3-Step Process for Achieving Instructional Goals

It’s an almost universal truth that law professors do not ever learn quantitatively how much of what they believe they are teaching is learned by what percentage of their students.  Many professors do not practice Mastery Teaching and use tests that are only designed to discriminate.  What is needed is a modest mastery goal and a means of verification.

This two-part teaching tip discusses how a Criminal Procedure course wanted at least fifty percent of the students to be able to perform fifty percent of the behavioral objectives competencies that had been identified, defined, and illustrated for them.  It also shows how using technology, such as TWEN, provided a reasonable chance to attain this and like goals, and therefore to find out whether the teaching is making the contribution that was envisioned.

Using a 3-Step Process to Construct a Basis for Achieving Goal

Many interdisciplinary experts have written about how to construct a basis for achieving a goal:

 

Gregory S. Munro, for example, writes in Outcomes Assessment for Law Schools (Gonzaga, 2000) that “[f]or law schools, this book proposes that assessment connotes a set of practices by which an educational institution adopts a mission, identifies desired student and institutional goals and objectives (outcomes), and measures its effectiveness in attaining these outcomes.  Assessment is not only a means of determining what and how a student is learning, but is itself a learning tool…. In this regard, the focus of student assessment in law school should be on enhancing student performance, providing multiple evaluations of student performance, and giving appropriate feedback to students.  Hence, assessment is more than just tests and testing.  Rather, it is an approach to legal education that fosters more active teaching and learning.”

Stephen Klein writes that “[i]f the goal is to assign grades, and there are four choices per item, then item difficulties should range from .25 to .85, with a mean of about .65.  Item discrimination is related to difficulty.  All other things being equal, the closer the difficulty is to .5, the higher the biserial.  Extremely easy or hard items do not tell you much.” (March 2006 email correspondence.)

Dr. Claudette Ligons writes that “a Behavioral Objective has four sequential components: (1) Behavior – what students will do; (2) Condition – performance restrictions that defines the circumstances; (3) Criterion – standards of performance; and (4) Content – subject matter to be mastered.”

Dr. Emiel Owens writes that “a test is a method of gathering information that is part of an assessment system, and its purposes include providing feedback, determining mastery, and to discriminate.”

The work of these experts can be used to form the basis for a 3-step process for achieving an instructional goal:

1.  Conform the Teaching Goals to Student Oriented Behavior Objectives and Communicate the Behavior Objectives to the Students.
2.  Establish Assessment Exercises.  The purpose of these exercises is to help students achieve the identified behavior objectives.  The exercises can but need not be a component of a class participation grade.  A class session provides an opportunity for a dialogue about the sequential assessment items-behavior objectives. The dialogue exchange provides an opportunity for the professor to evaluate when and how to modify the definition and demonstration of the behavior objectives to facilitate the student’s achievement of the behavior objectives.
3.  Administer Follow-up Assessments.  Give these assessments in the form of examinations whose items are written based on the behavior objectives, and reflect the learning achieved through the exchanges in Step 2.

In our follow-up post, we’ll share an example of these ideas in action by looking at a Criminal Procedure course.