Course Documents

E. Forms for eliciting feedback about community placements

These documents are examples of letters and evaluation forms that I have used in past years to solicit written information from community partners about their experiences working on a project with a law student, and from law students about their community partner. At least when the system works as I have intended it, at the beginning of the semester, both the students and their partners receive a copy of these forms, together with a cover letter from me explaining that they will be used at the end of the semester. The idea is that no one should be taken by surprise by the evaluation. Perhaps more important, the form itself suggests some things about the kinds of behaviors we hope to see from students and their collaborators.

Having said all that, I should also note that many community partners (and probably students as well) are too busy to spend a lot of time unnecessarily perusing blank forms. Certainly at the end of the semester I do not expect either of them to have retained the form. Instead I hand out to students, and mail out to community partners, a second copy of their respective forms, together with a request that they now complete it.

A second observation is that written forms of this kind seldom provide what a researcher would think of as high quality information. Most collaborators and students alike are polite and relatively conflict averse; they often want to avoid burning bridges; they are usually pressed for time; the forms are pretty dry. All these factors add up to a strong likelihood that the little paper form will contain not that much helpful information. Teachers and students should look for more meaningful ways of getting helpful feedback whenever possible, including face-to-face interactions and focus groups if appropriate. One step I take when I can is to call the community collaborator after I have received the written form, and follow it up with a phone conversation. Of course, with my students, I can follow up in class or in individual meetings.

I have also discovered that if we conduct some in-class mini-evaluations of different aspects of the course as the semester goes forward, these evaluations can give students some good ideas about ways they might want to elicit evaluative comments from their own collaborators.

At any rate, to see these imperfect instruments:

click here for the community partner form,

and here for the law student form.

 

course documents continued | < previous | 5 of 5 |