Measuring Learning Outcomes and Competencies

The new ABA accreditation standards are out, and we’ll need to start making adjustments to how we assess what our students learn.     The standards are intended to move law schools in the direction of learning outcomes, while still requiring certain inputs into the law school learning environment.  The word “competency” makes its debut in the standards (appearing three times) and the phrase “learning outcomes” debuts with ten appearances.

Most notably, according to revised standard 301(b), a “law school shall establish and publish learning outcomes.”  Revised standard 302 takes areas of law and practice in which we are currently required to “provide instruction” and mandates that we now establish learning outcomes in those areas:

Standard 302. LEARNING OUTCOMES

A law school shall establish learning outcomes that shall, at a minimum, include competency in the following:

(a) Knowledge and understanding of substantive and procedural law;

(b) Legal analysis and reasoning, legal research, problem-solving, and written and oral communication in the legal context;

(c) Exercise of proper professional and ethical responsibilities to clients and the legal system; and

(d) Other professional skills needed for competent and ethical participation as a member of the legal profession.”

New standard 315 states that we must conduct ongoing evaluation of our learning outcomes and assessment methods:

Standard 315. EVALUATION OF PROGRAM OF LEGAL EDUCATION, LEARNING OUTCOMES, AND ASSESSMENT METHODS

The dean and the faculty of a law school shall conduct ongoing evaluation of the law school’s program of legal education, learning outcomes, and assessment methods; and shall use the results of this evaluation to determine the degree of student attainment of competency in the learning outcomes and to make appropriate changes to improve the curriculum.

Many in the clinical community have become accustomed to evaluating and measuring student performance, so these changes present less of a sea change and more of an opportunity to re-examine and upgrade our practices.

I am lucky to work in an interprofessional context in which I can learn from my psychology and social work colleagues, whose accreditation standards have long required competency based educational models.  The National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology bases its model on six measurable core competencies.  The Council on Social Work Education has identified ten core competencies which are defined as “measurable practice behaviors that are comprised of knowledge, values, and skills.”

While we at the Interprofessional Center have been engaged in interprofessional practice for over a decade, our assessment tools have remained focused on our individual disciplines.  Each supervisor evaluates her or his  students by discipline specific tools.  Over the past year, we have been looking to the health professions for models for identifying and assessing interprofessional collaboration competencies.  As a result, we have been learning not only from other health professions, but from each other in terms of how to assess our students’ development.  Relying very heavily on the work of others, we have modified and developed a set of Interprofessional Collaboration Competencies and are working this year to implement and measure them with our students engaged in practice.  Stay tuned for more on how we are trying to accomplish that task.

Virgil Wiebe, University of St. Thomas (MN)