Designing Success: Motivating and Measuring Successful 1L Student Engagement in an Optional, Proficiency-Based Program Teaching Grammar and Punctuation

Abstract

Clear, error-free writing is an essential skill for attorneys and crucial point of evaluation by potential employers, clients, and judges. But does ability to identify and correct errors of punctuation and grammar correlate with outcomes in law school and on the bar? What role, if any, does student motivation play? Can a course intended to improve skills for all students, but particularly to increase relative proficiency in lower-performing students, designed as optional, motivated by students' aspirations for a professional future, and whose goal is proficiency, not a grade, enhance autonomy and engagement in ways that pay off in student buy-in and performance? This paper examines these questions and presents the results of a study of five first-year (1L) law school classes, totaling nearly 1500 students.The study tracked each student's skill in grammar and punctuation on pre- and post-instruction assessments, attendance at optional classes and office hours, first-year legal writing grade, first-year GPA, cumulative GPA, and first-time bar passage. The data provide insight into how to predict student success both from an engagement perspective and an initial-skills perspective. Further, the data support the efficacy of self-regulated and mastery learning for fundamental skills that provides students with both the power and the responsibility to shape their own learning in the context of a professional requirement of proficiency. Finally, the data dispel fears that this approach based on proficiency, not ranking, will reduce student motivation, even in the context of the highly competitive law-school environment.