Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2020-2021 Level: Graduate
Campus Department: Law School [Grad]
Program Type: Major [UG] / Program [Grad]
Program Name: Law JD (Link)
Description of Data Collection:
The ABA conducts site visits every ten (10) years for accreditation purposes.
ABA Standard 315 entitled EVALUATION OF PROGRAM OF LEGAL EDUCATION, LEARNING OUTCOMES, AND ASSESSMENT METHODS provides as follows:
“The dean and faculty of a law school shall conduct ongoing evaluation of the law school’s program of legal education, learning outcomes, and assessment methods; and shall use the results of this evaluation to determine the degree of student attainment of competency in the learning outcomes and to make appropriate changes to improve the curriculum.”
The Law School, through its EPC, developed performance criteria to help assess students’ progress in meeting the institutional outcomes. The EPC conducted extensive faculty-wide training to educate faculty on designing course learning outcomes aligned with the Law School’s institutional assessment goals and on documenting outcomes in syllabi. In addition, the EPC surveyed faculty to create a curriculum map that helps the EPC to identify courses that meet the five institutional assessment methods.
To assess students’ progress toward meeting the institutional outcomes, the EPC has adopted the following procedure: each academic year, the committee meets to identify which outcome(s) the committee will assess in that academic year, and the methods that will be used to assess them. The assessment is carried out either by the EPC itself or by a designated sub-committee. The following academic year, the EPC reviews the results of the assessment and considers what improvements might be made to the curriculum, and, if necessary, the assessment process itself. Concurrently, the EPC also identifies the outcomes that will be assessed that calendar year, and the methods that will be used to assess them. The EPC reports the results of its assessments to the faculty regularly, and, if necessary, makes suggestions for improvements to the institution’s program of study and the assessment process itself.
EPC assessments completed to date have been conducted of the Upper Level Writing Requirement (2018-19) and the 1L Experiential Elective program (2020-21). In the Spring of 2021, the EPC also undertook a review of the 1L curriculum.
Following the completion of two assessment cycles, the EPC is studying best practices for assessment methodologies as it develops its priorities and plans for future years. In particular, the EPC has recommended that the Law School replace its existing assessment process with a more distributed assessment model, such as the one captured by Andrea A. Circio, A Simple Low-Cost Institutional Learning-Outcomes Assessment Process, 67 J. Legal Educ. 489 (2018). Under this approach, faculty members identify the institutional performance criteria relevant to their courses, and assess student competence against that performance criteria as part of the overall teaching and grading process. EPC then collects this data as needed from faculty to assess institutional-level student learning outcomes, by selecting one student learning outcome each year for assessment and review.
As part of its future assessment plan, the EPC has scheduled assessments of the Perspective courses (expected in 2021-22), Professional Responsibility courses (expected in 2023-24), and the Experiential Learning Courses (expected in 2024-25).
In addition to the assessment plan, the Law School monitors carefully the Bar passage results for each year’s graduating class. Under ABA Standard 316, at least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates in a calendar year who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination within two years of their date of graduation (“ultimate bar passage”). The most recently published ultimate bar passage rate (for the class of 2018) is 95%.
Review Process:
The Dean, the Associate Dean for Faculty and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs review the information on a departmental basis. Faculty within certain subject areas, including the Clinical faculty and the faculty for the Law Practice classes meet on a regular basis to review curriculum and learning outcomes. The EPC is directly responsible for the assessment plan described above and ultimately reports to the faculty.
Resulting Program Changes:
The results of the assessment of the Upper Level Writing Requirement (“ULWR”) did not reflect the need for any immediate programmatic change in how the ULWR is currently structured and carried out.
The assessment of the first-year experiential elective showed that the 1L experiential electives were meeting the goal of helping students achieve competency in the relevant learning outcomes. These were the second and fourth learning outcomes. The results are also useful for establishing a protocol for developing future 1L experiential learning electives.
Although not a formal part of the assessment cycle, the Law School believed that there were opportunities for students to enhance their performance on the bar examination. Consequently, internal studies identified the characteristics of students most likely to encounter challenges in educational attainment in law school and on the bar exam. These students were invited to participate in the Law School’s enhanced Academic Support Program (“ASP”) which includes tutoring as well as specialized coursework in the first and third years of law school. There has been a marked increase in performance on the bar examination following the expansion of this program.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
The results of the assessment of the Upper Level Writing Requirement (“ULWR”) did not reflect the need for any immediate programmatic change in how the ULWR is currently structured and carried out.
The assessment of the first-year experiential elective showed that the 1L experiential electives were meeting the goal of helping students achieve competency in the relevant learning outcomes. These were the second and fourth learning outcomes. The results are also useful for establishing a protocol for developing future 1L experiential learning electives.
Although not a formal part of the assessment cycle, the Law School believed that there were opportunities for students to enhance their performance on the bar examination. Consequently, internal studies identified the characteristics of students most likely to encounter challenges in educational attainment in law school and on the bar exam. These students were invited to participate in the Law School’s enhanced Academic Support Program (“ASP”) which includes tutoring as well as specialized coursework in the first and third years of law school. There has been a marked increase in performance on the bar examination following the expansion of this program.
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