Legal Commentary

With the start of the new school year, I?ve seen a lot of interesting a valuable discussion about teaching methods, such as whether to use the Socratic method or PowerPoint, or whether to ban or limit laptops in class. What I sometimes wonder most, though, as a relatively new teacher with no formal training in education, is how I should measure my success at achieving my ultimate goal: student learning ? which of course is itself a loaded concept, since from what I can tell different law professors prioritize different things to be learned: doctrine, theory, critical thinking skills, professionalism, and so on. But whatever I want my students to learn, how should I measure my success at getting students to learn it through whatever methods I've chosen?

I?ve detailed a few thoughts and ideas of my own below the jump, but would love to hear others.

The standard answer I have received to my question is student evals. And, my student evals have aided me tremendously in refining my teaching methods?I'm always impressed with how seriously some students take this opportunity to voice their opinion about their education. But I see some limitations to student evals, too.

Some students don't complete the evals or take them as seriously as others, which leaves me with no idea of whether I've reached these students. Additionally, our evals, like many of the evals I remember completing as a student, ask pretty general questions like: ?What has the professor done especially well??, ?What should the professor do to improve the teaching of this course??, and ?General comments.? As a result, some students, particularly my 1L students who are still learning about legal education, seem to tell me whether I accomplished their goals for the class, which may not be the same as my goals for them. These evals certainly help me to evaluate whether I?m communicating my goals well, but I?m not confident that they provide a complete evaluative resource. I also get students' evals only after the course has ended. I want to know whether I?m helping students while I?m instructing them.

So, I?ve tried a few other things. The last couple of semesters other faculty members who are not on our PRT committee have agreed to attend my class to evaluate my work. These observations have been great, because I get no-agenda feedback from faculty who know what I?m trying to accomplish, and who can watch the class and individual students more objectively from their observation post. Of course, it?s still a teacher?s perspective of whether I?m effectively reaching the students, but along with my evals, this perspective has helped to round out my sense of whether I?m accomplishing my goals.

Last semester in con law I also required students to submit written questions to me at the end of each chapter or significant section in our casebook. I thought these questions really gave me a good sense of what the students were taking out of our classes right after we finished them, and offered me the chance to respond directly to those questions?I could devote some class time to more common questions, post my thoughts on our TWEN discussion board, or simply alter my approach to future materials.

And, to return to the topic of ?Socratic? teaching, I regularly question my students in class not only to give them a chance to work through legal problems with me before I test them, but also so they can show me through their responses what they?re getting out of the class.

Any other thoughts or ideas out there on how we law professors should evaluate the success of our chosen teaching methods?