On Friday 12 September 2003, the Broadband Britain Challenge judges Semple Piggot Rochez as their National Champion in the ‘Education’ category of the prestigious awards. The award was in recognition of the company’s pioneering work in the provision of online legal education to both students and practitioners and outstanding innovation in the use of ADSL Broadband.
The prize was awarded to John Pitman, Semple Piggot Rochez’ Publishing Director at a spectacular ceremony at The Royal Horticultural Hall in London hosted by TV personality Paul Ross.
The Broadband Britain Challenge is a nationwide search to find Britain's brightest ADSL broadband users - people who have bettered their lives or the lives of others through the use of ADSL broadband technology at work, at home, in education or anywhere else. The champions are chosen by a panel of experts, all of whom share a passion for broadband and its ability to re-shape the lives and business practices of users.
Founded by a group of lawyers and with a largely legally qualified management team, Semple Piggot Rochez began developing internet based training resources in 1997, and in 1998 acquired the law division of Wolsey Hall, Oxford, "the university in the home", which over the course of its 100 year history, was responsible for educating and training many thousands of lawyers including, for example, Nelson Mandela. SPR has since continued to build upon this tradition of excellence whilst adding advanced electronic support mechanisms and sophisticated website technology in order to provide the world’s first online law degree programmes for students reading for the University of London’s LLB and LLM (External) degrees.
Semple Piggot Rochez takes a multi-media approach to legal education have been able to harness the power of broadband to offer extensive online resources and interaction as an integral part of their academic programmes. For example, all Semple Piggot Rochez students are provided with online text-based course and revision materials, audio and video files of lectures and interviews with leading members of the judiciary and practitioners, virtual tutorials and discussion forums, interactive testing and personal assessment, and last but by no means least, access to an online Law Library which rivals in its quality and extent the libraries of most leading law firms.
Encouraged by the success of the law school, in 2000 Semple Piggot Rochez took the decision to expand their operations into the field of continuing professional development and, as part of a joint venture with leading legal publishers Butterworths Tolley, launched CPD Direct, a professional training service offering a wide range of online multi-media courses and other related materials. However, for over two years CPD Direct remained one of the best kept secrets in the legal training world as Semple Piggot Rochez and Butterworths struggled to find the right formula for success in what they discovered to be an extremely cautious and conservative target market. Throughout this difficult time and largely thanks to the determination and dedication of CEO Mike Semple Piggot, SPR remained convinced that the convergence of traditional distance education, computer conveyed education and the latest broadband technologies was resulting in a wealth of rich media and interaction becoming available to supplement law firm training programmes. In February 2003 CPD Direct was re-launched by Semple Piggot Rochez as part of The Legal Practitioner suite of multimedia legal training products and in June 2003 the service was adopted by the Law Society’s Young Solicitors Group as their official online training service.
In addition, The Legal Practitioner umbrella service now offers a complete portfolio of innovative products utilising a mixture of CD ROM and internet delivery and enabling training partners to offer learner-content interaction in the form of written documents and HTML pages, audio and video presentations, and simple drill and practice exercises; asynchronous learner-learner or learner-instructor interaction via e-mail and online forums; and even synchronous interaction through real time virtual classrooms and videoconferencing.
John Pitman said "We are very pleased indeed that we have won this prestigious award. We have found that the use of broadband technologies can, quite literally, free a firm’s training programme from the boundaries of the terrestrial lecture room. Our students are now able to make use of a powerful combination of rich media to train at a location to suit themselves - no-one need spend time out of the office, learners can control the pace and direction of their own learning, and they can do so at times convenient to them. Also, the effectiveness of the training we are able to offer via broadband is tremendous. For example, the use of streaming video is particularly beneficial in that it imparts a message using sight, sound, and emotion with the result that the audience becomes more engaged, and is thus more likely to take notice. When the message is also reinforced through the use of event streamed slides and self assessment testing and is backed up by access to additional materials and expert opinion then the overall learning experience becomes even more powerful. There is no doubt that without broadband, the provision of credible internet based training at graduate level and above would be impossible."
Links:
http://www.broadbandbritainchallenge.co.uk
http://www.legalpractitioner.co.uk
About Semple Piggot Rochez (legal Education) Ltd
Formed in 1996, Semple Piggot Rochez (Legal Education) Ltd is the first legal training firm in the world to deliver full law degree programmes over the Internet. The organisation provides tuition for students reading for The University of London LLB and LLM degrees. The SPR group of companies also publish The Legal Practitioner suite of multimedia CPD training products, various online legal texts and periodicals, produce training films and corporate video for law firms and provide a full web design service.
For more information visit www.spr-law.com, http://www.legalpractitioner.co.uk or contact Mike Semple Piggot on 020 8742 1357.