Law in Contemporary Society

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TimelySubmissionOfGrades 39 - 09 Jul 2012 - Main.JaredMiller
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           Days after we finished our finals we received the following email from the Dean of our law school which I am reposting here:

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 Marc, I completely agree - that said, radical change (such as a complete reorientation of 1L away from an exam-oriented approach) is unlikely to be achieved through a polite dialogue with Dean Schizer and some other administration members. I've been thinking about Eben's comment in an old interview about how he, Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler and Pamela Samuelson each took different roles in advocating for free software, with Eben being the "bad boy" while others played the role of public figure and industry diplomat. In a similar vein, it might be beneficial to organize a meeting and discuss strategy and tactics, including the possibility of delegating to individuals or subgroups responsibility for presenting palatable reforms (i.e. making exams more transparent) to the administration with the aim of getting them enacted, while others provide systemic criticisms and advocate for broader structural reform through organizing the student body.

One reform that I believe would represent a significant improvement over the current grading system would be to replace the grading curve with a standards-based system, where an "A" corresponds to "x level of achievement" rather than "x percentile of the class." This is quite a large change, however, and would probably require implementing some smaller reforms first (like as I mentioned above, an upfront assessment policy with outcomes and details of assessments and a post-exam analysis of student performance and the exam itself) to familiarize staff with the new tools necessary to make the switch. So building on the division-of-labor/distinguishing roles within reform advocates idea, perhaps one individual or group can argue for this, taking the long-view, while others can present the more achievable short-term incremental reforms.

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Hey Rohan, Just a side note: That interview sounds intriguing, but I can only seem to get a preview without paying. Do you (or Eben) have the full version? Thanks. -- JaredMiller - 09 Jul 2012

Revision 39r39 - 09 Jul 2012 - 04:07:00 - JaredMiller
Revision 38r38 - 08 Jul 2012 - 13:40:38 - RohanGrey
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