“They are in lawyer mode” – Lecturer feedback and communication from a joint honours students’ perspective.

By Katie King, Martin Jones and Mischa Allen

Law and/with Criminology is the most popular law combined undergraduate degree offered within the sector (Giles and Ang, 2025). An investigation into the student experience of the BA (Honours) Criminology and Law students on Law modules at a large online distance learning Higher Education institution was undertaken in 2024. The institution used for the investigation offer a BA (Honours) Criminology and Law since 2014/15, structured as a joint honours degree, with students pursuing half of their credits in Law and half of their credits in Criminology at each level. Year-on-year, degree level performance analysis has consistently shown that students pursuing the BA (Honours) Criminology and Law degree have lower attainment, progression and achievement rates compared with single honours LLB Law students and single honours BA Criminology.

The investigation sought to identify gaps and suggest interventions to support students BA (Honours) Criminology and Law students, ultimately seeking to reduce the awarding, attainment, progression and retention gaps.

A mixed methods approach was adopted, comprising focusgroups with students, empirical analysis to compare degree level performance, module level performance and a desk-based review of the programme structure. The investigation identified themes related to the cognitive load of joint honours students, the importance of degree design, the need for interdisciplinary approaches and knowledge and skills gaps that impact performance. The focus of this blog is on a peripheral finding relating to the communication style of Lecturers in Law from the student responses in the focus groups.

Several students at two of the five focus groups made observations regarding the tone and communication style of Law Lecturers compared to their Criminology Lecturers in written feedback. Although the content and detail of feedback generally received high praise from students, (10 students expressed that the content of the feedback was substantial, comprehensive and constructive) students reported a clear distinction between the tone of feedback from Law Lecturers and Criminology Lecturers. They described the tone of feedback as “blunt”, “deflating”, “to the point”, “brutal” and “lacking in pleasantries or praise”. It must be noted that several students in each focus group where this issue was discussed made it clear that they had not experienced the same things as their peers. However, these students also acknowledged ‘being lucky’ with the Lecturers they had been allocated thus far. Showing that the experience by students was varied but there were sufficient responses to draw out a theme that needs further exploration.

“I feel like the feedback on law modules is to the point, it's black and white and sometimes I walk away, and I think ouch... with law I open the box and think oh god, what's coming this time? Because it feels a lot more to the point. There was no fluffiness to start it off, no congratulations for completing your assessment or well done. Especially when you do it remotely, you put all this time and energy into it and to just have somebody reel off a list of things you could try harder next time can be a little bit deflating at times.” ​[FG5 Student A]

The students identified a difference in the tone of feedback between the disciplines. Their unique position of studying 50% of each discipline means they can draw comparisons between the approaches as can be seen below.

“The feedback was kind of brutal…I don't need it to be that blunt. It’s not as fluffy as Criminology, but I have found that the feedback itself isn’t the issue, but the tone of the feedback is a lot more to the point and I guess that's because it’s law I assume. I've always presumed it's that. But you do notice the difference in the tone.” ​[FG5 Student D]

Two key features of effective feedback are; it encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning and encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem (Nicol and Macfarlane, 2006). The practices described by the students in the focus group arguably do not achieve these principles. The tone of feedback is hindering the students’ willingness to engage in dialogue, and this is further impacted by the tone being perceived as the same in email communication. Students in the focus group were vocal about the impact this had on self-esteem; “It really upset me to the point where I was going to quit. I was going to quit, and that was introduction to law.” [FG4 Student B].

Student also highlighted that the issue of communication style and tone was present in email communication with LawLecturers. They also clearly marked the differences between Law and Criminology in their responses.

“Criminology tutors are so nice. Whenever I've had an issue, it's just been friendly and so helpful and then the difference with law is that it just seems like I'm supposed to know the answers…” [FG5 Student C]

Students were vocal about the fact that tone and communication style was a key factor in whether they felt comfortable reaching out for support or asking questions via email. Several students were unwilling to engage in support in this format because of previous experiences with Lecturers and their perception of the tone used. Following on from a discussion about being hesitant to email Law Lecturers, students in focus group 5 were asked what the team can do to try and address this.

“I think maybe just the tone when replying to students could be better, I feel like they are still in lawyer mode whenever they reply to us. And if they were just a bit more friendly, and maybe it's because they know the law, everything's so straightforward to them.  But they need to remember that we are learning and that it is difficult, maybe they need to remember that when they were learning it was probably really difficult as well. So, I think that the main thing is to make us feel like we could go to them and we're not stupid for asking these questions.” ​[ FG5 Student B]

At the institution being investigated the Lecturers often have full time employment in other roles while being employed part time. We identified four different profiles that describe the Lecturers; academics who hold roles at other teaching institutions (36% of the team), practitioners who hold a core legal practitioner role (23% of the team), those who hold core roles as an Lecturer at the institution (22% of the team) and hybrid who hold multiple roles in different industries (20% of the team). It is important to note that the comparative data for the Lecturers in Criminology was not available to us and therefore it is unclear whether these profiles exist in the other discipline. There are potential questions raised here about teacher-practitioner identities and the impact this has on student experience. Peri, Jõgi and Remmik (2024) highlight the difficulties teacher‐practitioners have in maintaining dual identities and they differentiate between the goals of each role. A practitioner’s goal is to provide services or solutions,and a teacher’s role is to educate and empower others. The different goals require teacher-practitioners to draw on different knowledge, skills and methods to be successful. The student responses suggest a perception that the communication style and tone they are experiencing from their Lecturers is due to what they perceive as their practitioner identity e.g being in “lawyer mode”. This raises questions about the training of communication skills in lawyers and how this may be impacting the student experience.

One of the key recommendations for addressing this is to provide a broader overview of the teacher's role in recruitment and improve their training in this regard (Peri, Jõgi and Remmik, 2024). This is complicated for online institutionswith homeworking staff and a part-time workforce who may have a lack of time or opportunity to immerse themselves in the institution or their teacher identity. The makeup of theLecturer profiles and the online nature of the role means that establishing teacher identity can be difficult due to isolation from the community of practice. The training and communication style ingrained in practitioners of law may also be a barrier to addressing this issue. Therefore, the issueespecially complex where a Lecturer must balance dual identities. To help build teacher identity, which is essential for enhancing the student experience grounded in best practice, we need to prioritise networking, training and immersion in the community of practice. 

As a peripheral finding of a much larger investigation these observations require further investigation to provide reliable conclusions and recommendations for practice. However, it establishes the need for consideration of how this impacts the experience of joint honours students and provides food for thought.

References

Giles, C., & Ang, Y. (2025). What qualifies a law degree: surveying elective module provision in undergraduate legal education across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2023–2024. The Law Teacher, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069400.2024.2433327  

Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199-218. 

Peri, E., Jõgi, L., & Remmik, M. (2024). Who am I—Teacher or practitioner? Teacher-practitioners’ experience of identity in higher education—A phenomenological view. Future in Educational Research, 2(1), 65–80. https://doi.org/10.1002/fer3.20