Posted on October 22, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
I am really excited about moderating and serving as commentator of the second session of the Joint Program sponsored by the Clinical and Professional Responsibility Sections to be held in San Diego on Wednesday, January 7. It is on assessment and is going to be very interactive. At the International Clinical Conference this summer, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Professor Kevin Kerrigan and Dean Philip Plowden of Northumbia who were the organizers of the conference in Cork, Ireland. (I discussed this in an earlier post, “Two American Keynotes.” ) The plan for the AALS session will involve how they assess learning across the law school curriculum in the UK, and they plan to involve the group in an interactive assessment exercise. They will ask the group to use a criteria-referenced protocol used at Northumbria. I have blogged about how important it is to measure students learning by their performance with regard to a specific desired outcome rather than simply ranking them against each other, so I am very interested in seeing how a group of clinicians will use the protocol. And, Lawrence Grosberg of New York Law School will discuss multiple assessment methods in clinical and skills courses as a result of his work using of “standardized clients”. He will involve the group in an interactive assessment exercise. Since I have been working with the UNM Medical School using standardized clients in joint training about domestic violence, I have very interested in seeing how Professor Grosberg’s assessment techniques have developed. I get to play “Oprah” and get the audience involved and hopefully in my best “Oprah like” way ask provocative and interesting questions! And, if you have been following my posts, you know that I am very interested in the impact of outcome based assessment on law students of color. My theory is that clearly articulating learning outcomes and evaluating the extent to which students acheive those objectives will benefit all students. And, I hope that measuring performance on criteria referenced objectives will prove to be a much better way of evaluating students rather than ranking them against each other on their performance of the same skills that they demonstrated on the Law School Admissions Test. And, true to a foundational principle of clinical teaching…this session will not involve “talking heads”…we will all learn by doing!
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | Tagged: Assessment | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 21, 2008 by dmaranville
Wish you all could have been there for the 11th Annual Northwest Clinical Conference at the beautiful Sleeping Lady Conference Center outside Leavenworth in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Our topic? A central Best Practices issue: Assessment. Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 29, 2008 by Carolyn Grose
We had a fantastic time in Seattle a few weeks ago, and I for one felt reinvigorated and excited about this great project we’re all involved in — you know, the one about totally reforming legal education? What we didn’t get either from the Best Practices Meets Reality workshop (see my earlier post on September 9th) was much discussion about the following questions. So I’d be very interested in seeing if we can generate some dialogue here, and then maybe take it on the road at the next round of conferences.
Let’s brainstorm and generate concrete ideas about the following:
- A Best Practices checklist or other instrument for implementing curricular and other law school reform;
- A Best Practices checklist or other instrument for self- and external assessment of individual courses, teaching methods and law school curricula;
- Potential obstacles to using Best Practices for change or assessment;
- How to actively engage law students (and perhaps, where feasible, graduate students in education) in selection of educational objectives, development of creative and sophisticated teaching techniques, and assessment of teaching choices and curricular reforms;
- The feasibility and desirability of a “Commitment to Best Practices for Legal Education” policy statement for potential adoption by law schools;
- The feasibility and desirability of developing “Best Practices implementation consultants” to engage with law school faculty and administrators;
- The feasibility and desirability of developing honors, recognition, and/or awards for legal educators and law schools committed to and actively engaged in implementation of Best Practices strategies and techniques (e.g. a Best Practices Certification Program);
- How to use – and teach others not at the workshop to use — the Best Practices Blog to learn about innovative legal education, including the experiences of law schools that are using elements of Best Practices;
- Other vehicles to publicize examples of successful implementation of Best Practices concepts and make available detailed information about outcomes.
What do you all think?
Carolyn Grose
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Queries from the Best Practices Implementation Committee
Posted on September 16, 2008 by Margaret Moore Jackson
One of the more surprising aspects of law teaching is how hard it is to articulate with specificity the outcomes we are trying to achieve. Our goals seem too obvious to even discuss – until we try to pin them down. The challenge of identifying learning goals is present at all levels of academic decision-making, from planning individual courses to revisiting a law school’s stated institutional mission. For those of us who are relatively new to thinking about assessment, it can be difficult to get started.
