An Interview with Julie Cassidy
(“Inter: ” refers to the interviewer, “Cassidy” refers to Julie Cassidy)
Inter:	Julie, welcome to the wonderful world of Company Law was your opening to each lecture in that subject…
Cassidy:	Yes.
Inter:	…which we captured in audio stream form and put on a CD as part of your national teaching award application. I wonder whether you could welcome us to both Company Law and Tax Law and just explain a little bit about the aims and objectives of those two units in the law program.
Cassidy:	It's actually interesting because I was thinking about this, that the two subjects complement each other and have very similar roles in the law program because both of them are very practical. You might think well all law subjects are practical but they're not, some have a more theoretical focus than others. Both Company Law and Tax are very practical in the sense that there's lots of hands on sort of skills that people need if they actually want to practice in that area. So that's reflected in the assessment regime particularly with Company Law where we get them to do things like incorporate a company, while in other subjects you have a more theoretical essay on the history of equity, for example. So they both play that particular role that not only have we got the goal of making sure they have the foundations for basic Company Law, basic Tax, but we get them to develop these additional skills if they choose to go on and work in those particular areas.
Inter:	Now Julie you mention skills and it tends to bring to the fore, the suite of graduate attributes that Deakin's committed to. Do you see those subjects as making in some ways a particular or unique contribution in terms of developing written, oral communication skills in the context of law, that type of skill set?
Cassidy:	Yes, yes particularly because of having off campus students the focus is definitely more on written skills. The students do have oral skills developed in other units in our practical legal skills program but in our particular units there's definitely a major focus on developing those written skills. For example, the first assignment for Company Law, they actually write a letter of advice to a client suggesting what business organisation they should be using for their project. So it's using or drawing on theoretical material but in a very practical way getting them to actually write in a format which they will use when they're out there in the real world.
Inter:	One of these attributes that doesn't get a lot of press at times relates to information literacy, probably related to legal research skills…
Cassidy:	Yes.
Inter:	…and particularly in the new digital environment. I wonder whether you might comment on what's your understanding of information literacy in the context of law and do you see particular challenges in developing information literacy with a growing importance of digital environments to do professional legal work for example?
Cassidy:	It's interesting because by chance I was thinking about this, this morning in the shower and I was reflecting back to when I first came here in 1992 and we did a video on how to moot and in that particular video we showed our students researching for a moot, mock court trial and they were using paper books. They were down the library opening up books and I was thinking about it this morning, thinking we don't do that anymore. We do to an extent, you might go to a textbook for example for your basic overview of information, but we tend to use technology now. Google, Google and Google and Google, we use Google a lot, we also have particular legal ones, legal websites such as 'AustLii' which are sources of cases, legislation and so on. Taxation in particular promotes those skills because the assignment is a major research project. We tried to pick something topical so we looked at Capital Gains issues, we've looked at investment issues, tried to pick something that is perhaps in the papers at the moment and got the students to do a 40%, so a 4000 word paper giving them no basis at all, so they have to actually go and do the research. So taxation in particular promotes those skills. I'm quite concerned that students have those skills and am very happy that at least one of my subjects has as its primary, an important part of its assessment this legal research where they actually have to get out, play with the tools and get that sort of feel for them, because as you say when they get out there in the real world that's what's going to happen these days. We're using more and more electronic sources of law rather than paper form.
Inter:	Now sort of moving from say the curriculum, the subject matter, the what and why to the how, teaching and learning, how do you see effective teaching for quality learning in law and you might want to comment Julie in terms of how you enact effective teaching, whether it be in a tutorial or a lecture and we can move to the online in the next question?
Cassidy:	On campus I've tried to make sure that it's very engaging and interactive. Anybody can pick up a law textbook and read it, you've got to be able to get something more out of a class, whether it's a big lecture or a tutorial and I think that extra is through the interaction. I try to encourage students to express themselves in class, not just answering questions, but explaining concepts in their own words. So at the moment we're looking at different business organisations, I'm encouraging them to say in class, 'well this is how I understand a trust and how I understand it to work', because unless they can actually explain it in their own words, applying those concepts in an exam or a real life situation is going to be very difficult. So that it's interactive, the students taking a very strong role in their own learning through their own expression is something in particular on campus that we do no matter the size of the class.
