Hart, C et al --- "The real deal: using authentic assessment to promote student engagement in the first and second years of a regional law program" [2012] LegEdDig 18; (2012) 20(2) Legal Education Digest 6

• The real deal: using authentic assessment to promote student engagement in the first and second years of a regional law program

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The real deal: using authentic assessment to promote student engagement in the first and second years of a regional law program

C Hart, S Hammer, P Collins and T Chardon

Legal Education Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2011, pp 97-122

Recent reports into university students’ experiences indicate that student engagement with on-campus life is decreasing. The First Year Experience in Australian Universities report stated that this trend is attributed to a significant rise in the proportion of full-time students engaged in paid employment.

A key question, then, is how universities can effectively engage with students who are increasingly absent from campus in order to provide the type and kind of relationship that fosters learning. One strategy promoted by the literature is the use of assessment to leverage student engagement with their studies, with the teacher and with each other.

‘Student engagement’ has been defined in a range of ways, including ‘the time spent on campus or studying, to in – and out – of-class learning experiences that connect students to their peers in educationally purposeful and meaningful ways’. ‘Authentic assessment’ is ‘a form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills.’

The essential knowledge and skills which graduating law students should possess have most recently been framed by the Standards Statement for the Bachelor of Laws as six ‘Threshold Learning Outcomes’ (TLOs). In December 2010, the Council of Australian Law Deans endorsed the six TLOs for the Bachelor of Laws: (1) TLO 1: knowledge; (2) TLO 2: ethics and professional responsibility; (3) TLO 3: thinking skills; (4) TLO 4: research skills; (5) TLO 5: communication and collaboration; and (6) TLO 6: self-management.

The TLOs use language consistent with the outcomes and benefits associated with student engagement and authentic assessment. The relevance of this point is that the TLOs signal the importance of student engagement and the importance of legal education as it relates to how it will be used after university.

The literature clearly links authentic assessment with engaging students in the learning process. Sacks identified the link between student engagement and an authentic teaching and learning environment:

If an experience seems real, the beneficial effects on students are likely to be several. Students have more interest in the subject matter, and are better motivated to learn. They work harder, and pay closer attention to what is happening. They tend to learn things at a deeper level, and thus to remember them longer.

Rogers stated that students will not achieve a ‘deep learning approach’ unless they have been ‘internally motivated to learn to satisfy their own interest or curiosity’. The implication is that to be engaged requires a motivation from within the student. Meyers asserted that one method of engaging students was through the use of authentic assessment. According to Brill and Park, one of the indicators for ‘engaged learning’ is that assessments occur in authentic circumstances; that is, assessments have relevance to how the student will be using the assessed knowledge and skills once they have completed their formal education. The Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) did not directly correlate authentic assessment with student engagement, but did find a link between student engagement and ‘enriching education experiences’.

The importance of student engagement is shown by its use as an indicator to measure the quality of learning and teaching in universities by the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER). ACER carries out the AUSSE at 35 universities to provide those institutions with data to monitor and enhance education.

At the course or unit level, engagement involves the actions and responsibilities of both parties involved in the learner-teacher relationship – the academic and the student. For the student’s part, it requires some initiating action, followed by a continuation of those activities. Academics are responsible for offering a range of activities with which the student can engage; for example, lectures. The academic is also responsible for offering assessment that is designed to maximise possibilities for engagement.

Engagement enables students to see meaning and relevance in the subject matter. Assessment is one opportunity for students to become engaged.

In her study of a group of QUT law students and their motivation for studying, Nicolette Rogers found that ‘[a]ssessment was ranked the primary motivation for learning by a total 70 per cent of the students surveyed’. For students, assessment defines the actual curriculum; students will learn only what they think they will be tested on.

Authentic assessment broadens the role of assessment beyond simply grading students to incorporate social, cognitive and reflective processes of learning. Authentic assessment is based on criteria that have been developed or negotiated with students to ensure that they understand the nature of the task and how it will be marked. It ensures that students have opportunities to develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills needed in professional situations, as well as the cognitive and performance skills relating to graduate attributes.

The notions of integration, coherency and the real-world context of authentic assessment reflect the learning outcomes recently identified by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.

This part of the article reports on a study carried out on law academics with responsibility for teaching in the first and second years of a regional law program.

One of the key purposes of the study was to obtain the reflections and the perspective of both law academics and students on aspects of learning and teaching in the first and second years of the Bachelor of Law program. The study used a qualitative research method that drew upon the following sources: (1) a pre-interview survey of the law school academics; (2) a follow-up semi-structured interview with those academics; and (3) a law student focus group.

