The Reader Services SIS will be sponsoring a program at AALL
Annual Meeting in Indianapolis this summer dealing with the legal
research competence of law students. Specifically, we will be
discussing methods used to measure or evaluate how well students
are learning the sources and processes of legal research. If you
are in an academic setting and teach either a beginning or advanced
legal research course, please take a few minutes to respond to the
following survey. The results of the survey will be presented as
part of the program at the Annual Meeting this summer. Please E-
mail your responses to janto@uofrlaw.urich.edu and not to the list.
1. What is the title of the legal research course you teach?
2. Is this an independent class or a component of another class
(i.e. part of Legal Research & Writing)?
3. Is this a beginning or an advanced level course?
4. What subjects do you consider basic? advanced?
5. What is the length of the course?
6. Do you require students to keep a research journal/log?
7. How is the course graded? Letter, pass/fail, no grade?
8. If graded, how is the final grade for each student determined?
9. Do you require students to take an exam as part of the course?
10. If yes, is it a written exam? If no, please explain.
11. Is the exam comprehensive? If not, please explain.
12. How many questions are on the exam?
13. When is the exam offered? During regularly scheduled finals or
during class time?
14. Do you include CALR in basic research courses?
15. What method of testing do you use? (ie; true/false, multiple
choice, short answer, essay, a combination, or other)
16. If your answer is #combination# or #other#, please explain.
17. Please put an #X# next to each area below that is tested on the
exam.
Primary Sources
___ Reporters
___ Statutory Codes
___ Administrative Law
Secondary Sources
___ Legal Periodical Indexes
___ Legal Encyclopedias
___ American Law Reports
___ Legal Dictionaries
Other
___ West Digests
___ Shepards Citators
___ Legislative History
___ Restatements
___ Looseleafs
18. Do you require students to demonstrate either in act or in
writing any processes of legal research such as the ability to
get from a case in one jurisdiction to a similar case in
another using the West topic and key number system, or the
ability to find a parallel citation using Shepards? If
yes, please explain.
19. Would you be willing to make your exam available to others legal
research instructors?
20. Are there methods other than written exams that you use to
evaluate or measure how well your students are learning to
perform legal research? If so, please explain.
Thank you for your time.
Joyce Manna Janto
Deputy Director of the Law Library
University of Richmond School of Law
janto@uofrlaw.urich.edu
804/289-8223
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