Coordinating Formative Assessment across the Curriculum: A View from the Associate Dean's Desk
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Coordinating Formative Assessment
Across the Curriculum: A View from the
Associate Dean's Desk
BY SANDRA L. SIMPSON
I. INTRODUCTION
With the recent changes in the American Bar Association (ABA)
Accreditation standards, law schools have found themselves in uncharted
waters in the areas of assessment. The ABA's addition to Standard 314,'
requiring law schools to utilize both formative and summative assessments
in their curriculum, is a new concept for most law schools.2 Legal education
in the U.S. is renowned for its adherence to traditional case books, Socratic
teaching method, single end-of-semester final exams, and an unwillingness
to change.3 Standard 314 is a natural extension of Standards 301 and 302,
which require law schools to adopt learning outcomes designed to help
students achieve their stated objectives.4 Logically, then, law schools
explain how their curricula are designed to achieve those outcomes, and
identify their methods for assessing student performance and institutional
outcomes.5 The measuring of these outcomes happens both inside the
. Sandra Simpson was the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for Gonzaga
University School of Law, from May, 2013 - July, 2017. Professor Simpson joined the law
faculty at Gonzaga University School of Law as an Assistant Professor of Legal Research and
Writing in August 2007 and was promoted to Associate Professor in August of 2012.
Professor Simpson has been a co-director of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
since 2013 and has been involved as a contributing faculty member for the Institute since fall
of 2008. Professor Simpson is published in the areas of death penalty discrimination and
protecting caretakers in the workplace. Professor Simpson also researches, publishes, and
speaks in the area of assessment, rubric creation and utilization, and teaching. Prior to joining
the law faculty at Gonzaga Law School, Professor Simpson spent three years teaching at
Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Before entering the teaching field, Professor
Simpson spent two years in general practice in Iowa City, Iowa, and five years as an
employment defense litigator for Workland and Witherspoon, P.L.L.C., in Spokane,
Washington. She also has a Master's in Teaching from Whitworth University.
1.American Bar Association, Managing Director's Guidance Memo, Standards 301, 302, 314
and 315, June 2015, at 2,
https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrativelegal_education and admissi
onstothe bar/governancedocuments/2015_learning outcomes guidance.authcheckdam.p
df [hereinafter ABA Memo].
2. GREGORY S. MUNRO, OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT FOR LAW SCHOOLS 3 (2000).
3. Id
4. ABA Memo, supra note 1, at 1.
5. MUNRO, supra note 2, at 3.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/udetmr95&div=8&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Coordinating Formative Assessment across the Curriculum: A View from the Associate Dean's Desk
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