Inter:	Now at the beginning I mentioned that you audio stream your lectures which presumably you're still doing?
Cassidy:	Yes, yes.
Inter:	... and I guess there are great pros to doing that and there are some cons as well. I wonder whether you might actually talk about maybe some of the benefits of actually capturing the lecture and making that available more generally and maybe some of the potential dangers in doing that as well?
Cassidy:	I don't think they are many cons. The only con is people say, 'well what if I defame someone?' My answer to that is well you shouldn't be defaming anyone so I actually don't believe there are any cons. There are lots of pros for off campus students it's breaking down that tyranny of distance and the feedback we've had is fantastic because you can't replicate the classroom, you can't, it's not just because again we're not just focusing just on content, it's the interactive aspect of it. The off campus students think that's really great that they're being able to share in that. It's great for disabled students, if you've got a student who's physically challenged they might actually decide that in light of audio streaming that they can stay in an environment which they prefer. We've got one student at the moment, I've been walking with him in his wheelchair to class because I've been concerned that if the lift doesn't work he can't get there and because it's in the science building, trying to find that lift was in itself quite difficult. He might actually decide, 'look it's such an effort, I'm comfortable at home, I can through audio streaming access those lectures'. On campus students too, if there's a concept that they came out of class, might talk to me about it after class but still aren't happy they can go back and listen to it again through the audio streaming. So I can't see anything really negative, I can only see great benefits through audio streaming.
Inter:	So in terms of capturing the lecture in a stream fashion, it's one type of codified learning resource, but there's a whole array of resources used in the law program, the units you teach. Without jumping into online, the print is still important isn't it and I know a number of you in law have actually created teaching textbooks which has been a key resource used in your units. So would you like to comment on still the role and place of print and the opportunities of doing printed teaching books as a key resource in teaching law?
Cassidy:	I think all the different attributes are, really interactive and complement each other. Having the printed work as we know just sort of to jump a little bit, different people learn in different ways. I'm one of these people when I was a student and I've had to go back and do studies, even subsequently to be able to become a barrister, there were extra subjects I had to do so I was able to continue that learning process. I have to write something down, I have to read it and then write it down before it actually is engrained in my brain. Other people like looking at diagrams so I use the whiteboard a lot so that helps those students. So I think the printed form still has a major role because of just simply a lot of people like me need to read it not just hear it. It's also great because hopefully the students are doing the preparation beforehand. They're reading the commentaries, they're reading the cases before they come into class and clearly they're doing that because they are able to tell you the facts, ratio and so on and that complements therefore the classroom discussion, so printed form is still a major part of the teaching tools.
Inter:	Okay, so talking about the DSO environment and the online tools that you use, can you paint a picture of when students enter your DSO sites, I mean what do they find? What do you ask them to do in those sites?
Cassidy:	Well I know I'm not using it as far as I could, it simply overloads so to speak. Last year I took on far too much and so haven't been able to perhaps research into the use of DSO at this point as much as I would like to. As you know I'm working on another project which will sort of add to the dimensions, but at the moment it's really once again putting up for the students a whole variety of tools that may assist them. My colleges at Burwood like Power Points so we've been having my audio streaming, but it's complemented by their power points. The tutors are being putting up suggested answers after the tutorials, suggested answers to the tutorials so there is just a whole sort of array of different teaching tools or teaching assistance for them. Maybe because of that the number of questions on DSO can be quite limited. They can be more administrative queries rather than academic queries because I think they're finding an answer one way or another, they're finding that the different teaching tools complement their learning.
Inter:	Julie, the off campus student group is really important to Deakin. We've had a growing on campus student population but we still need to give attention to the off campus group and their needs and I know a lot of things have been done particularly for the off campus group and there are residential weekends and so on. Are there other things that you do to particularly try and meet their needs? Now I know in some other law subjects they run e-tutorials for the off campus students but are there things like that you're doing particularly for them?
