Law and Social Thought
Assessment  Plan

 

 

Introduction to LST—Program Mission and Educational Objectives:

 

The Program in Law and Social Thought provides undergraduate students at the University of Toledo with the intellectual tools necessary for the reasoned appraisal of U.S. and other western and non-western legal systems and the policies, practices and philosophies that underlie them.  Through a carefully selected curriculum taught by an accomplished faculty, LST requires its students to learn about the way law combines moral argument, rhetorical practices and force in structuring human life.  This pursuit can encourage sustained reflection on the fundamental yet contestable values that shape the requirements of citizenship in contemporary democracy.  It can also develop an appreciation for the connections among various academic disciplines and the quality of knowledge that emerges from their convergence on issues of law and its relation to morality, politics, language, culture and the arts of critical and creative thinking.

 

The primary objective of the LST program is to develop knowledge of legal institutions from an interdisciplinary perspective.  As an undergraduate program that emphasizes student participation and responsibility, LST offers not only a first rate curriculum based on law and legal institutions but an education in the art and technique of learning at an advanced level.  To this end, we actively develop critical thinking skills and intellectual versatility—we provide students with the tools to assist students in understanding a complex and diverse world structured by law, power and value. Also, for students who intend to continue in a legal, academic, or public service profession, clear written expression is a fundamental virtue.  LST courses are typically writing-intensive, whether or not they are designated as WAC courses. Furthermore, LST courses challenge students to read with precision and to develop creative interpretative skills that are both essential to a legal education and that are sorely needed in legal, social, and political life.

LST’s curriculum is designed to maximize conversation between students and faculty.  The Proseminar is designed around this interaction, and every other element of LST’s program depends on faculty and student involvement.   For example, the “Upper Division Seminar” offerings are selected with student input each semester.  Because these seminars concentrate LST students in a few courses each semester, and in conjunction with the Proseminar and the faculty research group, LST students and faculty form de facto “research clusters,” groups of students who work in and out of the classroom on topics of active concern.  Because students collaborate in the formation of LST’s curriculum and are asked to take responsibility for the course and character of their own education, LST fosters interpersonal skills among its students and between students and faculty.  Students are encouraged to express themselves and are helped to make that expression more effective.

 

Finally, LST’s “Field Experience” gives students an opportunity to engage in service learning.  LST is one of a few programs in Arts and Sciences that requires students to direct their attention outside the confines of the classroom.

 

Student Outcomes:

 

The student outcomes measured by our assessment procedures grow out of our mission as an innovative undergraduate program dedicated to the educational objectives outlined above.  We require our students to develop knowledge relating to the study of law and legal institutions in the liberal arts, the ability to interpret that knowledge in relation to multiple perspectives and experiences, and to take responsibility for the process by which these outcomes are achieved.  The following goals guide our assessment of outcomes:

 

Goal I:  Interpretative Skill: 

Students in LST will demonstrate an ability to interpret current law related issues in the context of broad cultural, historical, and intellectual traditions.

Students will be able to think critically about the assumptions and traditions that guide distinct interpretations of the law and of legal institutions and understandings of justice and fairness.

 

Goal II:  Social and Political Awareness: 

Students in LST will demonstrate awareness of and ability to understand and interpret the social effects of legal decision, legal institutions and the deployment of force that invests law.

Students will demonstrate an awareness of issues surrounding racial, ethnic, cultural, and economic differences.  Students will demonstrate sensitivity to legal status and meaning of race, gender and disability.

 

Goal III:  Writing

Students will develop the ability to write clearly, critically, and effectively.

Students will demonstrate ability to read and analyze complex argument.

Students will demonstrate familiarity with the methodologies of various disciplines related to the study of law and legal institutions (though proficiency in methodologies proper to the human and social sciences will not be assessed).

Students will be able to identify and assess key assumptions that guide moral, political, and practical arguments and to formulate arguments and positions with clarity.

Students will be able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant data and claims, and to work creatively with the difference between relevant and irrelevant where necessary.

 

Goal IV:  Profession

Students will be able to describe relevance of the “Field Experience” to the interdisciplinary study of law

 

Students will become familiar with the professional options open to them, and will consider how their thinking about law and legal institutions will contribute to their future practice.


Goal V:  Interdisciplinary Education

“Reflective essays” will be clear statements of the student’s judgment about the relation among courses in various disciplines and will demonstrate attention to how courses in combination promote all other goals and objectives.

Students will be able to articulate the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the way law combines moral argument, rhetorical practice and force to structure human life and to distinguish that understanding from a technical understanding of law

Student will be able to generate a general account of the difference between an interdisciplinary approach to an object and discipline-specific approaches.

