Monthly Archives: September 2018

Assessment Institute – coming up in October!

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I’ve written before about the importance of learning from other disciplines’ experiences with assessment.  A great place to do so is the annual Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, put on by IUPUI.  This year’s conference is October 21-23, 2018.  It’s a big conference (about 1000 attendees are expected) with a lot of interesting programs and panels.  It’s a terrific place to get ideas and see what other disciplines are up to.

This year’s Institute has two programs related to legal education and many more concerning graduate and professional education. The law school presentations are:

  • Building a Bridge Between Experiential Skills Development and Skills Assessment on Professional Licensing Exams – In this session, we will explore the relationship between student participation in experiential skills programs and scores earned on the skills assessment component of a professional licensing exam. Results from a longitudinal research study of University of Cincinnati Law students’ participation in clinics, externships, and clerkships and corresponding scores on the bar exam performance test will be presented. Participants will be encouraged to share the clinical and skills assessment contained in licensing exams for their associated fields, as well as approaches to better align clinical skills development and testing of clinical skills as a requirement for professional licensure.  The presenters are with the University of Cincinnati.
  • Isn’t the Bar Exam the Ultimate Assessment?: Learning Outcomes, ABA Standard 302, and Law Schools – The American Bar Association, the accrediting entity for American law schools, has recently adopted Standard 302, which requires law schools to “establish” learning outcomes related to knowledge of substantive and procedural law, legal analysis and reasoning, legal research, oral and written communication, professional responsibility (ethics), and other professional skills. The overwhelming majority of law school graduates also take a bar examination, the licensing exam required for admission to practice as a lawyer. How do these relate to each other? And how do both of them relate to law school exams and grades? Come find out!  The presenters are Diane J. Klein, University of La Verne College of Law; and Linda Jellum, Mercer School of Law.

The early bird registration deadline is Friday, September 14, 2018.

Keeping Track of Assessment Follow-Up

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Once a school implements its assessment plan, it will begin collecting a lot of data, distilling it into results, and hopefully identifying recommendations for improving student learning based on those results.  That is a lot of data and information, and it’s easy for the work of a school’s assessment committees to end up sitting on a shelf, forgotten with the passage of time.  Assessment is not about producing reports; it’s about converting student data into meaningful action.

I developed a template for schools to use in keeping track of its assessment methods, findings, and recommendations.  You don’t need fancy software, like Weave, to keep track of a single set of learning outcomes (university-level metrics are another matter). A simple Excel spreadsheet will do.  For each learning outcome, list the following:

  • The year the outcome was assessed.
  • Who led the assessment team or committee.
  • The methods used to complete the assessment.
  • The committee’s key findings.
  • Recommendations based on the report.
  • For each recommendation:
    • Which administrator or committee is responsible for follow-up.
    • The status of that recommendation: whether it was implemented and when.
    • Color code based on status (green = implemented; yellow = in progress; red = no action to date).

This easy format allows the dean and faculty to ensure that tangible results are achieved with the assessment process.  In the template, I included examples of methods, findings, and recommendations for one of seven learning outcomes.  (These are made up findings and recommendations that I created as an example.  They don’t necessarily reflect those of St. John’s.)  Feel free to use and adapt at your school.  (LC)