Course Documents

D. A guidance memo for students about their end-of-semester reports

Both the students and the teacher need some kind of vehicle in a fieldwork class that will memorialize the student’s project and provide a place for reflection and assessment. In my classes that vehicle usually comes in the form of a Final Report. Given the wide range of projects, divergent modes of documentation, and special issues associated with group work, the guidelines need to be highly adaptable by each individual or team. At the same time, in the midst of so much flexibility and variation, law students are often hungry for structure. The document posted here shows the approach I took one semester in an effort to give students some additional guidance. In it I set out which parts of the report were to be completed individually and which parts could be done collaboratively, I gave students some ideas about what I meant by “reflection” (since I have learned that the term “reflection” is often received by students as a pretty opaque signal), and I encouraged them to document their project in various ways.

It is always a challenge for me to explain intelligibly what I am looking for in final reports, since projects and students can be so different one from another. One reason I have built this website is to find good ways for law students to learn from other students about interesting ways they might represent their work and reflect upon it.

To see the guidance memo, click here.

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