Teaching opportunities for Law graduate students
Internal applications only. This opportunity is in the first instance for Graduate Research Students. Taught Graduate students can register their interest, as can postdoctoral position holders, and if capacity allows, will be considered.
Further positions are now available for a summer teaching programme (this website contains the basic, internal-facing only material from the pilot year last year, but is a good guide to this year) being offered by the Law Faculty. The course will be offered entirely on line this year. The opportunity is for graduate research students only. The overall aims of the programme are to provide an opportunity to engage with those of University age who want to get a taster for law in the UK.
Teaching period: 17-28 July 2023
Duties:
The main role is Tutor, and for that the core teaching is one seminar, and one tutorial, each day, for 8 days. The seminar will have 12 students, and three tutors. The tutorial will have one tutor and 4-6 students.
Areas of law covered last year which are examples of what might be covered in 2023 are: Criminal law, Property, Tort, Contract, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Law and Technology and Environmental law (subject to change). You will teach all the areas but the content of the seminar and tutorial is set by the academics and you will be provided with material for you to be able to lead the discussion. It is therefore an opportunity to engage in different areas of UK law and provide you with supported teaching experience.
Additional duties each day are to support the students, and to monitor the on-line lectures, which should not involve much active engagement, so it is expected that other related work will be done during this time (including a couple of hours of marking the total of four essays to be marked in the two weeks).
The preparation for the course will be in the two to three weeks before the course is delivered.
The teaching will be online, from around 8.15am to 5pm BST each weekday during the course.
Hours and rate of pay:
The work will be paid at £16.49 per hour (which equates to University Grade 6, point 1), on the basis of completed and approved timesheets, which must be submitted to payroll@law.ox.ac.uk by the end of the calendar month for payment on the last working day of the following month.
In addition, annual leave will be assumed to be taken in the month in which it was accrued.
The work takes two parts, totally 82 hours of work. First, to prepare for the course we estimate 32 hours of preparation and marking. Second, during the two weeks of the programme, we estimate 50 hours of work, of which half is teaching, and half is being online, such as helping with student queries, and providing background monitoring of lectures.
This is intended to be in line with the Faculty limit on student working, which is 8 hours per week, or an average of 8 hours per week over a reasonable period of time.
Selection criteria:
The teaching standard will need to be high, so prior teaching experience will be an advantage. You do not need to have done the PLTO course but again, doing so might be an advantage for your application. You do not need to know about the 8 areas of law you will be teaching, as you will receive a briefing, but you should ideally have done one or more law degrees.
Days 1 and 10 are separate, with more enrichment activities, and a moot on day 10 (tutors will be judging moots).
In addition to the Tutors, there are also the following positions:
Cohort Leaders (8): a third of the tutors will be have a few extra responsibilities and be cohort leaders for groups of 12 students (around 17 additional hours which comes from the extra time facilitating students and liaising with the course director and other tutors); and
Master of Moots (1): one tutor will also work on developing the final day's mooting event (around 28 additional hours). This will include creating three ‘speed’ moots, with materials from publicly available sources, crib sheets and two example skeleton arguments.
We reserve the right to decide that the Master of Moots will not be able to be a cohort leader, in order to share the opportunities around more.
Application process:
If you are interested, please e-mail by no later than Monday 13 February at 5pm, a short CV (no more than 2 sides) to the Programme Administrator, Agata Dybisz, summer.school@law.ox.ac.uk. Please have the CV include:
A. your teaching experience and your research project, including your supervisors'/'s details;
B. a clear statement at the top of which post or posts you are interested in (feel free to apply for more than one); and
C. if it is not covered in the CV, anything else you think is relevant can be included in the cover email.
Similarly, please e-mail Matt Dyson, matthew.dyson@law.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions, and he will be very happy to help.
We want everyone to have a chance to teach. Selection will normally be based on fit with the course's offering, relevant experience in the areas of law, and teaching experience. We hope to offer the opportunity again in the future as well.
Guidelines for Faculty members, line managers and students
Work must not commence without a letter of engagement or variable hours contract and a right to work check having been carried out by the Faculty Personnel Officer.
Full-time graduate students in the Faculty of Law may work up to 8 hours per week, or a common sense average across the year, regardless of the type of work.
Students may not work as Research Assistants for their own supervisor without the approval of the Associate Dean for Graduate Students.
Any queries regarding the eligibility of a particular student should be directed to Geraldine Malloy in the Faculty Office.
It is expected that the work will be undertaken in the UK.