Nottingham Trent lecturer uses Pokémon Go-inspired game to teach students land law

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By Katie King on

The nightmare of all subjects made fun?

A property law boffin from Nottingham Trent University has created a Pokémon Go-inspired augmented reality game to help keep his students’ (sometimes faltering) attention.

The game was born out of a challenge Nigel Hudson set himself when he joined the law school as a senior lecturer last year: to make land law interesting.

It’s quite the challenge. The subject was voted the ultimate nightmare law exam subject by Legal Cheek readers last year, scooping 36% of the vote in our ‘The World Cup of Law Exams’ final. Trusts and EU law filled the rest of the podium positions, coming a tied second with 27%.

To fulfil his goal, Hudson — a former property solicitor at Edge & Ellison — took to the streets of Nottingham papping buildings and objects to create an augmented game. LLBers can scout out these buildings and objects via an app called Aurasma, much in the same way as gamers can hunt down Pokémon creatures. Then, they view the location through their smartphones to play a video of Hudson talking about a relevant land law topic.

Legal Cheek is based in London and unable to head down for a spot of Propertymon Go! this afternoon, but we did manage to spy some of Hudson’s chosen locations which can be accessed through the Aurasma app (screenshot below).

According to Hudson, student feedback has generally been positive. But, he tells us:

The timing of the release of Propertymon Go! was not ideal as it coincided with the end of last term. It will be offered to the students at the start of next academic year when I’ll be able to better assess both response and success in my aim of engaging students with land law.

Hudson — who, interestingly, is FA-qualified coach currently managing Nottingham Forest Ladies Under 18s — must be on the right path with his land law creation. He has been nominated for the Teaching Law with Technology Prize 2017. The coveted gong will be judged by the committees of publisher Routledge and the Association of Law Teachers, with the victor set to take home a cash prize of £1,200. Previous winners include fellow Nottingham Trent academic Matthew Homewood, whose #eulawrocks Twitter Q&A saw him take land the prize in 2014.

Last year’s top performer was land law enthusiast Thomas Dunk, from the University of Hertfordshire. His award-winning 3D model of a small town was designed to demonstrate land law concepts to students.

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