Research project
Activating education for first year law students: Evaluating the new Ateliers
In what ways does Atelier education contribute to skills development, active learning, interactions between students and staff, and connections between disciplines of law?
- Duration
- 2025 - 2026
- Contact
- Indira Day
Researchers
- dr. Indira Day
- dr. Kristof Gombeer, Leiden Law School - co-researcher
To provide more opportunities for valuable interactions with students and staff, ensure active engagement with class materials, focus more strongly on skills education, and strengthen critical reflection and connections between disciplines of law, the faculty of Law introduced ‘the Atelier’. This is a small scale educational meeting, first piloted in March 2025. The current project investigates this pilot from the perspectives of students and teachers.
Context and relevance
Every year, around 900 first year students enrol in a bachelor of Law. To be able to deal with these large student numbers, a lot of education in the program focuses on teacher led instruction, in lectures or in work groups. However, the faculty also wants to offer more small scale, interactive and engaging educational meetings to students.
In the academic year 2024 – 2025, the Atelier was introduced as a new type of educational meeting. Ateliers are smaller scale, with a maximum of 16 students instead of the usual 30 in workgroups. Through the Ateliers, the faculty aims to promote students’ active participation in their education. The main aims of the meetings are to provide more opportunities for valuable interactions with students and staff, ensure active engagement with class materials, strengthen critical reflection and connections between disciplines of law, and focus more strongly on skills education.
The Ateliers were introduced as a pilot, where students could sign up voluntarily. In this Atelier pilot, content from the courses ‘Introduction to European Law’, ‘Introduction to Administrative Law’, and ‘Orientation Course: Foundations of the Law’ was integrated around the central theme of the Environment. Across six meetings, students worked on their writing, presenting, and debating skills. The current project evaluates this Atelier pilot, so that the setup can be enhanced during the further implementation of the Atelier format in the full bachelor programme.
The current project uses principles of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Research questions
- To what extent have the Ateliers contributed to students learning, specifically their skills development?
- To what extent do the Ateliers improve the integration between courses?
- How have students and teachers experienced the Ateliers?
Materials and methods
Data is collected from students and teachers, using a variety of methods.
To examine how the Ateliers influenced student’s study behaviour, two students in each Atelier group are asked to keep a brief journal of their time investment in the Atelier each week.
Additionally, all students who participated in the ateliers are invited to answer a questionnaire, evaluating their motivation for signing up and their experiences during the atelier education. A small subset of students will be invited to participate in a group interview to elaborate on the outcomes of the questionnaire.
Teachers who were involved in the Ateliers are invited for a group interview to reflect on their experiences with designing and executing the Ateliers.
Finally, students who did not participate in the Ateliers were invited to answer a brief questionnaire about why they decided not to.
The project’s findings will form a contributing part to a broader internal evaluation report for the Faculty of Law regarding the pilot.