UNAIR Law on Tuesday (25/10/2022) held a seminar and sharing session entitled “Learning Innovation in Legal Education.” Held offline in the Pancasila Hall, Building A FH UNAIR, this seminar seeks to discuss the need for innovative legal education to be more accommodating to social change and digitalization.
The first speaker invited was Assoc. Prof. Fokke Fernhout of Maastrich University. Fernhout said that legal education should implement student-centered learning. By focusing the curriculum and learning methods on the needs of students, they have the freedom to explore legal knowledge critically, as needed, creatively, and collaboratively.
“Therefore, the direction of learning between lecturers and students should not be authoritative. The role of lecturers here is to trigger students with challenging legal problems. Reading materials are also not a matter of quantity, but must be about quality and efficiency, “said the academic.
Dr. Sascha Hardt from Maastricht University then attended as the second speaker. Sasha emphasizes that not all innovations are inherently good things. Therefore, legal higher education should not innovate for the wrong reasons. Innovation should not be directed so that law school graduates know an aspect of law fluently. However, the invention must be directed so that graduates can be proficient in responding to new situations and knowledge.
“So, the engagement given to law students is not passive engagement which only makes the student pass the exam. However, the engagement must be active engagement that teaches students to think,” said Hardt.
The third speaker was the Dean of UNAIR Law Iman Prihandono PhD. Iman said that legal education must be able to produce future leaders who have integrity and are adaptive to social change and technology. An interdisciplinary approach is needed in curriculum redesign so that legal education can anticipate legal work that may not yet exist.
“Law faculties must also try to increase their contribution to help the community and promote social justice. For an academic atmosphere, a progressive and sustainable collaborative ecosystem between academic institutions must be developed,” concluded Iman.
