Pedagogical Research on the use of Mock Trials at undergraduate and postgraduate levels

Along with our colleagues in Governance, and with funding from DCU’s Learning Innovation Unit, we are undertaking a series of simulations/mock trials in order to explore the extent to which learning simulations work differently across disciplines and student levels. The Mock Trials will involve volunteers from criminal law modules being given a criminal case scenario, being assigned specific roles, (judge, witnesses, jurors, lawyers) and playing out a mock trial to its conclusion. In the Foreign Aid Project, development students will play the roles of politicians, bureaucrats, NGO representatives who have to bargain over the design of a foreign-aid programme.

The simulations will be formulated and facilitated respectively by a barrister and an aid worker, in consultation with academic staff. The barrister and aid worker will prepare a package of materials for the students in advance of each simulation. This package will be made available to students, who have opted in to the project, via Moodle one week prior to the simulation. At that time also, mock trial students will be divided into prosecution, defence and judges and will be asked to prepare, in groups of two or three, the case for the prosecution or the defence or the direction to be given by the judge to the jury, as applicable to them, and to submit memorials on these issues to the Moodle page. Development students will be divided into ministers and bureaucrats from an aid agency, a department of foreign affairs, and prime minister’s office, as well as NGO representatives, and legislative representatives. They will be required to submit position papers to Moodle.

On the morning of the simulations, students will be assigned more specific roles. Students will then be given time to make final preparations for their roles, with the assistance of three PhD students, under the direction of the aid worker/barrister. In the Mock Trial, witnesses will be questioned; arguments will be made by lawyers on both sides; a direction to the jury will be given by the judge; and the jury will deliberate and return with a verdict. In the Development Simulation, a draft foreign aid plan will be prepared; discussed at meetings with NGOs and others; defended in parliament; and defended to OECD representatives who benchmark foreign aid programmes.

Following each simulation there will be a debriefing session. This will involve discussion with students in relation to the roles played by them, with some focus on the dynamic of trials and foreign aid politics, and also the gathering of feedback on the simulation as a learning method. Feedback will also be sought from students (through a specially designed student survey on Moodle) on the simulation as a learning tool, its value as part of academic programmes, and their interest in the expansion of the project as a part of the curriculum within these and other modules on their programme.

We will also have a separate discussion with the barrister, aid worker and PhD students in relation to its learning value, its application to the undergraduate and postgraduate groups, any suggestion that it is more useful or workable with one group rather than the other, and any opinion as to the varying dynamic in such groups.