volume 16, number 1 - UDC Law Review

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\\jciprod01\productn\D\DCR\16-1\DCR104.txt unknown Seq: 10 29-JAN-13 10:2626 UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA LAW REVIEWof mastery (competence), and to connect with faculty, other students, and communitypartners (relatedness). 60 Community projects are believed to “constitutepowerful and instructional ‘texts.’” 61The students who worked on this project were enrolled in the General PracticeClinic at the Catholic University of America. 62 By the time they administered thesurvey, they had three months of clinical legal education and all had some experiencewith individual client representation. All of them had expressed an interestin policy work. Between September and early November, Professor Pumar led aforty-five minute seminar once a week for six weeks. The seminar was held whenstudents would otherwise have been in the clinic as part of their regularly scheduledoffice hours.During this seminar, students learned how to implement a research process togather empirical evidence, from conceptualization through data collection. As aresult, they began to understand the interdependence of the different phases of aresearch enterprise. Students also learned how the length and design of questionnairesaffect the rate of completed surveys. Students received instruction in researchmethods during the first two weeks of the seminar and then workedcollaboratively on formulating the survey questionnaire and collecting data. 63Another topic of discussion in the seminar was the importance of devising measuringschemes to gather sufficient and persuasive data. As part of this exercise,the students were asked to formulate and bring to class questions they thoughtshould be included in the survey. The students examined different strategies tomanage the return rate of surveys. This aspect of the seminar was important forthe success of the project because this measurement provides a reliable calculationof the validity of the survey findings. 64 Finally, Professor Pumar instructed60 Id.61 Ira Harkavy & Matthew Hartley, Pursuing Franklin’s Dream: Philosophical and HistoricalRoots of Service-Learning, 46 AM. J. COMMUNITY PSYCHOL. 418, 420 (2010).62 Students enroll in the General Practice Clinic for six credits, with an option, under certaincircumstances, to continue for three to six credits in subsequent semesters. They are expected to bepresent in the clinic for twenty hours per week. Students work in teams and represent two to fiveclients (depending on the scope or complexity of the cases) in civil matters including child support,special education, estate planning, consumer, and public benefit cases. Participation in this projectcounted as work on one case.63 Ultimately, we did not discuss any arrangements to support the data analysis effort in ourseminars because asking students to analyze the data would have required more expertise than thestudents possessed and would have interfered with their end of semester final examinations.64 The rate of returns in surveys is the outcome of the division of the number of people whowere asked to complete the survey by the actual number of those who completed the questionnaire.The rate of return measures the validity of surveys. If the questionnaire is too long, unattractive,inaccessible, or contains irrelevant questions, the population one asks to participate in the study islikely to decline to participate. Sufficient number of rejections, in turn, would affect the reliability ofsurvey research because it undermines the general applicability of the questionnaire tool. See FLOYDJ. FOWLER, JR., IMPROVING SURVEY QUESTIONS: DESIGN AND EVALUATION (Susan McElroy, ed.,1995).
\\jciprod01\productn\D\DCR\16-1\DCR104.txt unknown Seq: 11 29-JAN-13 10:26THE PLURAL OF ANECDOTE IS NOT DATA 27students on how to conduct a pretest. Pretests provide an opportunity for a researcherto perfect the survey questionnaire and to test some of the methodologicalassumptions supporting the research process. The pretest provides the lastopportunity to tweak any aspect of the research before it is fully implemented. Atthe conclusion of the survey, Professor Pumar analyzed the data. Asking studentsto analyze data would have interfered with their final examinations. To enhancetheir learning, students recorded their observations about their work on the surveyand their thoughts about access to justice in administrative hearings. 65A. Framing the Research QuestionThe first step in framing the research question was for all the students andboth faculty members to observe at least one UI appeal hearing in which theparties were self-represented. In these hearings, the ALJs routinely provided theparties with an overview of the hearing process and clarified procedural issues asthey surfaced. Among ALJs there were slight variations, but most communicatedthe same basic information to parties—that the hearing would be recorded, theorder of presenting the case, and the burden of proof. Even so, students notedthat most self-represented parties seemed uncertain about the order in whichthings would occur during the hearing, what information would best prove theircases, and how to respond to the other party’s evidence. It was clear that this wasthe first time some parties had heard this information. One student wrote:The employee seemed confused about her role and responsibilities in thehearing, basically tipping off to the Judge and the employer [about] her theoriesregarding the case and seeming to think that she had to make a longwindedstatement in order to prevail. Most puzzling, she didn’t take any65 Asking students to write about their experiences is consistent with best practices in legaleducation as well as consistent with the goals of service learning as articulated by Yi Lu who notedthat “[b]y providing reflection opportunities, instructors facilitate students processing their values andgoals and moving beyond individual experience to consider broader implications of their service.”(citations omitted) Yi Lu & Kristina T. Lambright, Looking Beyond the Undergraduate Classroom:Factors Influencing Service Learning’s Effectiveness at Improving Graduate Students’ ProfessionalSkills, 58 C. TEACHING 118, 119 (2010). It is also consistent with best practices in legal education. SeeAM. BAR ASS’N: SECTION OF LEGAL EDUC. AND ADMISSIONS TO THE BAR, MACCRATE REPORT: ANEDUCATIONAL CONTINUUM REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON LAW SCHOOLS AND THE PROFESSION:NARROWING THE Gap (1992), available at http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/publications/maccrate.html#A.%20Reasons%20for%20a%20Statement.See also Marcy L. Karin & RobinR. Runge, Toward Integrated Law Clinics that Train Social Change Advocates, 17 CLINICAL L. REV.563, 567-68 (2011). “The integrated approach to clinical education provides one of the bestframeworks for creating optimal learning experience for law students by providing multiple, differentopportunities to experience lawyering, to reflect on what happened or was done, to interpret the taskor event and to see it in a larger context of social change lawyering, thereby enabling them to effectivelyapply their experience in the future.”
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