Defining and Assessing Team Skills of Business and Accountancy Students

Nabil Alghalith, Sandra Weber, Michael Blum, Amanda Medlock

The objectives of the project are (1) to define the skills necessary for students to work effectively with others to achieve common goals, and (2) to develop an assessment instrument to measure student progress toward achieving these skills.  The defined skill set will form a basis for common expectations related to team skills that will be shared with students and be used by faculty for setting goals, planning curriculum and pedagogy, and assessing student progress.  Assessment data will be incorporated into the Division of Business and Accountancy’s Continuous Improvement Plan and assessment cycle.  The significance of this project is to ensure and demonstrate student learning related to teamwork, which is one of the key elements of the Division’s newly adopted vision statement.  The ability to demonstrate continuous improvement related to the Division’s mission is vital to the re-accreditation of the business program.  The project will incorporate input from the entire faculty of the Division, and the results will be used by the entire faculty and shared with students in order to communicate expectations.  This participative process will serve to enhance the culture of assessment in the Business Division among faculty and students.  Additionally, this is an interdisciplinary proposal involving faculty from communications and business.

An original assessment instrument will be developed to meet the needs of the Division’s faculty, incorporating sources in the literature, results of a faculty survey, and student input obtained from portfolio entries.  Results will be disseminated in discipline and division meetings for faculty use, and will be available for sharing at the University planning day.  In order to externally disseminate the results of this project, the applicants plan to coauthor papers that have the potential to be published in journals or presented at conferences related to educational assessment and pedagogy in the areas of communication, organizational behavior, and accounting.