Using Standardized Course Shells to Enhance Student Learning and Improve Assessment Results

The use of standardized shells for some courses can help improve student learning. The standard shell includes a weekly outline, inclass exercises, PPTs, quizzes, and tests similar to the types of standardized shells used by online courses. All of the secondary materials are correlated to the weekly outline. Many of the law faculty, especially newly hired faculty have used these shells and reported good results. This jump starts them in the course preparation resulting in a better learning experience for the students. Standardized shells also help with assessment because when we find a problem area, as we recently did with a specific topic, we could insert added quiz questions, revisions to the PPTs, test questions, and in-class exercises to improve learning and reach a large student audience.