FORMATIVE FEEDBACK FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
Gerald Hess
Gonzaga University, Institute for Law School Teaching

Assessment is integral to effective learning. Learning is a loop in which teachers facilitate students’ active learning, students perform, and teachers provide students feedback that shows how students’ learning and performance can be improved. Assessment can be summative or formative. Summative assessment, such as a final paper or exam at the end of a course, is designed primarily to measure student performance and assign grades. Formative assessment is intended to provide students feedback to complete the learning loop.

Formative feedback to students

Characteristics of Effective, Formative Feedback to Students

• Specific. Feedback is most valuable when teachers articulate criteria for student performance, students perform, and students receive feedback based on the criteria.
• Corrective. Feedback is directed at behavior that students can change; it identifies the weaknesses of the students’ work, and provides strategies for improvement.
• Positive. Feedback identifies for students what they did well and encourages them to build on those strengths in future performances.
• Timely. Feedback is prompt; the longer the delay between the students’ performance and the feedback, the less effective it will be. Timely formative feedback comes when students have an opportunity to use it to improve their performance on future work.

Sources of Formative Feedback to Students in Large Classes

• Self-assessment. An important skill for lawyers, is the ability to monitor their own understanding. Consequently, students need to learn to assess their own performance.
• Peers. Students can provide feedback on one another’s learning when they work in groups on collaborative projects or they review each other’s performance on quizzes, practice exams, or lawyering skills.
• External reviewers. Lawyers and judges from the community are a valuable sources of feedback on student performances of skills such as counseling, negotiating, or advocacy.
• Computer programs. Computer lessons allow students to learn at their own pace and provide continuous feedback as students respond to questions.
• Teachers. Teachers can give valuable feedback to large groups in several ways.
  In-class writing exercises and quizzes. Multiple-choice questions or short writing exercises are excellent vehicles for in-class quizzes. Students are actively involved in their own learning teachers can give immediate feedback through class discussion.
  Web site writing exercises and quizzes. Teachers can pose problems or quizzes and give written group feedback on the course web site.
  Practice exams. Practice exams which follow a format similar to the graded exams are an excellent learning tool for students. Teachers can give group feedback by discussing in class common strengths and weaknesses of the student responses or by talking through with the students how the teacher would have approached the exam. Teachers can provide feedback to the class by putting a sample paper or exam response on an overhead projector and grading it in class, speaking aloud the teacher’s comments. Teachers can facilitate students’ self-assessment of practice exams by posting on reserve in the library or on the course web site a score sheet, model answers, and sample student answers. Then, teachers can offer to review student responses in individual conferences.

Formative feedback to teachers

Formative feedback is crucial to teachers as well. Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross have led a formative feedback movement in higher education known as Classroom Assessment. Classroom Assessment helps teachers discover how well their students are learning. It encourages teachers to collect frequent feedback about their students’ learning and how they respond to different teaching techniques. Teachers can use that feedback to redesign their instruction to improve their teaching effectiveness and enhance their students’ learning.

Many Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are appropriate for law school.

• Teacher-designed feedback form - gather students’ opinions during the course on the effectiveness of teaching and learning methods.
• Student advisory teams - provide ongoing feedback and suggestions to teachers throughout the course.
• Minute papers - students respond in writing to questions about their learning during the last few minutes of class.

The essence of successful use of CATs is for teachers to gather brief, frequent feedback on student learning, to report back to students on the results of the CAT, to modify subsequent instruction in response to student learning, and to implement reasonable student suggestions.

Brief Formative Feedback Bibliography

Books
Greg Munro, Outcomes Assessment for Law Schools (Inst. for Law School Teach. 2000)
Gerald Hess & Steve Friedland, Techniques for Teaching Law (Carolina Acad. Pr.1999)
Marlene LeBrun & Richard Johnstone, The Quiet Revolution: Improving Student Learning in Law (Wm. W. Gaunt & Sons, 1994)
Angelo, Thomas A. and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (Jossey-Bass, 2nd ed. 1993)
Articles
Terri LeClercq, Principle 4: Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback, 49 J. Legal Educ. 418 (1999).
Gerald Hess, Student Involvement in Improving Law Teaching and Learning, 67 UMKC L. Rev. 343 (1999).
Videotape
Gerald Hess, Paula Lustbader, Laurie Zimet, “Principles to Enhance Legal Education,” Institute for Law School Teaching (2001).