Cassidy:	Well it's interesting the e-tutorials. I raised it last year with my off campus group, whether they would like to have e-tutorials and the answer was no from a practical point of view that not everyone's online at the same time and it's something you know when we first developed DSO and had First Class and so on, I thought 'oh great, we'll be able to have online tutorials' and everyone said no but while three of you are there at 10 am none of us are, we're all at work and Gertrude is on at 11pm while we're asleep. So I've found that hasn't worked but what we have done is for example, the suggested answers so that while the off campus students can have a crack at the tutorials at home at whatever pace, a week later we release some suggested answers so they're getting that feedback quite quickly. The audio streaming is still also primarily for off campus I believe, but I think that that breaking down of tyranny distance, also just familiarity with the lecturer. When they come to revision weekends they think it's great that they've heard my sort of very nasally voice for however many weeks and now they finally see this person and they feel they know you, especially because I have a strange sense of humour and they enjoy that, one of them called it a self deprecating sense of humour and that again breaks down barriers, that they know that person. So I think audio streaming has been very important for off campus.
Inter:	Now Julie you alluded to a new project that might be under wraps at the moment that you're working on. Is that the new wholly online Master of Commercial Law program?
Cassidy:	No, no.
Inter:	No it's not, okay.
Cassidy:	That is one thing that as soon as I get over jet lag from my sabbatical I'm taking over as Head of the postgraduate program and as you say it's a new one which will be purely online and I just think that's going to have so many benefits for people who want to get a Masters but for reasons of work or reasons of distance and location can't actually attend classes, I think this purely online Masters is going to be great. The thing I was more so talking about is we're looking at an interactive e-simulation.
Inter:	E-simulation, yes.
Cassidy:	E-simulation is the best way of putting it. We're working on one which is based on my Company Law unit and it's essentially looking at what they normally do in their first assessment which is advising the client as to a particular business organisation, to actually have them through an e-simulation interviewing that client and identifying what would be the relevant questions to ask that client and so on. So that's going to be great because when I use to teach purely on campus I would literally sit there in class and they would interview me, I would be the client. Once we went to off campus I couldn't do that anymore because you can't have one form of assessment so to speak for the on campus, one for off campus. Once this e-simulation which they're hoping will be finished by the end of the semester, once that is fully developed, off campus can interview just as much as on campus. They'll be interviewing this Julie, but Julie online so to speak.
Inter:	Right. In terms of that being a really useful new development, are there other things that you reflect upon in your teaching and learning environments and say 'well if I could wave a magic wand, I'd really like to do this, that and the other to enhance my teaching'?
Cassidy:	Well as you are probably aware of, I think about my teaching quite a lot and I get frustrated if I actually don't have time to think about the actual process. I've often thought about video, whether we could video the lectures. When I was at Bond University all of my lectures were video taped. Talking to people though who have done that and either have videos or CD ROMs sent to students, the students sort of turn off from the visual, that's at least the feedback I've got from going to papers on it. They're more concerned about the audio and I'm not sure why but the feedback I've been given is they turn off, they get sick of looking at that one face because I guess it's not very interesting, maybe, maybe that's it and so I've sort of decided that there isn't much extra merit in video, that audio is more important to student learning.
Inter:	And finally Julie, given that you're a very experienced tertiary educator in Law, what sort of advice would you give to a new academic staff member new to tertiary teaching coming to a place like Deakin to actually do well in their teaching in the law?
Cassidy:	One of the things I've said to new people who I've been mentoring or just because I try to take an interest in what I call junior academics coming through is think about the teachers that you liked when you were in University and try to replicate some of those things because if you enjoyed it, those aspects, then it's probably going to be the next student will also enjoy it, but they have to be mindful that they have to be teaching in a way that's comfortable for them. We're not all you know court jesters; you've got to make sure that whatever you are doing is something that you're comfortable with. So find a teaching style that suits you but reflect back to what you liked about your other past lecturers. But the other thing which applies to all people is preparation. Students pick it up. They know if you've done the hard slog, they know if you've got that knowledge. People might think well their students, I can wing it, I'm surely going to be one step in front of them. No. Students always comment on my student evaluations that they appreciate the preparation, they appreciate the depth of knowledge. I guess third and finally is if you don't know something, if the student asks you a question, say I don't know and I will come back tomorrow or next week and I will have that answered for you. Good point, point out to them that it's a good point and that will encourage them to ask questions but don't think you're a superhero, we all have questions all the time that even after teaching Company Law since 1987, I still get questions and I don't know the answer and I go away and find out. So that's sort of the general advice I give people when they're starting out.
Inter:	Thank-you Julie.
Cassidy:	Thank-you. It's been nice to talk with you Dale.
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