At the Crossroads conference in Seattle earlier this month (Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Implementation), Barbara Glesner-Fines presented, among other things, a series of questions that can be used to generate productive thinking about learning goals. During her talk, she asked members of the audience to respond to question 16, “What major misunderstanding, mistaken assumption, prejudice, or bad habit (of thought or practice) do students bring to your course that you would like them to “unlearn”? The responses contributed by conference attendees were vivid and specific – nothing like the broadly meaningless attempts at defining learning goals one sometimes sees/hears/engages in. Attacking the weighty issue of learning goals with smaller, more manageable questions, from different angles, initiates a good dialogue (whether with colleagues or with oneself). Which can lead to actual results.
While Glesner-Fines and her colleagues developed these questions during collaborative discussions about assessment among UM-KC family law faculty, I could also see using variations of these questions to spark a larger discussion about the programmatic goals of an institution. Thanks to Barbara for providing the link. Enjoy.
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 6, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
I just saw that the Outcome Measures Report is posted on the ABA web site. The Outcome Measure Committee was chaired by Randy Hertz and is a tour de force. The Report cites Best Practices and the Carnegie Report extensively, it then goes on to look at legal education in other countries, accreditation in other disciplines and regional accreditation standards for universities and colleges. The Report concludes that the ABA accreditation standards should be less “input driven” and more “outcome driven”. It even begins to consider the costs of this shift in accreditation standards. Check out the report!
http://www.abanet.org/legaled/
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 3 Comments »
Posted on July 22, 2008 by Roy Stuckey
The June/July 2008 issue of the Ohio Bar Association’s magazine, the Ohio Lawyer, focuses on “Mending Legal Education.” http://www.scbar.org/public/pdf/mendinglegaled.pdf Two articles in the magaqzine discuss the implications of the Best Practices book and the Carnegie report. One article was written by Nancy Rogers, President of the Association of American Law Schools.
The other article points out that law teachers no longer have Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 14, 2008 by Margaret Moore Jackson
I hate to be one of the first to mention it, but it feels like summer is waning. As much as I love what I do during the academic year, summer break never seems long enough to catch up on what gets back-burnered by the demands of teaching – in my case, teaching students within the context of litigation. Maybe I’m jumping the gun in sensing the nearness of fall. But I’m working on my syllabus. Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 25, 2008 by dmaranville
Sorry it’s taken me longer to post this than expected: The good news: it was my left shoulder and I’m a right-ie. The bad news: I’m clumsy, it was a cement floor and my shoulder’s broken. And all because my internet connection wouldn’t work and I was trying to figure out what was wrong.
You can sign up for the conference and take a look at the preliminary schedule at:
http://www.law.washington.edu/News/Articles/Default.aspx?YR=2008&ID=Crossroads
Registration closes August 22, 2008, but don’t wait to register and make your hotel reservation: The UW’s Husky football team opens their season against BYU on the conference weekend and hotel space in Seattle is going fast.
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Register for the UW’s Legal Education at the Crossroads Conference
Posted on June 17, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
One of the great things about teaching in the Guanajuato Summer Law Institute is the opportunity to meet professors from our partner law schools. At our mid-day comida today, Professor Jorge Ramirez from Texas Tech talked about his approach to providing interim feedback in his International Business and International Law courses. During the semester he gives the students problems that he asks them to work on in groups of two or three. The problems are designed to cover the material fairly comprehensively. Each of the groups is assigned a different problem and they are required to provide a written analysis of the problem to Professor Ramirez. Then, he reviews the students’ written responses to the problems and then MEETS with each small group to give them feedback on their first draft. They are asked to take his feedback and rewrite the answer to the problem. Professor Ramirez then shares the re-writes with the whole class. Professor Ramirez thus provides formative feedback that the students take very seriously since they know that their work will be shared with their colleagues. He has the opportunity to assess the students learning and make adjustments during the semester to ensure that the students grasp the material and can discuss and analyze the problems effectively. What a neat idea!
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Comments Off on Formative Feedback Idea from Texas Tech Prof
Posted on June 17, 2008 by dmaranville
I mentioned in my post on Curriculum Reform: Best Processes? that one of our curriculum committee “accomplishments” this year was initiating conversations.
For one of our conversations, we invited Jan Carline, Ph.D. of the University of Washington Medical School’s Department of Medical Education to talk to the committee about what they do at medical schools. Not a new topic for this blog — use the blog’s search function for “medical school” and you’ll find 6 posts by Antoinette.
