The Impact of Active Learning Sessions on Law School Performance: An Empirical Study

“Active learning” – where law students actively participate in the learning process, rather than passively receive information from the “sage on the stage” – has become a cornerstone of the calls for reform in legal education. But academic support programs have been using active learning techniques for a long time. The legal academy generally, not just academic support professionals, should appreciate the effectiveness of active learning in improving students’ law school performance. This article is a both a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of a comprehensive Active Learning (“AL”) program at St. Thomas University School of Law. St. Thomas runs approximately 200 AL sessions per year. Attendance is voluntary and open to all first-year students. The sessions are tied to the students’ four doctrinal courses (Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property, and Torts). Upperclass Active Learning Instructors conduct the sessions, and are closely supervised by the doctrinal professors and the Director and Coordinator of Academic Support. Using attendance records at the sessions for the past three years, we performed numerous statistical tests of the effectiveness of the AL program in improving students’ performance as measured by their grades. By every measure, attendance at the AL program was tied to a startling boost in students’ grades. For example, we performed a multiple regression on students’ cumulative first-year law school grade point average (“LGPA”), using AL attendance, LSAT score, undergraduate GPA, gender, ethnicity, age, and other factors as independent variables. We found that as a student’s attendance at AL sessions increases from 0% attendance to 100% attendance, his or her cumulative LGPA for the first year is expected to increase by about 0.47 on a 4.0 scale – holding all other variables, such as LSAT score, constant. This means that a student with 0% AL attendance who would otherwise earn a 2.2 LGPA is expected to earn a 2.67 LGPA with 100% AL attendance. At a 95% confidence interval, this increase in LGPA could be as low as 0.33 or as high as 0.61 (on a 4.0 scale). The probability that, by chance, AL attendance would have this large a positive relationship to LGPA is less than 0.01%, conventionally termed “statistically significant” at the 99% level. Moreover, it appears that the positive relationship between AL attendance in the first year and LGPA continues into the second and third years. What is the AL program doing right? In accord with recent studies of legal education and ASPs, the AL program offers several advantages. First, the ALIs are students one year senior to the incoming class. They are carefully selected for both their teaching aptitude and for their successful academic performance in their first year, usually with the very professor they now join as an ALI. This strengthens their credibility with the incoming students. Second, the frequency of the sessions solidifies the students’ gains. Third, the less formal atmosphere and usually smaller class size allows for “AL” exercises – such as worksheets, short essay questions, and practice exams – that the students complete individually or in groups and on which they receive immediate or prompt feedback. Fourth, a primary goal of the sessions is to teach the students independent studying and learning skills – but tied to a particular doctrinal subject. For example, students learn to read statutes in general by learning how to read the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Fifth, the ALIs are under continuous supervision by the professor, the academic support department, and the ALI “team leader.” If anything goes awry, it is quickly noticed and corrected. In addition to statistical analyses of the database, we include a description of the AL program, including students’ reflections on the program, and a sample AL exercise. We hope to display the benefits of active learning to an audience in the legal academy wider than academic support professionals.