Teaching Resources

A sea change is coming. Changes to the ABA Standards, coupled with mandates from regional accreditors, will soon require every law school to adopt, implement, and use an institutional assessment plan based on the achievement of desired student learning outcomes. Is your school ready? This guide, intended for law school administrators and faculty, will walk you through the process step by step, answering questions, giving tips on best practices, and, perhaps most importantly, providing you with an action list for developing your school's assessment planning strategy. Our goal is for you to finish this guide with a completed assessment plan in hand and an appreciation of how you can use outcomes assessment to enhance your students' learning experience. "Student Learning Outcomes and Law School Assessment is an excellent tool for any legal or general academic setting that is reviewing what specialized schools are undertaking. . . It is a valuable purchase that can help make your work easier." --Duane A. Strojny, Law Library Journal

The highly anticipated second edition of Understanding by Design poses the core, essential questions of understanding and design, and provides readers with practical solutions for the teacher-designer.  The book opens by analyzing the logic of backward design as an alternative to coverage and activity-oriented plans.  Though backward from habit, this approach brings more focus and coherence to instruction.  The text proposes a multifaceted approach, with the six "facets" of understanding.  The facets combine with backward design to provide a powerful, expanded array of practical tools and strategies for designing curriculum, instruction, and assessments that lead students at all grade levels to genuine understanding.  The second edition, a refined work, has been thoroughly and extensively revised, updated, and expanded, including improvement of the UbD Template, the key terms of UbD, dozens of worksheets, and some of the larger concepts. The authors have successfully put together a text that demonstrates what best practice in the design of learning looks like, enhancing for its audience their capability for creating more engaging and effective learning, whether the student is a third grader, a college freshman, or a faculty member.