About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

49 J. Legal Educ. 418 (1999)
Principle 4: Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback

handle is hein.journals/jled49 and id is 428 raw text is: Principle 4: Good Practice Gives Prompt-Feedback Terri LeClercq Knowing what you know and don't know focuses learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. When getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. In classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.' When an infant, playing with mouth sounds, emits a da-da, parents smile, laugh,, repeat the sounds in encouragement. Teenagers with newly spiked blue hair walk through the mall expecting immediate reactions. A business- man, putting money into a stock, reads the NASDAQ daily to learn how his money is f&ring. Feedback is an essential element of all education: it helps steer students as they absorb what they are being taught and as they attempt to express their new knowledge. Without feedback, none of us could know whether we clearly understood what we thought we understood. Feedback Without Martyrdom Perhaps the greatest hindrance to feedback in law schools is teachers' assumption that feedback needs to be extensive; they have vivid memories of a Miss Fitzditch covering their college papers in red ink.Add to that depressing image the reality of large first-year classes, and it's a wonder that law teachers offer students even the scant feedback they do. It will take conscious recondi- tioning to alter their behavior patterns; perhaps the institution will have to offer faculty seminars devoted to explaining that effective feedback might require only a fewwords, or check marks, or a simple grid. The problem is not limited to first-year classes. Teachers in upper-division'seminars would also find it useful to investigate the many options to tedious, detailed marginalia on a final draft. Here are several methods for offering feedback that are by no means burdensome. Terri LeClercq is a senior lecturer and fellow, Norman Black Professorship in Ethical Communi- cation in Law, at the University of Texas School of Law. 1. Arthur W. Chickering & Zelda F. Garrson, Seven Principles for Good Practice in Under- graduate Education, AAHE Bull., Mar. 1987, at 3, 5. Journal of Legal Education, Volume 49, Number 3 (September 1999)

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most