 

Types of Assessment (Current):

 

As an interdisciplinary program that depends on other departments in the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Health and Human Services, LST must count on these departments for the soundness of their assessment procedures in relation to individual courses and faculty members.  However, we have always believed that assessment is important to student success and to faculty development.  Thus we built a number of tools into our program that serve as assessment tools.   They are:

 

Proseminar: The Proseminar, a one-unit course taken three times throughout a student’s career in LST, is conducted as a round-table discussion among students and faculty.  In the course, students evaluate their current courses in terms of relation to the LST program as a whole as well as their personal pathways and they select the courses to be cross-listed as Upper division Seminars (UDS).  Students are encouraged to express their concerns for the program as well as address LST opportunities, interest and current events.  In addition, the Proseminar is also an opportunity to conduct “group advising.”  Students share their experiences in LST courses and faculty members help them understand the LST curriculum.

 

Student performance and progress evaluations: The GPA, both cumulative and in LST, is used to determine the student’s performance in the program.  Performance on standardized tests such as the GRE and LSAT is considered as well, though until now we have not used a reliable means of reporting these scores.  The LST student is required to complete a yearly checklist (Appendix ‘A’) of his/her progress in the program.  The main purpose of this checklist is advisory yet it also provides the directors with an opportunity to evaluate the majors and minors on a yearly basis.  In addition, the checklist allows the student to place him/herself in terms of completion of programmatic requirements.

 

LST Advisory Committee: The advisory committee is solicited for assessment of the program and its activities to ensure that LST is fulfilling its programmatic requirements and goals.

 

Types of Assessment (New in 2003-2004)

 

New assessment procedures in AY 2003-2004 include the addition of several student advisory components to the Proseminar, increase in alumni tracking, and a portfolio submitted for evaluation by an LST faculty committee.  An important addition to the curriculum format is the specific identification of the second Proseminar (LST 3500) as the Portfolio Proseminar.

 

Additions to the assessment program include the student portfolio, Faculty Response Survey and the LST course evaluation.  These changes and additions will be described in further detail below.

 

  • Faculty Response Survey

 

To improve the cross-listing procedure and increase faculty involvement in the program, Faculty Response Surveys will be administered to any faculty member who allows his/her course to be cross-listed.  The responses to this survey would be provided on a voluntary basis.  The survey will accomplish two purposes:  it will inform students and the directors of LST about what is happening in the LST program, and it will inform instructors of cross-listed courses about the students who are taking the course for LST credit and about the program’s aims.  This information would then be used in the consideration of specific courses (whether to cross-list the course again) or in consideration of the faculty member (whether his/her other courses should be considered for cross-listing as regular seminars or as UDS options).

 

The survey will focus on three areas: regular involvement with students, whether his/her research interests have relation to law and social thought, and how LST students contributed to the cross-listed courses.

 

These questions are designed to provide the Proseminar with valuable information about professors who have cross-listed their courses and on course content, and to help students develop an understanding of faculty pedagogical and research interests.

In addition, the surveys will also be used to measure continuing interest in the LST program for professors who have previously taught LST courses, and to inform faculty members with cross-listed courses of what such a designation means—that no special treatment of LST students is expected, but that students taking the course as an LST section are likely to be interested in the socio-legal dimension of the subject matter of the course. 

The Proseminar would access survey information only when provided by the Directors for the current cross-listing decisions.  Therefore, this information would not be freely available to any LST student, yet still accessible to LST directors.

 

 

  • The LST Portfolio:  Each student in Law and Social Thought will be required to maintain a portfolio.  The portfolio will consist of written work from LST courses and short reflective essays in which a student describes the connections among LST courses and what the student learned from the interdisciplinary approach to the study of legal institutions.  These essays will be assessed on an ongoing basis by the LST student’s advisor, and the portfolio as a whole will be assessed by a committee of LST faculty members prior to graduation as a program requirement.  Students in Proseminar II will be coached on the assembly of their portfolios and will engage in an open discussion designed to enhance their essays. 

 

The contents of the portfolio when complete will be as follows:

 

·         The LST Checksheet:  The checklist will play a vital role in the development of each student’s portfolio.  The portfolio outlines the student’s experience with LST and his/her personal career development.  The basic outline of a LST student portfolio is as follows:

·         Current resume/curriculum vitae (Digital copy included)

·         Current transcript

·         Entrance Essay (on the concept of law and the function of law in society—Completed in LST 2010)

·         Selected Written Work:  Term papers, exams, and other written work representative of the student’s best efforts during a semester.  Divided by course, semester, and year.  Criteria of assessment:

Example of excellence in critical thinking in an essay format

Good bibliographical work with multiple sources

Example of quantitative analysis for students emphasizing the social sciences

Relationship between LST pathway and coursework

·         Reflective Essays:  Written after each semester.  Requires student to reflect on relation among LST courses and on student’s progress in the major.  Goals of reflective essays:

Assess individual progress

Identify personal strengths and weaknesses

Relation of skills to coursework

Identification of academic work /study most important to individual

·         Field Experience Evaluation:  Student will include materials associated with the field experience, including a self-evaluation.  Evaluation will include:

