In the morning session of the conference on Building an Assessment Plan from the Ground Up, presenters shared an overview of assessment in action.
Professor Andrea Curcio, Professor of Law and Co-director Externship Program at Georgia State University College of Law, presented on “The Purposes of Assessment” by providing two powerful examples of how assessment challenges faculty to change and improve their teaching. The first of these targeted a learning outcome of developing cultural sensitivity. She described challenging survey results from her law school regarding student ability to perceive their own cultural lens and the teaching challenges those results presented. The second was the learning outcome of analytical reasoning and her efforts in her civil procedure class to improve student skill through formative feedback. For both of these, Andrea has published articles that provide resources and analysis of these assessments.
Professor Vicki VanZandt of the University of Dayton School of Law and Professor Kelley Mauerman of Whittier Law School presented a primer on “Assessment 101” including much of the language of assessment, providing examples from their own schools off their curricular planning process. They emphasized the importance of starting small and building an assessment plan from activities faculty already engage in. They reminded the audience that not every outcome needs to be assessed every year, providing examples of their law school’s own curriculum maps and assessment plans. Read the learning outcomes and performance criteria from Dayton here: https://www.udayton.edu/law/_resources/documents/academics/learning-outcomes-and-performance-criteria.pdf and from Whittier here:
https://www.law.whittier.edu/index/experience/mission-and-goals/institutional-goals/
Professor VanZandt is the co-author of Student Learning Outcomes and Law School Assessment: A Practical Guide to Measuring Institutional Effectiveness (Carolina Academic Press 2015) available for purchase here: http://www.cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781611632668/Student-Learning-Outcomes-and-Law-School-Assessment
More resources will be available, including slideshows and handouts from the conference. Keep watching!
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