Comparative judgment as a formative assessment activity in legal education

The poster will present a research project on the use of adaptive comparative judgment in legal education with the purpose of supporting law students’ understanding of quality work. Comparative judgment in this context is about letting students compare different administrative decisions in pairs. Approximately 300 law students will be involved during an administrative law course. Groups of 30 students will assess administrative decisions of varying quality. During the iterative process of pairwise comparison of decisions; students chose which one is better, and justify their choice based on assessment criteria for legal method, language, and content. Using learning analytics, the judgment of these legal decisions will be ranked for each student group in terms of quality. This ranking along with the student comments and experiences from the assessment activity will serve as a foundation for group discussion about quality in legal decisions in public administration. The project aims to investigate whether and how comparative judgement may contribute to support the students in developing a better understanding of variations and levels of quality in legal work. Data will be collected through observation, semi-structured group interviews, learning analytics and a student survey.QC 20221201