Lecturing for non-law background students: Assessing the cognitive load of case and legislation-based lecturing approaches

摘要

Lecturing is a traditional method for teaching in discipline-based teachingudenvironments and its success in legal discipline depends upon its alignmentudwith learner backgrounds, learning objectives and the lecturing approachesudutilised in the classes. In a situation where students do not have any priorudknowledge of the given discipline that requires a particular lecturingudapproach, a mismatch in such an alignment would place learner knowledgeudacquisition into a challenging situation. From this perspective, this studyudtests the suitability of two dominant lecturing approaches—the case and theudlaw-based lecturing approaches. It finds that a lecturer should put moreudemphasis on the case-based approach while lecturing to non-law backgroundudbusiness students at the postgraduate level, provided that such an emphasisudshould be relative to the cognitive ability of the students and their motivationudfor learning law units.