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By Susannah Pollvogt

This blog post provides a brief review of our well-attended webinar last week on Best Practices in Developing and Assessing Learning Outcomes.

The Need for Guidance

There has been a robust dialogue around learning outcomes in higher education for many years, but not so much in the realm of legal education. So, while newly adopted ABA Standards require law schools to develop learning outcomes at both the programmatic and individual course level, administrators and faculty members do not necessarily have extensive experience to draw on in pursuing this task.  

There is a surfeit of academic literature on the topic, but wading through it all can be somewhat overwhelming. The purpose of this webinar was to consolidate and streamline that information so that associate deans and committee chairs had a clear starting point.

Why Are We Here?

Before we dove into the nitty-gritty of best practices, we pulled back to the 20,000-foot view: Why discuss learning outcomes in the first place? The obvious answer is that they are the subject of ABA accreditation standards. But the need for compliance does not provide meaningful motivation.

A poll of the audience indicated that 79% of attendees believed that faculty members at their schools were “not enthusiastic� about learning outcomes. This is, in a sense, the fundamental problem with the task. We need more compelling reasons than compliance to engage with the learning outcomes project.

What are some of those more compelling reasons? One is that the conversation around learning outcomes dovetails nicely with the conversation around preparing students for the NextGen Bar Exam.  

Another is that a discussion about learning outcomes provides an opportunity for faculty members to engage in a motivated dialogue about what we are teaching, why we are teaching it, and how we know whether our students are actually learning what we hope they will. This prompts faculty members to consider (or reconsider) the law school’s institutional identity, which in turn can inform efforts to recruit faculty and students.

But in my mind, the most compelling reason to talk about learning outcomes is because learning outcomes represent a promise made to students: this is what you will gain from attending law school here. For any law school that prides itself on being student-centered, this should be a central motivator.

Some Best Practices

The full extent of the best practices we discussed goes beyond the scope of a short blog post, but a key tenet of learning outcomes is that they focus on what students can do at the completion of the program of legal education or the completion of an individual course. Learning outcomes do not focus on what is covered in the syllabus, what we hope that students will learn, or what we think makes for a well-rounded student or graduate. And of course, we can only determine whether students have gained particular competencies (i.e., what they can do) by evaluating whether they can execute those competencies � that is, through assessment.

This should make clear that the process of articulating learning outcomes cannot be separated from a plan for assessing student attainment of those learning outcomes. For this reason, another best practice is to identify how you will assess each learning outcome simultaneously with articulating the learning outcome. Stated another way, there is no such thing as a learning outcome without an associated assessment. You need not assess every learning outcome in every instance, but learning outcomes must be truly and fundamentally assessable when the occasion calls for it.

Another basic truth about learning outcomes is that each learning outcome must address a single competency. Again, this makes perfect sense when you think about how you assess learning outcomes. You would not use the same instrument to assess competency in oral advocacy as you would competency in legal research. It is only by disaggregating learning outcomes into discrete competencies that you can evaluate the strengths and challenges of a cohort of students.

For this reason, I have come to refer to the guidance provided in Standard 302(a) as “categories of competence� rather than learning outcomes, because many refer to multiple competencies that need to be disaggregated. For example, Standard 302(a)(2) lists “[l]egal analysis and reasoning, legal research, problem-solving, and written and oral communication in the legal context.� A programmatic learning outcome that would fit into this category might be stated as follows: “Upon completion of the program of legal education, a graduate will be able to conduct competent legal research.� An aligned course-level learning outcome might be: “Upon completion of the course, a student will be able to distinguish between binding and persuasive authority.�

Next Steps

There is a lot more to say about learning outcomes and how best to assess them. Some next steps associate deans and committee chairs might consider:

1. Conduct a presentation for faculty explaining the new ABA Standards but quickly pivoting to the underlying academic rationale for learning outcomes
2. Facilitate a workshop where faculty develop their course-level learning outcomes and associated assessments
3. Engage in a curriculum mapping project to identify where in the curriculum your programmatic learning outcomes are being assessed
4. Draft an assessment plan

I am available to assist with all of these projects. Please feel free to contact me at spollvogt@°®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý.org.