An instructional environment for learning to construct a legal case description: e-See

Law students experience difficulties in acquiring legal knowledge and in applying legal knowledge when performing a legal task. To support law students in acquiring legal knowledge and legal problem solving skills we develop e-materials for learning the law. In this paper we first describe the general design methodology used in realizing these e-materials: HYPATIA. This is followed by describing the design of the training tool e-See, an instructional environment for learning the construction of the legal case description. The construction of a legal case description from real life facts and events is an essential part of legal case solving. Constructing a legal case description involves the selection and the proof of facts and events from real life. There are two major problems with selecting and proving facts from real life.

First there is the problem of the complexity of real life where only certain facts are legally relevant. The second problem is that it may be necessary to actually observe facts in real life. For both problems we argue that integrating video in the instructional environment is of help to the student in acquiring the skill of constructing a legal case description.