Essay Ranking: Learning How to Learn
by
Max Young

Effective assessment of student performance is an integral part of legal education. This article describes how I make use of an essay-ranking exercise to give students fast feedback; to show students what is expected of them when writing an essay exam; and to give students a prediction of their future performance. This article also shows the students' positive response to the ranking exercise and points to future developments of the ranking exercise.

Learning from prior assessment

Law students often take their first exams without much guidance as to what is expected of them. Students might be given general guidelines to follow, but this advice tends to be fairly meaningless to students new to legal education. For example, in the exercise described below one student said:

"Although frequently been told how to structure and present a problem type essay, only by looking at, and working with, such answers have I properly grasped the basic concepts."

Students often find on the return of their first exams that their teachers explain why the students' approach is all wrong, etc. Students then comment that if they had been given that sort of guidance in the first place they would have approached the answer differently: They are starting to learn from the assessment.

How much better things would be if it were possible to show students what was expected of them before they undertook their first exams. If students could be shown the type of work that was expected of them and also why different exams were graded in the way they were, surely this would be a better and more logical way to prepare?

The Contract Law Essay Exercise

The assessment exercise described in this article was conceived as an idea to improve the student-learning experience. My contract law multiple-choice essay exercise is run in the following way:

1. Some weeks before the exercise is due, students are given a typical contract law problem. They are told to prepare the answer to the problem in the way they would do if they were going to submit it as an essay answer but that they will not be allowed to actually submit it. Students were encouraged to work on the problem in small groups.
2. The team of contract law teachers selects five answers to the problem from previous students. Each member of the team marks the five essays, commenting in detail on each. The team then meets to discuss the ranking of the essays and a rank order is agreed. The team's comments on each of the five essays are collated for future feedback to the students.
3. During a subsequent class, the students are issued the five answers. The students are told to study each answer carefully and place all five in an order of merit. They are also told to consider where they would rank their own prepared answer. They have the lecture period, about 50 minutes, to complete the exercise.
4. At the end of the lecture period, the students hand in their rank orders. Each student's mark is then calculated by comparing its rank order against the rank order of the contract law team.
5. Within a week the students are given their marked ranking sheets. They also are given the collated comments of the contract law team. Students can read these comments and see why each essay was given the grade it was.

Students' comments

Preparing for the exercise in small groups:

"On the whole I enjoyed the exercise immensely. It was rather fun working with the group and I liked the way everyone had a differing idea as to what was relevant and what was not." (Student scored 2/20)

"This exercise has been an eye opener as it has made me realize that I do not have to work alone and also that I am not alone in my quest to complete a law degree. There are other people in the same boat, having the same problems and making the same mistakes as I am." (Student scored 10/20)

"The exercise was useful in that the group discussion was especially enlightening in that as a group so many ideas can be produced and approaches to answering the question can vary." (Student scored 14/20)

Evaluating the ranking exercise:

"I think it was a good idea to do this exercise, since it actually makes one aware of what to expect and how to approach questions during our time of study. And also reading through the essays had made it clear what examiners have to go through to come to a final decision when allocating grades. The assessment in general was beneficial to me in the sense that, I will be able to approach and tackle questions properly in the future." (Student scored 18/20)

"I thought this exercise was a big challenge. I felt this exercise was worthwhile and in a few months I would love to be at the standard of [the best essay]. From this exercise I observed the importance of good knowledge of case law and I gained a slight insight into the good and bad ways of answering an essay." (Student scored 8/20)

"Overall I felt the exercise was not as effective as it could have been as we were not given enough time to read the essays through thoroughly enough to make an educated decision. Also, the atmosphere of the lecture hall was not conducive to a proper discussion." (Student scored 20/20)

Conclusions

The only complaint some students had about the exercise was that there was not sufficient time in which to properly complete it. A solution to this problem might be to allow the students to complete the exercise overnight instead of in a single 50-minute lecture period. Although this might seem an obvious solution, a few students who had problems with reading the 5 essays in the 50 minutes said it was a useful experience as it showed them that they needed to improve their reading skills.

For example one student said:

"In the actual assessment I found I did not have enough time to assimilate all the essays. I decided it was through lack of experience in reading articles or literature that I was unable to 'take it all in.' I therefore have gained at least one goal which is to assert my reading skills much more. I think it was a good exercise." (Student scored 0/20)

Given that there seems to be value in using this methodology as both a group exercise and as an individual experience, it would seem that the next step would be to design a group exercise that students could complete overnight and an individual assignment that would take place at present. A further obvious development would be to adapt the exercise for other subjects. In fact, this has been suggested by many second-year students.