Assessment Highlights for the Undergraduate Program

The School of Business established a set of program goals and learning outcomes and collects assessment data to measure student achievement of these outcomes. In 2008-2009, we started assessment of general education skills, after completing a three-year cycle of assessing outcomes related to knowledge and skills in areas of business. We focused on assessment of reading and writing outcomes and used course-embedded assessment techniques to gather data in three sections of core undergraduate courses. The faculty developed assessment forms and used benchmarks to evaluate individual student performance and establish whether the student learning in an outcome is Exemplary, Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory. We collect and evaluate assessment data every semester.

The School also uses the ETS Major Field Test in Business to measure the knowledge and skills of all graduates. The results of this national standardized ETS test taken by the graduates provide external validation to our course-embedded assessment data. Overall, the School’s graduates performed strongly on this national test in 2008-2009. There were 32 graduates taking the test in Spring 2009, and the mean performance for the cohort was at the 80th percentile compared to all institutions participating in the ETS testing nationally. This sample includes 564 institutions and 83,323 students in 2006-08.

The following are assessment highlights:
•      Mission, Program Goals and Learning Outcomes are established and reviewed
•      Course-embedded assessment data is collected every school year
•      External standardized testing with the ETS Major Field Test for Business
•      Assessment Committee oversees all assessment activities
•      Assessment results reviewed by all faculty in regular faculty meetings
•      Coverage of learning outcomes verified by periodic syllabi checks
•      Other activities include periodic surveys of graduates