Engaging and Assessing Our Students
Session 4 Workshops

Thursday, June 2, 2011 – 3:15-5:00 p.m.

[A] Autonomy, Mastery, & Purpose: Enhancing Critical Educational Goals

Beryl Blaustone, CUNY School of Law and Catherine Klein, Columbus School of Law

This workshop will first review the psychological literature of motivation, and its relationship to legal education. We then will focus on how legal education may support or undermine goals of student autonomy support. We will address the considerable challenge of moving students to some sense of mastery of skills and substance necessary for lawyering within the constraints of an academic semester, as well as helping students to feel they are working with a sense of purpose that motivates rather than frustrates and leads to unhealthy stress. The workshop will use a video presentation and a combination of small group and large group discussion.

[B] Introducing Ethical Skills Exercises in First-Year Courses

Miriam Albert and Jennifer Gundlach, Hofstra University School of Law

One challenge in trying to incorporate The Carnegie Report's emphasis on integrating ethical training, lawyering skills, and knowledge of doctrine into traditional law teaching is how to break free of the doctrinal pigeon holes of "contract law" or "ethics" so we can show our students multi-layered stories within our fact patt erns (real and simulated). We will demonstrate an application of the doctrine of fraud within the context of a simulated client's situation to introduce students to both the ethical rules that are implicated with client fraud in transactional sett ings and the lawyering skills of client counseling, problem solving, and synthesis of law and fact.

[C] Are My Innovations Improving Student Learning?

Andi Curcio, Georgia State University College of Law

This workshop is designed to help those who want to study whether their teaching or assessment methods help their students learn, with an eye toward both publishing their study results and using the results to further refine their teaching. Using a participant's teaching innovations [e.g., clickers, having students summarize key concepts before exams, engaging students in self-reflective exercises, etc.], we will walk through how to develop a study, addressing issues such as: 1) Narrowing the question to one which can be measured; 2) Deciding how to measure it; 3.)Basic design issues; and 4) Implementation issues. After working through an example, participants will collaborate in small groups on studies they may want to develop collectively or individually.

[D] Gaming in the Classroom

Bari Burke and Hillary A. Wandler, University of Montana School of Law

Explore how playing games can generate student enthusiasm and active engagement in the law classroom. In this session, you will play part of a game we created for a first-year doctrinal course, learn the process we went through to create games for first-year courses, and brainstorm ways you could use games in your classroom. You will also learn how to use the Create a Board Game assignment to encourage students to think about your course objectives from a new, fun perspective.

[E] Using Pop Culture to Teach Legal Research

Kate Irwin-Smiler, Wake Forest School of Law; Julie Graves Krishnaswami, Vermont Law School; and Deborah Schander, Georgia State University College of Law

I'm Just a Bill. Marcia Clark being schooled during the OJ trial for not Shepardizing. Pop culture is full of examples of legal research both successful and not. Speakers will provide examples and demonstrate best practices for integrating video clips, songs, comics and other pop culture references into your legal research lesson. This session will address how using pop culture and humor can humanize teachers to students, encourage student participation in what many see as a "boring" class, foster collaboration among instructors and be an eff ective tool for peer instruction. Speakers will also discuss avoiding common pitfalls of using this technique in the classroom.

[F] Adding Collaborative and Formative Feedback Opportunities to Your Classes: How Grading by Design and Working Together Save the Day

Anna Hemingway, Dionne Anthon, and Amanda Smith, Widener University School of Law; and Jessica Clark and Christy DeSanctis, George Washington University Law School

Effective assessment requires providing students several opportunities to practice what they have learned and then applying clear evaluative criteria to their work. The use of both collaboration and rubrics can simplify the grading process. Collaborative work allows professors teaching large classes to provide multiple assignments and feedback on those assignments without sacrificing coverage or control. In addition, developing and implementing clear grading criteria (rubrics) enable professors to grade numerous assignments consistently and fairly. Join us to learn how to incorporate collaborative assessment opportunities for your students and to explore the tools and considerations necessary for designing and applying grading rubrics.