Teacher experiences with online experiential legal education

To gain insight into the potential benefits and shortcomings of online experiential education, seventeen teachers were interviewed who offered online experiential legal education following the COVID-19 pandemic. Juxtaposing the online learning activities with the stages of the experiential learning cycle provided a more detailed understanding of the type of online activities that can induce meaningful learning experiences, and which online activities may be less suited to attain experiential learning. The analysis shows that teachers deemed symbolically oriented online learning activities to be most fortuitous, whereas affectively oriented online learning activities were seen as inferior to equivalent on-site activities. Teachers had more mixed feelings concerning the quality of perceptually and behaviorally oriented online learning activities. The findings are of wider relevance than the legal domain as teachers (and students) across higher education grapple with the transition to online (experiential) learning that will arguably continue well past the pandemic.