The conversation was fascinating. The medical school is so much ahead of us on multiple dimensions. Three that stuck out for me were: Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »
Posted on June 3, 2008 by andicurcio
I teach the second half of a year-long first-year civil procedure class. We spend the semester reading and interpreting the Fed. R. of Civ. P. Throughout the semester, I give the students hypothetical questions that require them to read and interpret the applicable Federal Rules. This semester, I wanted to see if I could assess how well students learned how to read and interpet statutes. The assessment was motivated, in part, by my desire to assess a broader range of skills than are normally covered in essay exams.
As a small part of a 72-hour take-home exam, I gave students two short answer questions that required them to read Fed. R. of Civ. P that we had not covered in class and to answer two straightforward questions. Using the fact pattern that served as the basis for the essay question, I asked students: #1: Who must be served with this Answer?; #2: On what date must you file and serve your Answer?
Much to my dismay, Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | 3 Comments »
Posted on May 20, 2008 by ssparrow
Identifying rules.
Analyzing and synthesizing authorities.
Applying them to facts.
Organizing coherently.
Using accurate punctuation and grammar.
Citing to authority.
We tell students that all of these are important in legal writing classes, but in all honesty, we show a different message. If a student does brilliant analysis, but butchers the writing and citation, the student can usually get a decent grade. The reverse is not true. But what if all of these had descriptive minimum competencies – students would need to show that they could write without sentence fragments to pass the course. Ditto for citation. Students would not pass the course if they didn’t reach a minimum competency. As long as we provide ample notice, practice opportunities and feedback, why not? Analysis is really important, but according to a survey conducted by two of my colleagues, when readers-judges- see grammatical errors, they don’t even get to the analysis. I think of grammatical errors as lettuce on the teeth – the kind of distraction that precludes further thought. Same with citation. If students can’t do that correctly, employers will give up pretty quickly.
So now we are in the process of defining our minimum competencies. It’s not easy. And it begs the question – if everyone is competent, what is an “A” in the course? Super-competence? Competence with flair?
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | Comments Off on Meet minimum competencies to pass a course?
Posted on May 9, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Several of the sessions at the recent AALS clinical conference in Tucson raised issues that involve what many call cultural competence. (EXCELLENT CONFERENCE, by the way). All agreed that these issues are very difficult to address. I have an article coming out in the Wash. U. Journal of Law and Policy this fall that grows out of the many years we have tried to teach about these issues at the University of New Mexico. Because our faculty, student body and client base in the clinic is so diverse, our differences become very obvious. Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: Add new tag, cultural competence; intercultural communication | 2 Comments »
Posted on April 20, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
As we have been working on curricular planning, one of my colleagues, Laura Gomez could not attend an early meeting (I think she was at a book signing or her son’s field trip or something). With her permission, I am posting her thoughts:
Initially I’d like to thank Suellyn for turning our attention to the Carnegie report and to the Best Practices for Legal Education report. Together, the books point to deeply entrenched problems with how law schools teach and prepare students for the legal profession; they also suggest strategies for improvement. I share Suellyn’s assessment that we at the Universityof New Mexico are poised to take advantage of the cumulative wisdom presented in these studies. We are well-suited to do so for three reasons: (1) we are a highly collegial group (those of us who have come from other institutions might see this more clearly, but I think we all know it at the gut level); (2) we have a tradition of valuing teaching and truly caring about students; and (3) we have an enviable student-faculty ratio.
Reading these two books helped… Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Comments Off on A Colleague’s Thoughts on Curricular Planning
Posted on March 14, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
The University of Denver, Sturm College of Law is using some of the sessions in its faculty lunch series to think about and talk about the Carnegie Report and Best Practices. I spoke at a faculty lunch on March 13 about Best Practices. I asked the organizer, Laura Rovner, in advance of the presentation about whether I should assume that faculty members were familiar with the book. She said no, it would be handed out after my presentation. I decided to focus on curricular development, assessment and professionalism. So I discussed the basic principles about developing a coherent curriculum, the basic need for students to receive formative and interim assessment based on clear articulation of learning goals and I posed the question about what professionalism education might look like at their law school.
I quickly realized that Continue reading →
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Comments Off on Building on Strengths: University of Denver Sturm College of Law and Best Practices
Best Practices for Legal Education 