Anatomy of an MBA Program Capstone Project Assessment Measure for AACSB Accreditation

Abstract

There is very little written about assessment measures business schools use for assessing their programs that not only helps them meet the assessment criteria necessary for AACSB accreditation but also helps them improve the curriculum to build top-tier successful programs. This paper informs the literature on the assessment measure (and process) used by an MBA program to assess student learning through end-of-program capstone projects; success that is demonstrated by stabilized enrollments and a recent top-tier ranking. This paper is useful to any graduate or undergraduate business program that chooses to use capstone projects as an assessment measure to earn or renew AACSB accreditation. Following guidelines suggested by Banta (2004, 2007, 2011) and Polomba and Banta, (1999) a defined process is implemented to collect, assess, and disseminate assessment data to improve the MBA curriculum.

Lessons Learned: Graduate Student Assessment

“…After another failed attempt assessing two different SLOs (through another poorly chosen assignment), we decided that graduate students could best show their mastery of the program by assessing student learning from the Capstone paper they completed in their final course in the program. In fact, we found that others were successful using Capstone projects in this way as well (Gray, Boasson, Carson, and Chakraborty 2014; van Acker and Bailey 2011). Therefore, beginning in spring 2015, we assessed all seven SLOs using students' Capstone papers.…”

Acreditaciones internacionales en escuelas de negocios. Una revisión de la literatura

“…Un ejercicio de revisión del uso de pruebas estandarizadas (como la Major Field Test in Business, MFT-B) es el de Bielinska-Kwapisz & Brown (2014) que revisa las características de universidades acreditadas AACSB que usan o no dichas pruebas para evaluar a sus egresados en sus metas de aprendizaje. Gray, Boasson, Carson & Chakraborty (2015) presentan los resultados de evaluación de metas de aprendizaje de un MBA tipo, de acuerdo con los parámetros sugeridos por AACSB y tomados de Palomba & Banta (1999). Sin embargo, en ninguno de estos casos y según los mismos autores, las pruebas pueden considerarse contundentes y definitivas.…”

Outcomes Assessment and Quality Enhancement through AACSB Business Accreditation: The Case of the University of Bahrain

“…Comprehensive exams and capstone projects are instruments used in the third approach of AoL, which provide summative data on students learning upon the completion of the program. The College of Business did not consider using the third approach, although capstone projects can be successfully used to access the learning outcomes of the MBA programs as Gray, Boasson, Carson and Chakraborty (2015) pointed out. They wrote that, "These summative assessments are to provide stakeholders such as faculty and administrators with a snap shot of students learning as a result of a culminating course experiences within the programs.…”