Law School Learning Outcomes: Step 4: Close the Loop

As you assess student learning during the semester, you may make immediate changes to improve student learning.

Example

Imagine this is one of the course learning objectives:

At the conclusion of the first-year legal writing course, a student will recognize and identify the purpose and form of legal citation and cite in accordance with at least one established, authoritative citation manual.

A class clicker quiz (or other quick classroom assessment technique) provides evidence that many students are improperly citing statutes. The instructor may decide to provide additional instruction and practice opportunities.

At the conclusion of the course, after measuring student learning on the course learning outcomes, consider what pedagogical changes might improve learning:

• Are there different activities that would facilitate student mastery?
• Would different sequencing improve student learning?
• Are there certain course activities and content that do not contribute to at least one of the learning objectives? If so, should the learning objectives be changed, or should this coverage be dropped?