend a further two hours on consolidation each week. Sometimes the consolidation task will simply involve a refresher of the material you covered this week. Other times it will also develop the case study and will be essential for your understanding of the following week’s tasks. Overall you can see that you have 9 hours allocated to each workshop, comprising of 5 hours of pre-workshop tasks, 2 hours in the workshop and then 2 hours of consolidation. So full time students can expect to be spending 36 hours per week on their core modules during the 10 substantive teaching weeks, plus 4 hours a week on Foundational Legal Skills. Part time students can expect to spend 18 hours per week on their core modules plus 2 hours per week on Foundational Legal Skills.

BPP University Law School: You will repeat this cycle until you are ready to complete your summative assessment. There is a separate video covering the assessment framework on the PGDL. Conclusion This brings us to the end of this video about the academic framework of the Conversion Course. You should now have an understanding of the structure of the programme and how it fits with the BPP Teaching, Learning & Assessment Strategy. We suggest you spend some time reading the Programme Handbook to further familiarise yourself with the Programme. Further information about each module can be found in the module outlines, which are in the Handbook and on the Hub module pages. There is also a module information video for each module. There is more detailed information about assessment of the modules in a separate video about PGDL assessments.

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