Working on the ICCA Bar course has been one of my proudest projects so far. I began working with the Inns of Court College of Advocacy part-time as a consultant, I later took the role of E-Learning Manager. The ICCA Bar course is a postgraduate course for those wanting to practise as barristers. Part one of the course is delivered completely online. The ICCA have a partnership with King’s College London, who are the awarding body for the diploma. The course is made up of two parts:
- Part One – Covers the knowledge topics; criminal and civil litigation and is delivered completely online.
- Part Two – Covers practical skills; advocacy, conference, legal resource and opinion writing and drafting. These subjects are taught in person.
When I started working on the project the development of the content was still in its infancy. The live-action films were being filmed and produced and many of the storyboards had been written by the SME’s. The VLE was empty at the time and the theme was being customised by the 3rd party hosting provider. All the activities and screencasts needed to be designed and created and the content needed to be built in the VLE.
Part One was launched in September 2020 and consisted of:
- 220 interactive quizzes
- 65 talking head videos
- 58 animated films explaining the more intricate areas of the course;
- 15 podcasts featuring interviews with judges, silks, juniors, solicitors and an expert witness;
- 7 fully developed case studies; and
- 1 virtual tour of the custody suite at Bury police station
Activities are made up of multiple-choice questions, true or false questions, single best answer questions, drag and drop activities, scenario activities and case studies, pupil and supervisor discussions, complete the table and fill the blank activities. Some screenshots of the activities I designed can be seen below.
I built many of the interactive quizzes, videos and screencasts and played a key role in building out the VLE (Moodle) adding content and developing lessons from storyboards. Later in the year when I changed role and became the E-Learning Manager. I hired some new contractors; a new Storyline Developer to help develop the rest of the storyline activities and a Learning Technologist to help with the Moodle build. My role shifted to more of a project management role, working with the external contractors to ensure the activities and VLE build-out were progressing and that they had everything they needed. Internally, I worked with the fantastic joint Heads of Online Learning and an incredibly knowledgeable team of subject matter experts.
Other projects included building out the development guidelines which I put together in Articulate Rise. These guidelines were fairly lean when the project began and developed organically as the project grew. It was also important to document the process to enable our contractors to have all the information they needed to hit the ground running.
The Process
The development process was similar to that of other projects I have worked on. Our SME’s developed a set of storyboards and activities which were then passed over to me and the development team. We’d then review the activities and apply ID best practices to work out what could and couldn’t be achieved. We’d prototype and build activities then send them back for review. This was then followed by a remediation round, another review and final sign-off. As there were 220 activities to build, I used Monday.com to keep track of all the builds as they went through the development process.
Summary
We kept the learners experience at the heart of the project and as a result have received some really positive feedback from students on social media as well as in our feedback survey. We had quite a small team and a tight deadline but we managed to launch on time and on budget.
I gained some brilliant experience working on a newly implemented VLE and watched it develop from a prototype with no students, to launch with a real cohort of students.
I brought a diverse set of skills and knowledge to the project and planned and managed various aspects of the build. I built a huge variety of activities and worked on many areas from the ground up. A highlight for me was being mentioned in the ICCA’s annual review.
“None of this would have been possible without the enormous contribution of the ICCA’s course designers and our E-Learning Manager who has brought her considerable talent and enthusiasm to bear on the project and has made herself an indispensable part of the ICCA’s e-learning team.”
ICCA Annual Review (2020)
As I continue to work with the ICCA the next steps are to review feedback and make improvements, which will be a continuous process. I’m looking forward to what Part Two brings and to developing further activities.
SKILLS DEMONSTRATED
- Project management and consultancy skills
- E-learning design and development
- VLE development
- Video editing and screencast development
- Graphic design
- Web development – HTML and CSS
TOOLS USED
- Articulate Storyline 360
- Camtasia and snagit
- Premiere Pro
- Planet eStream
- Moodle
- Illustrator
References
News Articles