Under Pressure: How Incorporating Time-Pressured Performance Tests Prepares Students for the Bar Exam and Practice

“Houston, we have a problem.” In 1970, an explosion on board the Apollo 13 spacecraft’s flight to the moon damaged the air filtration system, causing carbon monoxide to build up in the cabin. The astronauts on board would be dead in mere hours if the system could not be fixed or replaced. NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, Texas called for engineers, scientists, and technicians to work with a set of materials identical to those on the spacecraft to build a filtration system under extreme time pressure. The result may have been ugly, inelegant, and far from perfect, but it saved the astronauts’ life. The Apollo 13 situation may be a dramatic example of problem solving, creativity, and completing a task under extreme time pressure with life or death consequences; however, lawyers also work in stressful environments, under time pressure, while juggling multiple tasks involving life, liberty, or millions of dollars. How do recent law school graduates perform when facing a time-sensitive task when the stakes are high, when they are accustomed from law school of having several weeks or more, with feedback along the way, to complete that type of assignment? To prepare students for the bar exam and teach them the fundamental lawyering skills needed for legal practice, legal education should incorporate, into the law school curriculum, performance tests consisting of time-pressured assessments. While time-pressured performance assessments may push students out of their comfort zone, they are realistic to legal practice and necessary to help students develop the competencies needed for success on the bar exam and high-stakes legal practice, such as rapid cognitive processing, application, synthesis, and effective articulation. This Article offers such an initiative to help law students, law schools, and the legal profession. At a time of declining bar passage rates, the adoption of the Uniform Bar Exam, a majority of jurisdictions incorporating a Multistate Performance Test component, a competitive legal job market, and an expectation of practice-ready law graduates, the time is urgent to adequately prepare law students

Mind, Brain, and Education: A Case Study of Student Perceptions of an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program

Advances in developmental and neuroscience research, calls for educational reform, and an emphasis on interdisciplinarity have generated interest in how science might inform educational practice and policy, resulting in the emerging field of mind, brain, and education (MBE). A primary goal of the field is to connect the cognitive and developmental sciences, biology, and education to develop a scientific grounding for educational practice and policy. Interdisciplinary MBE graduate programs seek to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners. The purpose of this case study is to investigate students’ perceptions of their experiences developing interdisciplinary understanding in an MBE graduate program; how these perceptions vary based on student characteristics; and, to explore student perceptions of the potential and limitations of MBE to address educational problems. The findings suggest students gain interdisciplinary knowledge and skills in the program; are able to synthesize and produce integrative understandings to apply to problems in education; and, that the MBE program positively affects their appreciation for interdisciplinary research and their readiness to collaborate on interdisciplinary research. The results suggest students perceive the diversity of the knowledge, skills, and backgrounds of the cohort and participation in a lab/research experience are among the most supportive aspects of their experience in interdisciplinary learning and understanding, as well as in their future interdisciplinary work. Students leave having thought critically about a wide variety of tensions, uncertainties, and power imbalances in the interdisciplinary work of MBE and feel prepared to participate in collaborative research and begin the slow, and significant, process of change to improve education. The study is unique in exploring student perceptions of an MBE program and contributes to the literature on students’ development of interdisciplinary understanding and on educators’ beliefs about the potential of MBE to influence educational practice and policy. The study offers insight to institutions and individuals interested in developing interdisciplinary programs to advance the field of MBE and address some of the complex issues facing education today

Contemporary Teaching Strategies: Effectively Engaging Millennials Across the Curriculum

(Excerpt) Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. - Chinese Proverb American Bar Association ( ABA ) Standard 314, Assessment of Student Learning, requires law schools to utilize both formative and summative assessment methods in its curriculum to measure and improve student learning and provide meaningful feedback to students. This article will connect multiple formative assessments to Bloom\u27s taxonomy to demonstrate how law teachers can transform and enhance student learning, while promoting key steps in the self-regulated learning cycle. First, it is imperative law teachers understand the education background and social landscape that our students, mostly Millennials, bring to law school. We can acknowledge that our Millennial students are different, but what does this really mean and how does this affect our teaching and their learning? Next, effective application of ABA Standard 314 requires law teachers to understand self-regulated learning and the connection between the stages of learning and various formative assessments. To ensure that we are meeting this challenge, law teachers must become facilitators of learning. By serving as facilitators, we acknowledge the importance of involving students in the learning process from the very beginning. This will ultimately result in shifting the focus from the instructor\u27s teaching to student learning. While there are various teaching methods, we will explore contemporary teaching strategies as a means of encouraging a student-centered learning environment. Utilizing contemporary teaching strategies fosters an environment that is ripe for effective formative assessment in our courses. This article will address contemporary teaching strategies for effectively engaging Millennials across the law school curriculum. Part I will examine the experiences that define Millennials and how they learn best. In Part II, we analyze the impact of ABA Standard 314 on law schools. Part III discusses self-regulated learning and metacognition as tools for lifelong learning. In Part IV, we explore how the student-centered classroom enhances student learning. Finally, Part V demonstrates how Bloom\u27s taxonomy can serve as a framework for effective formative assessment

Midterm evaluation Research 2016-2018:

The research of TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (Faculteit Bouwkunde) covers the full spectrum of design, engineering, planning, and management of the built environment. Its research portfolio comprises the research that is conducted by four departments: Architecture Architectural Engineering + Technology (AE+T) Management in the Built Environment (MBE) Urbanism The faculty’s research focusses specifically at improving the design and performance of buildings, districts, cities and regions in order to better meet the requirements and expectations of their users and communities. From that perspective, much of the research that is conducted can be understood as applied science, appealing to the curiosity and the needs of other researchers, practitioners and the broader public alike. The research is a blend of humanities, social and engineering sciences. The humanities are strongest represented in the Architecture department, social sciences in the MBE and Urbanism departments, while the engineering sciences find their strongest representation in AE+T

Crazy by design : brain research and adolescence : implications for classroom teaching, teacher learning and possibilities of teacher research

This research aims to influence teacher understandings of brain research and its implications for teaching adolescents by addressing the following issues: 1. What are the implications of changes in the adolescent brain for teaching and teachers and the adolescent learning environment? 2. How can teachers better accommodate knowledge of the brain into their understandings and pedagogical practices for adolescents? 3. What can the use of a teacher-as-researcher model contribute to teacher learning in understanding brain research and the adolescent learning environment? To address these questions, this research aimed to: 1. Design, implement and evaluate a teacher learning package that would fill a gap in teacher knowledge by strengthening teacher knowledge of current brain research and deepen teacher understanding of the connection between this research and the adolescent learning environment. 2. Support a team of teachers to use an action research methodology to apply brain-research-informed pedagogical practices, learning tools and ‘essential understandings’ of adolescents in mainstream adolescent educational learning environments to improve educational experience and success. 3. Develop a further teacher learning package that: i) Builds the capacity of teachers outside of my research, and leaders of teachers, to implement action research processes in their own context to improve practice. ii) Describes how teachers at Purple High School (PHS) worked as teacher researchers to use brain research to improve the educational experience and success of adolescent learners, and what they learned about action research as teacher learning. This research addresses these aims and questions by telling the story of three inter-related projects. It engaged with three areas: with neuroscience, with teacher-as-researcher and with the teacher-learning literature and research and built connections to teacher praxis