The methodology for the research relied upon a legal education literature review. Out of that review, questions were developed for data collection instruments (the survey, interview and focus group) seeking input on the following: perceptions and reflections on assessment in terms of student engagement; graduate attributes and skills; lifelong learning; the purpose of assessment; authentic assessment; and feedback and marking criteria.

A pilot of the pre-interview survey was carried out with three academics and adjustments were made. The finalised pre-interview survey was then sent out to the 13 first- and second-year law academics. All academics responded. The follow-up semi-structured interviews were then carried out with the 13 participating first- and second-year academics. The law school comprises 18 staff in total. In contrast, the participation rate from the students was considerably lower; only eight students participated, out of a possible 190.

The results of the survey show that the academics ranked some elements of teaching above others. For example, the academics ranked providing students with discipline knowledge and developing competencies and skills for lawyers higher than the need for a more ‘interactive’ relationship that provided opportunities for active learning through authentic tasks, student reflection, and allowing students to manage their own learning. This may be for a number of reasons, including the academics’ own legal education experiences, which may have emphasised acquisition of knowledge at the expense of interaction and engagement; and the academics’ philosophical approaches to legal education.

The pre-interview survey revealed that 67 per cent of the academics considered that it was important that assessment tasks were perceived to be authentic in order to engage with students; only one academic stated that authentic tasks were not important at all in seeking to engage with students. This suggested that academics, even though they may not be aware of the literature on authentic assessment, intuitively formed a link with its use to improve student engagement.

Academics were asked to nominate examples of where authentic assessment had been used in the first- and second-year law programs. A number of examples were given, including court visits; advocacy exercises; essays requiring comparison between different legal traditions; oral debates; problem-based questions using legal files; and work-based assessment for an employer.

Law students from the study offered a range of perspectives on assessment in the first- and second-year of their law programs. Their perspectives ranged from viewing assessment as only testing acquired knowledge, to a broader view in which both knowledge and skills were being built.

The following response may indicate that that, while the student saw assessment as largely content-focused, they also saw their degree from a broadly developmental perspective: ‘The assessment has forced me to ... analyse the content, see how it’s all linked in together and probably form questions as a result of doing that’.

When law students were asked to identify their ‘favourite assessment’, they chose assessments that enabled displays of knowledge, application of skills, and opportunities for finding new information. For example, an assessment that allowed students to comment on a case which left open a key legal question elicited this response: ‘It let me look at all sorts of things and really go into it to a depth that I wanted to go into it.’

To varying degrees, the study revealed some use of authentic assessment by academics, and some acknowledgement by both staff and students that it was a useful means of improving student engagement and learning.

The choice of assessment type by some academics was based on the idea that legal education is a training ground for practice. We do not question the validity of that view, but suggest that broader purposes for assessment might be also considered; that is, to engage students and to achieve particular learning and teaching outcomes.

There was a strong perception by academics in the study that, for undergraduate students, marks were the predominant motivation throughout their degrees, since high marks would lead to the best choice of jobs.

The survey indicated that other factors may have a bearing on the effective use of authentic assessment as a means of promoting student engagement. In response to the survey findings, four factors have been identified: firstly, assessment needs to be used to teach skills that are relevant to the profession; secondly, the fact that authentic assessment is resource-intensive nature should be recognised; thirdly, authentic assessment needs to be supported with a structured (or scaffolded) approach; and, fourthly, assessment needs to be placed appropriately within the curriculum.

Any assessment method must consider the full costs, time and resource demands of the assessment, and whether these can be appropriately met by the institution and the academic staff.

Twenty-first century students are aware of their limited time resources and, as a result, have become increasingly astute at seeking learning and assessment options that maximise their results. It should not surprise academics that students choose the assessment options of least time investment over more adventurous assessment items.

The point at which skills are taught within a law program needs to be carefully considered. This may be a key factor in the success or failure of authentic assessment as a means of increasing student engagement.

A law student needs to be able gain basic skills and knowledge before they can acquire more complex skills. In order to prepare a law program that emphasises the development of skills, academics should understand how a first-year law student moves from being a ‘fresher’, or ‘novice’, to becoming an ‘expert’.

Stefan Krieger’s study into the development of a particular legal skill (legal reasoning), found that achieving ‘professional expertise’ involved a progression through four distinct levels. The levels included the ‘novice’, who is at the early stages of acquiring expertise or basic competencies; the ‘intermediate’, who is above the novice level but below a sub-expert; the ‘sub-expert’, who has a generic knowledge but inadequate specialised knowledge of the area; and, finally, the ‘expert’, who acquires a specialised knowledge of the area.