Description of specific experience

Statement of Goals

Description of Process

Findings, Analysis, of Interpretation of experience

Analysis of experience as a whole

·         Junior Year Career/Degree/Post-Graduate Plan:  In the second semester of the Junior year, each student will answer a short questionnaire concerning post-graduate plans

 

The Portfolio Proseminar

 

In the interest of making the portfolio procedure as painless for the LST student as possible, the second Proseminar (LST 3500) will be established at the 3500 level of the Proseminar, as the second Proseminar a LST student would complete.  The course offers the student guidelines on how to create a successful portfolio and professional resume/curriculum vitae.  Preferably, Proseminar II would be taken prior to the Field experience, as it would provide the LST student with guidelines for the formulation of the project and analysis of the outcomes.  These guidelines include making a field experience proposal, a record of the work done by the student (journals, reports and evaluations, elaborations of the process, meeting records, etc) and final analysis of the field experience.

 

 

Time Line:

 

As many students in LST are transfer students or find out about the program late in their undergraduate careers, this time line is usually compressed and is in any case an ideal timeline:

 

·         Second year:  LST 2010—Gateway Course:  Entrance Essay, introduce portfolio requirement.  Begin writing “Reflective Essays.”

·         Third year:  Advisor checks portfolio in spring semester.  Continue “Reflective Essays.”

·         Fourth year, Fall:  Portfolio “Proseminar.”  Students finish writing “Reflective Essays” and gathering written work.  Committee is selected by student in consultation with advisor.

·         Fourth year, spring:  Committee meets and assesses portfolio, provides written assessment to student prior to graduation.  A sample form for the assessment of student portfolios is attached as Appendix ‘B’.

 

Gathering and storing assessment data

 

The program will collect portfolios in the first week of March, 2004.  The committee will read and evaluate them prior to graduation.  A worksheet for the evaluation of portfolios is attached as Appendix A.  The co-directors will generate a report for the purposes of revision of the assessment procedure for the next graduating class, should revision be necessary.

 

Until LST is given office space of its own, LST will permanently store portfolios in space available in the Department of Philosophy.  The student will keep one copy and LST will archive another.  Students will be encouraged—and eventually required—to submit the portfolio on a CD-ROM.  Storage will then be electronic, and alumni will have permanent access to stored portfolios via the internet.

 

The co-directors of LST will continue to write annual reports about the LST program for all LST affiliated faculty, the administration of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the LST advisory committee.  Reports of changes based on assessment findings will be, as they have been, part of the annual report.

 

Specific Program/Curricular Changes

 

  • Current Assessment procedures:

 

Current procedures as described above (Types of Assessment (Current)) produce regular changes in LST's curriculum.  Because the program was initially developed in order to allow for maximum feedback with respect to the curriculum, assessment measures have always had a strong influence on program planning.

 

  • New Assessment procedures:

 

The LST program is a new program, and therefore we have not had the opportunity to implement the portfolio requirement until the spring of 2004 (in time for the graduating class of 2004).  We expect this procedure to help us refine and revise our curriculum and our instructional methods.  Successful portfolios will show us where students are able to synthesize courses and content, to make informed judgments about legal institutions and their interpretation and about the program's attempts to structure, refine and organize these judgments.  In cases where portfolios disappoint our expectations, we will be able to modify our curriculum or our advising procedures in order to enhance opportunities for student success.  The faculty response survey will allow us to monitor the effect that our planning has on other departments and faculty members.   This will help us with the administration of the complexities of our curriculum and will enable us to reach out to and incorporate the most active scholars on our campus.

 

The advisory committee's first report to the directors of LST will be filed as an addendum to this document in the spring of 2005.

 

Assessment Liaisons:  Benjamin S. Pryor, Co-Director, LST; Jerry Van Hoy, Co-Director, LST

 

 

(Appendix A)  Law and Social Thought—Portfolio Assessment Worksheet

 

Goals and Measures

 

1—Needs development; insufficient  evidence of improvement

2—Progressing; evidence of improvement

3—Marked improvement; evidence of strong ability

4—Evidence of achievement; very high level of ability

Interpretative Skills: work shows ability to engage with diverse traditions; student is aware of assumptions and practices that guide interpretations of law and legal institutions; written work demonstrates critical thinking skills

 

 

 

 

Social & Political Awareness: work demonstrates ability to understand and interpret social effects of legal decision, legal institutions, and force.

 

 

 

 

Writing:  Demonstrates ability to write effectively and clearly

 

 

 

 

Profession:  Relates field experience to the study of law; demonstrates awareness of the culture and politics of the legal profession; is aware of professional options and the contribution LST makes to the practice of law

 

 

 

 

 

Interdisciplinary:  Student can articulate importance of interdisciplinary approach to the study of law; reflective essays state clear and well reasoned judgments about relations among courses in various disciplines; student demonstrates sensitivity to difference between interdisciplinary and discipline-specific approaches