Using Capstone Courses to Assess Curriculum

February 22nd, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt

We make a lot of assumptions in legal education. One is that our courses teach students the skills and doctrine we hope to impart. But do they? Do our first-year doctrinal courses teach students to read cases and statutes critically? Do our writing courses teach them to communicate effectively in memos and to argue persuasively in briefs? Does an evidence course equip students to identify evidentiary problems, analyze them properly, and offer competing arguments when the resolution is unclear?

There is a way to answer these questions, through assessment of student outcomes. As Andrea Funk and Kelley Mauerman explain in this useful article, this type of assessment focuses on a whole cohort of students, not on a single student. To assess the success of a curriculum (or individual course), we examine whether the group has achieved the skills or knowledge we attempted to teach.

Funk and Mauerman explain this type of assessment, then apply it to the legal writing curriculum at their school. They demonstrate that focusing on a capstone performance (in this case, a final exam administered at the end of a four-course sequence) can illustrate whether the curriculum serves its intended goals. If students don’t perform as well as we want, we can’t blame the students; we need to go back and improve the curriculum.

Funk and Mauerman focus on assessment conducted by a professor (or group of professors) teaching a particular course or sequence. This type of assessment seems like an excellent place to start. Their article, however, made me wonder about assessment conducted by a group of faculty from different parts of the curriculum or–even better–by a group of faculty and alumni. If a group of faculty read selected finals from a variety of first-year courses, selected papers from third-year seminars, or written work prepared in our clinics, would we be pleased or horrified? Would we identify problem areas that we could address?

It would be particularly instructive to look at student papers together with some practicing alums. What would those alumni see in the work product? Could they identify the skills or analytic abilities that matter to them in practice? How well do they think the students are performing on those key abilities?

Assessment is a simple, but powerful, tool. The biggest hurdle may be the first one: motivating ourselves to take a hard, critical look at the success of our classroom efforts. For those willing to take that step, Funk and Mauerman offer a valuable guide to the assessment process.

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