Why use it with students?
I can remember being a law student really vividly.
The good bits and the inevitable less-good bits. Feeling at times immensely clever but often incredibly stupid. The very first lecture where I largely sat and wondered whether law was the right choice for me or if I should’ve chosen psychology instead. The last exam, Environmental Law, when the elation of reaching the end of my degree was balanced with sadness that it was over. And all the many challenges and triumphs in-between times. I can see so many moments now in my mind’s eye and I can remember how I felt at the time.
A DIFFERENT WORLD
But I don't know how it feels now
But I don’t know how it feels to be a student in today’s world.
My memories belong to a different time. Universities have changed, students’ lives have changed and the pressures surrounding legal education are very different too. Today’s students face enormous fees instead of my relatively generous student grant, a very different graduate employment landscape and the bewildering question of whether AI is a friend, a foe or something in between. A very different world.
I can observe today’s students, teach them and talk to them but I still see their experience from the outside and, because of that, my view will always be incomplete and imperfect. And there are questions that I will never think to ask the students because their experience is so different to mine.
ENTER STAGE RIGHT
Our hero, the World Café
The World Café seeks to recreate the sort of excited conversation that happens when people with a common interest meet over coffee and start talking. Ideas emerge and develop and someone scribbles them down on whatever paper is to hand so that the clever thoughts that appear around the table are not lost.
WHAT CONVERSATION REVEALS
From individual stories to a collective account
Replicating the informality of a café matters. Students sitting in small groups in a café environment do not feel like research participants being mined for data.
They are people talking to other people who understand the world that they are describing because they are living it too. They recognise each other’s experiences, ask questions about them, add to them and sometimes disagree with them. One student mentions a problem that they have experienced.
Someone else at the table says, “I thought it was just me”. There’s a sense of relief in discovering that the experience is shared. Another student contributes a different perspective. Somebody else adds a story about a friend.
Gradually, the individual strands begin to connect and a much fuller picture of the problem emerges and is sketched out on the paper tablecloths. As students move between tables, their stories and ideas travel with them. Wisdom grows. A collection of individual stories becomes a collective account of something that is important to them.
The World Café provides a way for students to paint that picture of student life and the challenges it presents.
I can’t create that picture and I couldn’t see it without working with the students in this way.
SOLVING TOGETHER
Seeing the picture is only part of the value
But seeing the picture is only part of the value of the World Café.
I don’t want students simply to tell me what is wrong and then wait for me to decide what to do about it. That’s not how the World Café works. If we identify a problem, we have to try and solve it together. Students understand these problems from the inside and this knowledge will give them ideas about possible solutions. They can envision what a better version of some aspect of legal education or student life might look or feel like.
We can then work together to think of ways that we might move closer to that vision given the constraints of the imperfect world that we actually inhabit.
PARTNERS IN CHANGE
Students are at the heart of the process
This is what excites me about the World Café. Students are not simply sources of feedback or recipients of solutions designed on their behalf. They are at the heart of the process. They are people with knowledge, insight and ideas and, most importantly, partners in making legal education and university life better.
Students already understand the challenges they face. They also have wisdom about what “better” might look and feel like. We do not need to imagine ourselves into their lives and decide for them what needs to change.
The World Café creates a space in which students feel: