Creative Approaches: Faculty Spotlights

Kristin Collins
Associate Professor
School of Law

"I give weekly mini-quizzes in my Civil Procedure class using the assessment feature on Courseinfo. Each quiz consists of two to four multiple choice or true/false questions based on the prior week's materials, so they are designed to facilitate review. First year law students are anxious. They generally have little experience with legal reasoning and they face an exam at the end of the semester that usually determines their entire grade. My goal is to get them to think like lawyers about the cases and rules we read and to give them lots of practice at it. Practice makes perfect."

"I post the quiz on Courseinfo on the same afternoon every week, and the students are expected to complete it by a set time the next morning. So, for example, last year I posted the quiz every Tuesday by 3:30 pm and the students were required to take the quiz by 8:30 the next morning in time for our 9:30 class. On the honor system, students are supposed to take the quiz alone, closed book. I would then use the first 15-20 minutes of class (sometimes more, sometimes less) to go over the questions."

"Courseinfo grades the quizzes instantly, giving feedback to each student for right and wrong answers (feedback that I supply in advance through the program). Courseinfo also allows me to track individual student performance or the overall performance on each question. I am much more interested in the overall performance, as it tells me whether 90% or 9% of the students answered a question on, say, personal jurisdiction correctly. In my lecture, I can revisit a concept that just didn’t get through the first time. The quizzes generate very good Q&A about the ambiguity of a legal doctrine. They also force me to include regular review of material, which is easy to leave off for fear of falling behind."

"At first the students are horrified by the idea of a weekly quiz. But the only 'grade' they receive is a participation mark – I treat failure to take a quiz like failure to be prepared for class. Generally, the feedback I receive from students is very positive."

"The Courseinfo assessment technology can be used for all manner of tests, quizzes, reviews, etc. The technology is simple. It takes about five minutes to learn the basics and about ten minutes to master."

"Writing the quizzes was very time consuming and there may be a faster way (for example, using bar exam questions). On the other hand, writing the questions forced me to get inside the material and to see it from the perspective of the students. I'm not a big believer in short-answer questions for purposes of student evaluation, and I tend not to use that format on my final exam, but I think this is a great teaching tool."

Kristin Collins’ research interests include gender and law, legal history, federal courts, and civil procedure. She has written on equal protection, citizenship law, the history of federal regulation of the family, and modern federalism jurisprudence. Her current research focuses on the origins of family welfare policy and the legal construction of the family and gender in early nineteenth-century administrative law.

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