Curricular Initiatives: Stillman School of Business
Faculty and instructors in the Stillman School of Business have a long-standing assessment model to evaluate the general competencies of its students. During the 2012-2013 school year the school focused on developing course-embedded, content driven assessments for each department to collect data on business discipline knowledge taught in prior courses.
Accounting
The Department of Accounting developed general program-level competency areas in its core Financial and Managerial Accounting courses. An assignment was used to assess students' ability to identify an appropriate ratio to evaluate a key attribute for a company, collect the correct information from the financial statements, and interpret results of key financial ratios. Also, data was collected on an exam administered to assess common knowledge in the discipline.
Computing & Decision Sciences
Collaborative assessments were conducted in this topical area. The Departments of Finance and Management collaborated to assess students' ability to perform a regression analysis and interpret the results. The Department of Finance also embedded questions into a quiz given in the core Business Finance course (BFIN 2201). Additionally, the Department of CDS created, administered, and analyzed results from a course-embedded assessment to evaluate students' understanding and retention of conceptions taught in MATH 1205.
Economics
The Department of Economics assessed students' ability to understand and discuss important concepts or issues in economics. Faculty used a writing assignment in which students had to write about five issues from Micro Economics (ECON 1402) as an assessment tool. Going forward, the department will expand this writing assignment to Legal Foundations.
Finance
The Finance Department implemented course-embedded assessments at the undergraduate and graduate levels during the 2012-2013 school year. Assessments were given in the beginning of the semester to collect information on student knowledge retained from mathematics and statistics courses taken prior to Business Finance (BFIN 2201) and Financial and Economic Analysis (BMBA 9113).
Management
The Department of Management implemented several assessments in several management courses. The program assesses students' ability to demonstrate mastery of the terms of means and correlations and to show mastery of being able to take data and translate that into a managerial course of action.
Marketing
The Department of Marketing created and administered a course-embedded assessment which evaluated students understanding of Economics concepts as applicable to the discipline of Marketing. In the future, faculty will implement an additional pre- and post-test model.
MBA Assessment
Our Masters in Business Administration assessment model uses case analysis and presentation as a vehicle to evaluate business knowledge, presentation skills and teamwork.