Getting Up to Speed: Understanding the Connection Between Learning Outcomes and Assessments in a Doctrinal Course

Many professors are bristling over the recent changes to the American Bar Association (ABA) Standards and Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Criteria, requiring law schools to have learning outcomes and assessments. While such criteria have existed outside the law school environment for many years, the concepts are new to most law professors. This article explains what a learning outcome is and how to create one. It then explores the flip side to outcomes, assessments. It provides a variety of ways for creating and incorporating assessments into a doctrinal course. More than just providing a basic introduction to outcomes and assessment, the paper explains how the shift to learning outcomes and assessments is good for legal education. With the shift, content knowledge and skill development based on that knowledge becomes the constant and the time it takes to cover material becomes the variable. Both professors and students can be assured learning, and the right learning, is happening. Moreover, through the professor’s focus on a demonstration of knowledge, students will leave law school with a vast skill set designed to allow them to do something with the knowledge they have acquired

Plant Traits are Differentially Linked to Performance in a Semiarid Ecosystem

A central principle in trait‐based ecology is that trait variation has an adaptive value. However, uncertainty over which plant traits influence individual performance across environmental gradients may limit our ability to use traits to infer ecological processes at larger scales. To better understand which traits are linked to performance under different precipitation regimes, we measured above‐ and belowground traits, growth, and reproductive allocation for four annual and four perennial species from a coastal sage scrub community in California under conditions of 50%, 100%, and 150% ambient precipitation. Across water treatments, annual species displayed morphological trait values consistent with high rates of resource acquisition (e.g., low leaf mass per area, low root tissue density, high specific root length), and aboveground measures of resource acquisition (including photosynthetic rate and leaf N concentration) were positively associated with plant performance (reproductive allocation). Results from a structural equation model demonstrated that leaf traits explained 38% of the variation in reproductive allocation across the water gradient in annual species, while root traits accounted for only 6%. Although roots play a critical role in water uptake, more work is needed to understand the mechanisms by which root trait variation can influence performance in water‐limited environments. Perennial species showed lower trait plasticity than annuals across the water gradient and were more variable as a group in terms of trait–performance relationships, indicating that species rely on different functional strategies to respond to drought. Our finding that species identity drives much of the variation in trait values and trait–performance relationships across a water gradient may simplify efforts to model ecological processes, such as productivity, that are potentially influenced by environmentally induced shifts in trait values

Intravenous hMSCs Improve Myocardial Infarction in Mice because Cells Embolized in Lung Are Activated to Secrete the Anti-inflammatory Protein TSG-6

SummaryQuantitative assays for human DNA and mRNA were used to examine the paradox that intravenously (i.v.) infused human multipotent stromal cells (hMSCs) can enhance tissue repair without significant engraftment. After 2 × 106 hMSCs were i.v. infused into mice, most of the cells were trapped as emboli in lung. The cells in lung disappeared with a half-life of about 24 hr, but <1000 cells appeared in six other tissues. The hMSCs in lung upregulated expression of multiple genes, with a large increase in the anti-inflammatory protein TSG-6. After myocardial infarction, i.v. hMSCs, but not hMSCs transduced with TSG-6 siRNA, decreased inflammatory responses, reduced infarct size, and improved cardiac function. I.v. administration of recombinant TSG-6 also reduced inflammatory responses and reduced infarct size. The results suggest that improvements in animal models and patients after i.v. infusions of MSCs are at least in part explained by activation of MSCs to secrete TSG-6

Getting Up to Speed: Understanding the Connection between Learning Outcomes and Assessments in a Doctrinal Course

Many professors are bristling over the recent changes to the American Bar Association (ABA) Standards and Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Criteria, requiring law schools to have learning outcomes and assessments. While such criteria have existed outside the law school environment for many years, the concepts are new to most law professors. This article explains what a learning outcome is and how to create one. It then explores the flip side to outcomes, assessments. It provides a variety of ways for creating and incorporating assessments into a doctrinal course. More than just providing a basic introduction to outcomes and assessment, the paper explains how the shift to learning outcomes and assessments is good for legal education. With the shift, content knowledge and skill development based on that knowledge becomes the constant and the time it takes to cover material becomes the variable. Both professors and students can be assured learning, and the right learning, is happening. Moreover, through the professor’s focus on a demonstration of knowledge, students will leave law school with a vast skill set designed to allow them to do something with the knowledge they have acquired

Sox11 Is Expressed in Early Progenitor Human Multipotent Stromal Cells and Decreases with Extensive Expansion of the Cells

There has been considerable interest in developing new therapies with adult multipotent progenitor stromal cells or mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in organ replacement and repair. To be effectively seeded into scaffolds for therapy, large numbers of cells are needed, but concerns remain regarding their chromatin stability in long-term culture. We therefore expanded four donors of human MSCs (hMSCs) from bone marrow aspirates with a protocol that maintains the cells at low density. MSCs initially proliferated at average doubling times of 24 h and then gradually reached senescence after 8–15 passages (33–55 population doublings) without evidence of immortalization. Comparative genomic hybridization assays of two preparations revealed no abnormalities through 33 population doublings. One preparation had a small amplification of unknown significance in chromosome 7 (7q21:11) after 55 population doublings. Microarray assays demonstrated progressive changes in the transcriptome of the cells. However, the transcriptomes clustered more closely over time within a single passage, rather than with passage number, indicating a partial reversibility of the patterns of gene expression. One of the largest changes was a decrease in mRNA for Sox11, a transcription factor previously identified in neural progenitor cells. Knockdown of Sox11 with siRNA decreased the proliferation and osteogenic differentiation potential of hMSCs. The results suggested that assays for Sox11 may provide a biomarker for early progenitor hMSCs

Environment and Hybrid Influences on Food-Grade Sorghum Grain Yield and Hardness

Few studies have examined grain quality of food-grade sorghum hybrids. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of environment and hybrid on grain quality of commercially available food-grade sorghums. A randomized complete block experiment with three replications was planted in 12 environments, which included the 2004 and 2005 growing seasons and irrigated and dryland water regimes in eastern, central, and west central Nebraska and a dryland low-N environment in eastern Nebraska. Environment accounted for 5 to 140 times greater variation in measured parameters than hybrid, and the hybrid × environment interaction accounted for less than 2% of the total variation. Grain yield and kernel mass varied, with low yields of 1.4 Mg ha−1 and kernels weighing 9.5 g 1000 kernels−1 in the low-N 2004 environment, high grain yields of 10.5 Mg ha−1 under irrigated conditions in central Nebraska in 2005, and kernels weighing 27.8 g 1000 kernels−1 in the eastern Nebraska dryland 2005 environment. Harder grain was produced in 2005 than in 2004, with the west central and central 2005 environments having the lowest tangential abrasive dehulling device (TADD) removals of 14%. Non-food-grade hybrids produced higher grain yields and kernel mass than food-grade hybrids. Grain hardness was greater for nonfood- grade and medium maturity hybrids when environmental means were lower (i.e., softer) but showed little or no difference in hardness when environmental means were high. Nebraska production environments have the capability to produce high quality food-grade sorghums for specific food uses to benefit both the producer and the food processor