A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Enhancing learning in legal education
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by the academic bodies consulted by the JASB. Third, there is still a belief that traditional
examinations are more rigorous than other assessment mechanisms, despite the volume
of educational literature which points to their shortcomings. Finally, there is also a
tendency for higher education to replicate the experience of earlier generations, so that
teachers tend, almost instinctively one suspects, to adopt the learning and assessment
methods by which they learned.
This is not to suggest that well-designed examinations and coursework essays have no
place in the system.
For example, as Bone (1999: 21) notes, examinations are:
• reasonably efficient
• reliable
• relatively plagiarism proof, and
• easy, in organisational terms, to moderate.
Like all methods, however, they have their shortcomings. Consider the following exercise
as a way of identifying those limits, and, perhaps, beginning to think differently about
assessment.
In Table 23.1 the column headings show a range of levels of performance (based on
Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001) and a set of transferable/legal skills (based on the QAA
Law Benchmark) that could be developed in the law degree. The levels indicate
generically the different kinds of cognitive competence that students might be asked to
demonstrate. These are not terms of art, they convey their ordinary everyday meaning.
‘Remembering’, it follows, is obviously the lowest level, representing the product of what
amounts to memory testing, and ‘creating’ [new knowledge] is equally obviously the
highest. This typology is also broadly reflected in the Benchmark’s references to
‘knowledge and understanding’, ‘application’ and ‘analysis, synthesis, critical judgement
and evaluation’. (Note that Table 23.1 excludes the Benchmark’s ‘autonomy and ability
to learn’ as a separate category. It is, however, reflected in part in the emphasis on
independent research under the heading ‘Legal research’.)
The headings ‘examination’ and ‘coursework’ should be construed traditionally. That
is, ‘examination’ should be understood to mean a summative unseen examination paper
containing a mix of essay and problem questions, and ‘coursework’ means a free-standing
essay or problem question to which the student produces a written answer outside any
controlled environment, again assessed summatively.
You now have two tasks:
1 First place a tick in the relevant box, where you think a skill or cognitive level can be
assessed (even in part) by that method; otherwise leave it blank.
2 Now focus on each cognitive level or skill and identify, by a different colour tick,
which one(s) can be particularly well assessed by examination or coursework. Again,
leave the others blank.