The research is important for a number of reasons. It suggests that there is pedagogical significance associated with the structuring of a law program to include ongoing development of learning opportunities. In the context of using authentic assessment to increase student engagement, Krieger’s findings support the use of authentic assessment (and learning) as an important and necessary means by which students can apply their legal knowledge and fully develop their legal reasoning skills.

In our study, some students noted their ‘accidental’ opportunities for authentic learning through personal circumstances:

A lot of the stuff I’m already learning through the course I’ve been able to put into our business. So for me at the moment it’s got an extremely practical application and I really enjoy that and I think sometimes I’ve wondered whether some of the younger students straight out of school get the benefit of being able to apply some of that given that lots of the stuff is experientially based.

Here, the student gained an unexpected chance to acquire expertise and, therefore, an opportunity to advance to the next developmental stage, but only because of their particular circumstances. The effective use of authentic assessment cannot be ad hoc or idiosyncratic, based on the chance that an individual’s circumstances will foster engagement. Authentic assessment should be offered to all students consistently. It needs to be appropriate to the year level (developmental stage) of the law student, and it needs to be supported by sufficient reference to content that may or may not have been acquired through authentic assessment.

Krieger’s research also suggests that law students need to be tested again and again on the same materials as they progress through the law program. As students progress through the developmental stages, they are tested repeatedly on the same subject matters, but in an increasingly real-world context and with an increasing ability to apply what they have learned.

In our study, academics expressed impatience with what was perceived to be students’ inability to grasp the significance and relevance of what they had learned:

Many students miss the connections between what is taught ... and what is required understanding and thus what is learned. This is because they are not either doing sufficient foundation learning and developing an understanding and or extracting information on a need to know, need to pass, basis only and or not making the connections between various pieces of information they may be separated by any number of pages in for example their introductory booklets. They can’t see the forest for the trees. The more information you give them the harder it becomes for them to extract the essence.

This supports Krieger’s approach that students need to be assessed and reassessed on the same knowledge but in a way that builds on that knowledge and its use in different contexts as the student advances. This approach presupposes an ‘integrated’ or ‘holistic’ structuring of assessment in a law program – it is within such a structure that authentic assessment might more effectively sit.

Clair Hughes has stated that ‘students can then progress sequentially and progressively from assessment tasks that have been firstly formative or developmental through to assessment tasks that become increasingly complex to including analysis and evaluation.’ Hughes made it clear, however, that she was not advocating that ‘students should be limited to lower-level cognitive tasks in the early years of a law program. Rather, it suggests a useful sequence of activities for systematic skill development.’

There is some support for Krieger’s developmental, integrated and cohesive approach to acquiring legal skills in the study. When the academics were asked about the level of integration of assessment across other courses in the law program, seven replied that they wanted assessment to be integrated; for example: ‘That the development of skills and discipline should be progressive and incremental from first to final year studies.’

Authentic assessment needs to be offered in conjunction with a structured approach and guidance. From Ingham and Boyle’s research into the learning-style patterns among first-year students, it is evident that students have a strong desire for structure in their learning environment and that they prefer to work with an authority figure. The need for structure can be met by guides and checklists created by both academics and by students with the assistance of academics.

Ingham and Boyle’s findings provided useful insights into the use of authentic assessment. For example, students’ responses to the use of authentic assessment in one course expressed the need to have an opportunity to practise and become familiar with a particular task before being assessed on it: ‘People who have never done [the type of assessment] need the opportunity to do one first, to learn from it before they are assessed on it.’

With reference to assessment more broadly, students from the study consistently expressed a keenness for ‘exemplars and templates’. They ‘liked the structured approach to the use of ILAC [issue; law; application; conclusion]’. They wanted to know how to structure an assignment.

The literature suggests that law student performance is improved through the use of structured and guided approaches. For example, where students are given a practice exam similar to the actual exam (enabling learning through practice), as well as feedback and explicit instructions on strategies, learning improves.

Ingham and Boyle’s research also indicated that students learn best while learning alone, rather than in pairs or groups. Only 10 per cent were peer-oriented. This does not necessarily mean that group work should not be used as part of authentic assessment – that would result in students never extending themselves.

Student engagement is important for a number of reasons: the costs of poor retention and progression rates; competition among universities for students; the increasing number of students who may be physically absent, but still need to be academically engaged; and the need to create an environment in which students can gain necessary skills for employability.

Specifically, there needs to be more opportunity for academics’ education and training on student-centred learning, student engagement and authentic assessment. Resources need to be allocated appropriately so that academics can use authentic assessment and encourage students to opt for it over more traditional forms of assessment. Authentic assessment needs to be appropriately structured and supported by academics to maximise its benefits.