Beyond Course Evaluations: YayNay Sheets

Collecting student evaluation data is a common practice among law professors, but the evaluation data can come too late if not collected until the end of a semester. Opportunities for student feedback happen in every class; at the end of each class period, students can evaluate what just happened in class, and professors can use this information to make immediate adjustments to their teaching. This article argues that law teachers should take advantage of these opportunities for collecting student feedback to improve both the students’ learning experience and the teacher’s teaching experience. The article gives an example of one way to do this feedback collection through daily or weekly “Yay/Nay Sheets.

Beyond Course Evaluations: YayNay Sheets

Collecting student evaluation data is a common practice among law professors, but the evaluation data can come too late if not collected until the end of a semester. Opportunities for student feedback happen in every class; at the end of each class period, students can evaluate what just happened in class, and professors can use this information to make immediate adjustments to their teaching. This article argues that law teachers should take advantage of these opportunities for collecting student feedback to improve both the students’ learning experience and the teacher’s teaching experience. The article gives an example of one way to do this feedback collection through daily or weekly “Yay/Nay Sheets.

THE GRAVELY HOUSE: A Case Study in Twentieth Century Archaeology and Material Culture

Material culture is the domain of the archaeologist. Like any science, the methods used and the answers sought in archaeology have changed, and continue to change, constantly adapting to the world in which they operate. Every century has its own legacy to be uncovered. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries are no exception to this, but their archaeological resources are only just beginning to be investigated. Through this research I sought to examine and represent the home of the Gravely family as a case study in archaeology of the early twentieth century. I first studied the historical record of the family through deeds, newspaper articles, and family records that have been maintained at the Library of Virginia. I then compared this data with the physical remains of the structure that were excavated after the demolition of the home in 2005. Only a few hundred artifacts were uncovered on the site despite a century of occupation. It is my thought that modern attitudes toward disposability will only increase the frequency of this type of occurrence. Emphasis is presently placed on expediently removing waste from peoples’ lives. Because of this, context as traditionally approached by archaeologists, is being destroyed. New construction and developments are being established, taking the place of twentieth century structures, and the information they had to offer is potentially lost. In the twentieth century, the technological advances made in America were enormous; the century began with homes still heated by coal and individuals who spent their lives working in factories. By the close of the century, many homes had personal computers and the job market had transitioned to office jobs with little emphasis on skilled labor. Such dramatic economic and cultural change warrants documentation. The stories of the people of twentieth century America deserve to be told and it has been my intention that this research argues that case. I believe that the Gravely House represents the fate that will befall structures of the twentieth century with increasing frequency in the future. The archaeological value of such structures is questioned due to their recent use, but also because they are documented historically to varying degrees. Demolition is also problematic because of the shift in context that results from it. Once a building is destroyed, its contents are severely fragmented and their relation to each other in the ground is unrelated to the positions they occupied in the structure. Through historic preservation, I believe that these structures can be maintained as they are to supplement the historic record and archaeology will not be necessary. In instances of rapid demolition, however, any salvage archaeology that is allowed to happen will likely require a different approach from traditional archaeology, including, but not limited to, working with historic documents, interviewing local people, and considering outlying contexts such as landfills or material culture distributed through yard sales, and other dispersal processes

Grades Matter; Legal Writing Grades Matter Most

In this study of 380 students in a law school’s 2011 graduating class, the data demonstrates a strong correlation between high performance in legal writing courses and high performance in non-legal writing courses. There is also a strong correlation at the opposite end: low performers in legal writing courses are low performers in non-legal writing courses. This article provides the hard data to support the significance of writing skills by demonstrating the correlation between performance in legal writing courses and performance in other law school courses by comparing grades and Grade Point Averages (GPAs). Of course grades and GPA data are not the sole measures of success, but as other research has indicated, good grades often translate to job interviews, job offers, and ultimately, jobs—the true measure of success these days. With the changing economy, declining employment statistics, downsizing legal employment market, increasing tuition at rates exceeding inflation, and a declining law school applicant pool, legal education cannot simply stand by and hope things get better. Information about how performance in legal writing correlates to law school performance outside of the legal writing course is nowhere close to curing any of these ills. Such information is, however, useful for schools in thinking about how to move forward. Slow as it may be to come or as difficult to manage, law schools must react to these and other changes; part of that reaction should include curricular reform that better prepares students for success—with success defined as after-graduation employment. To aid law schools in thinking about curricular reform, this article proves what legal writing professors and legal education reformers have known for a long time: legal writing courses are the linchpin of legal education

The Long and Winding Road: Developing an Online Research Curriculum

In the realm of online research instruction, electronic research vendors (such as LexisNexis and Westlaw) play various roles in teaching and training law students. Some students take advantage of all free training opportunities, while others ignore even mandatory trainings assigned as supplemental course instruction through a first-year legal writing program. This article details the results of a cooperative initiative among a law professor, a librarian, and the Westlaw and LexisNexis academic account managers, designed to integrate online research instruction into the first-year curriculum. The multiple goals of the initiative included taking advantage of the vendors’ expertise and resources, reinforcing lessons taught in legal research courses, formalizing the online research instruction to all first-year students, and improving law students’ research skills

Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, and Execution

Most law schools now require upper-level students to write a sophisticated legal research paper on a topic of their choice. Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, and Execution guides students through the process of constructing their legal research papers, from topic selection and thesis development to finishing a publishable product. The book walks students through a five-step process for researching and writing scholarly papers and follows multiple published student papers from idea to final execution as a method of illustrating the principles advocated in the text. The book includes up-to-date information about legal research and organizational tools. It also includes “bright ideas” that supplement the text with ideas and examples for student writers. The text may be used as either a required text for a course in Scholarly Legal Writing or a companion guide for students working on scholarly legal writing projects independently

Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, and Execution

Most law schools now require upper-level students to write a sophisticated legal research paper on a topic of their choice. Scholarly Writing: Ideas, Examples, and Execution guides students through the process of constructing their legal research papers, from topic selection and thesis development to finishing a publishable product. The book walks students through a five-step process for researching and writing scholarly papers and follows multiple published student papers from idea to final execution as a method of illustrating the principles advocated in the text. The book includes up-to-date information about legal research and organizational tools. It also includes “bright ideas” that supplement the text with ideas and examples for student writers. The text may be used as either a required text for a course in Scholarly Legal Writing or a companion guide for students working on scholarly legal writing projects independently

Public Procurement Systems: Unpacking Stakeholder Aspirations and Expectations

Around the world, governments are increasingly becoming focused on improving their public procurement regimes. Significant developments include the establishment of internationally shared norms for public procurement systems, while, at the national level, a number of countries have adopted dramatically new public procurement regimes, and others are experimenting with new procurement vehicles, such as framework agreements and electronic reverse auctions, and new procurement schemes, including public-private partnerships. As each of these changes is contemplated, planned, implemented, and then assessed, government leaders and policy makers need a framework of analysis for decision making - a framework based on public procurement goals and understanding stakeholder interests.In this condensed working paper (being delivered at the Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Symposium), we offer such a framework, building on the ideas in Steve Schooner\u27s 2002 article, \u27Desiderata: Objectives for a System of Government Contract Law.\u27 In that article, Schooner outlined nine objectives, or desiderata, of public procurement systems: competition, integrity, transparency, efficiency, customer satisfaction, best value, wealth distribution, risk avoidance, and uniformity. From that starting point, we use stakeholder analysis to further develop the desiderata into a two-part framework to give policy makers and government leaders a tool for public procurement decision making. Just as \u27Desiderata\u27 has contributed to public procurement decision making, this analytical framework can help clarify, and perhaps inform, many of the debates raging around procurement reform

Temporal aspects of polar bear occurrences at field camps in Wapusk National Park, Canada

Wapusk National Park, University of Manitoba, University of Saskatchewan, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Hudson Bay Helicopters, the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, and EarthRangers.Interaction between polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and people is a growing concern for both bear conservation and human safety in a warming Arctic climate. Consequently, the importance of monitoring temporal trends in the proximity of polar bears to people has become critical in managing human-polar bear conflicts. Such concerns are acute in Wapusk National Park in Manitoba, Canada on the Western Hudson Bay coast, where we deployed 18 camera traps at three remote field camps from 2010–2014 (~22,100 camera-days) to monitor the frequency and timing of bears’ visits to those facilities. Following seasonal breakup of Hudson Bay’s sea ice polar bear occurrences at these camps increased throughout the summer and into fall (low in May–July and increasing sharply through August–November and then approaching zero in December when Hudson Bay freezes). We quantified age and sex class and estimated body condition of bears visiting the camps: adult males were most prevalent at Nester One camp close to where adult males congregate at Cape Churchill, whereas the two camps farther south were visited more frequently by females with dependent young, likely traveling to and from a known maternal denning area. Few subadults were observed. As expected, body condition scores declined throughout the on-shore season. Our method of monitoring polar bear occurrence on shore is robust, cost-effective, and non-invasive, and so may provide an economical complement to data gathered through more conventional techniques

Sexual network characteristics, condomless anal intercourse, and the HIV care cascade among MSM living with controlled versus uncontrolled HIV infection in Lima, Peru: a population-based cross-sectional analysis

Background: Despite high rates of HIV transmission among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Lima, Peru, limited data exist on the sexual network characteristics or risk factors for secondary HIV transmission among MSM with uncontrolled HIV infection. We report the frequency of serodiscordant, condomless anal intercourse (CAI) and associated sexual network characteristics among MSM in Lima with detectable HIV viremia and compare to those with undetectable viremia. Methods: This cross-sectional analysis includes MSM who tested positive for HIV-1 during screening for a trial of partner management and STI control (June 2022–January 2023). Participants were tested for HIV, gonorrhoea, chlamydia, and syphilis, and completed questionnaires on their demographic characteristics, sexual identity and behaviour, sexual network structures and engagement in HIV care. Findings: Of 665 MSM, 153 (23%) had detectable (>200 copies/mL) viremia. 75% (499/662) of men living with HIV were previously diagnosed, with 94% (n = 469/499) reporting that they were on ART, and 93% (n = 436/469) virally suppressed. 96% (n = 147/153) of men with detectable viremia reported serodiscordant CAI with at least one of their last three sexual partners, and 74% (n = 106/144) reported the same with all three of their recent partners. In contrast, 62% (n = 302/489) of men with undetectable viral load reported serodiscordant CAI with all of their last three partners (p < 0.01). Interpretation: 23% of men living with HIV in Peru had detectable viremia, of whom almost all (96%) reported recent serodiscordant CAI. The primary gap in the HIV care cascade lies in awareness of HIV serostatus, suggesting that improved access to HIV testing could be a key prevention strategy in Peru. Funding: Funding for this study was provided by NIH/ NIMH grants R01 MH118973 (PI: Clark) and R25 MH087222 (PI: Clark).National Institutes of HealthRevisión por pare