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Friday, April 24, 2009
Multiple-choice exams: Clean copy of the rules?
Colin's terrific series of posts (too many to link to) about exams and grading suggests this is a good forum to raise an issue about exam set-up:
In a multiple-choice and short-answer exam in rules-based classes (in my case Civ Pro and Evidence), should you provide students with a clean copy of the rules and statutes? I have been doing M/C in Evidence for six years now and never have provided copies of the rules; my justification has been that I am trying to simulate trial, where quick response is required and there is no time to flip through a book and read the rule. This year I also am doing M/C in Civ Pro and am less sure that not giving the opportunity to find and read the rule is more difficult and less realistic, since there rarely will be a situation in which you will get asked a question about, say, the discovery rules or the diversity statute, and not have a chance to look it up.
Thoughts? Does it make the exam too easy? Is Civ Pro different from Evidence?
Posted by Howard Wasserman on April 24, 2009 at 09:57 AM in Howard Wasserman, Teaching Law | Permalink
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Comments
My Civ Pro exam 1L year wasn't really your traditional exam (it was a take-home short essay exam), so I don't know that it's applicable here. But my Evidence class -- taught by Dan Blinka at Marquette Law -- WAS short answer, and I think his system was a great one. He gave us a copy of Rules 801-804, and, on the hearsay questions, he asked us for specific applicability of ONE subsection per question (i.e., "Here's dialogue from court. Is this admissible under 801(c)(3)?") For all the other rules -- and we had a broad variety of them on the exam -- we were on our own for them.
Personally, I think that's a perfect way to give that particular exam. Frankly, there are judges who have been on the bench for several decades who still can't eloquently decipher and apply the rules governing hearsay and its various exceptions, so it's unfair to expect a law student to do it. But everything else is fairly straight-forward, and we should be able to memorize and apply the rules for those.
Posted by: Andrew Golden | Apr 26, 2009 9:15:46 PM
Atty raises an important issue about what we do in legal education in relation to the bar and about the dreaded "teaching to the Bar." Can we *both* teach them to pass the Bar and to be good lawyers? And if not, which do we emphasize? I have my thoughts, but others likely would disagree. There also is the confounding fact that, according to one recent study of students at Saint Louis University, there is no statistical correlation between taking Bar courses in law school and Bar passage. It seems likely, therefore, that there similarly is no statistical correlation between the manner of testing Bar classes and Bar preparation.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Apr 26, 2009 12:49:47 AM
Interesting that no one has brought up the bar exam, which is of course closed. Open book exams may be closer to actual practice, when we have the opportunity (in most circumstances) to consult the law. But the bar exam is different. I attended a law school where all bar exam subjects were closed book -- no materials permitted for use during the exam and all exams were in class. (My school has a 90%+ pass rate for first time takers.) I suppose at many schools most students are going to pass the bar, but isn't this a factor as well?
Posted by: Atty | Apr 25, 2009 9:25:13 PM
I like your point about needing to do it at a moment's notice in a courtroom. The difference is that in a courtroom you have some idea of the context you're in.
What if you do an exam in two parts.
Part 1: a normal exam, and you give a clean copy of the rules.
Part 2: simulate a courtroom. You give them, beforehand, a context for a courtroom situation. And you ask them questions based on what could come up in that situation.
(Disclaimer: neither a lawyer nor a law student.)
Posted by: Dan Bentley | Apr 25, 2009 4:16:34 AM
In the actual practice of law, if one did not look at the rules before answering a question, he would be committing malpractice. Doesn't seem like the type of thing schools should be encouraging, save for perhaps special situations (e.g., arguably regarding evidence exams, although I imagine the interpretation and application of rules of evidence are relevant not only during trials, but in contexts where a careful parsing of their text, etc. is important. If my impressions are correct, then I would think it best to have the first hour of the exam be an "on your feet" closed-book portion, and the remainder an open book portion.)
Posted by: andy | Apr 24, 2009 7:19:21 PM
Lou:
I used to give a 24-hour take-home for civ pro and I liked it (students were more mixed, but not universally opposed). I moved away from that this year because I am teaching an overload and have almost too many students to grade that many full take-homes in less than a week. This semester, I supplemented the multiple-choice with two take-home essays, one of which will be handed out on the last day of class and due when they show up for the exam. So in a manner of speaking, my exam is a combo of one take-home exam question and the in-class M/C.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Apr 24, 2009 3:44:55 PM
For the reasons listed in my "open everything" exam post, I have "open everything" exams in both classes. That said, I would say that Evidence if much better suited for a closed book exam than Civil Procedure because (a) as you note, in court you need an instant recall of rules of evidence to make contemporaneous objections whereas you rarely need instant recall of rules of civil procedure, (b) it seems harder to memorize the rules of civil procedure than the rules of evidence based upon specific time limits and geographic limitations etc.
Posted by: Colin Miller | Apr 24, 2009 1:46:30 PM
There's a critical distinction between evidence and civ pro that, to my mind, virtually forces one to allow civ pro students access to a clean copy of the rules: In civ pro, the exact text of the rule at issue matters; in evidence, it really does not, because the Fed. R. Evid. (with a couple of exceptions) merely summarize and codify common-law concepts. If you don't get the common-law concepts, having a copy of the Fed. R. Evid. won't do you a lot of good; even a thorough understanding of the Field Code and common-law motion practice, though, won't help in the face of the text of the Fed. R. Civ. Proc.
In either case, though, all you're doing is providing a prompt to avoid a misstatement on the exam; students who don't already have a good understanding of the rules will almost certainly not be able to use the clean copy as a substitute!
Posted by: C.E. Petit | Apr 24, 2009 12:50:28 PM
No exam will ever be "too easy." At least one student will be challenged, even by what you and I might believe is a "gimme" question.
In my Secured Transactions, Payment Systems, and Bankruptcy courses, I allow students to access their marked-up versions of the relevant Codes.
Posted by: Tim Zinnecker | Apr 24, 2009 12:37:07 PM
I say let them have the rules. It seems to me that simulated motion writing is more realistic than simulated trial performance.
Posted by: dwk | Apr 24, 2009 11:46:26 AM
In both my civ pro classes and in my UCC Sales classes, I allow clean copies of the rules or statutory text. This has worked well. But, in reality, I don't think my students have the time to really thumb through text for an in-class exam.
This leads me to wonder, do many folks offer take-home exams for the fist year? My sense is that a take-home is somewhat common in the upper-division, but not in the 1L curriculum. Thoughts?
Posted by: Lou Mulligan | Apr 24, 2009 10:35:12 AM
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