Assessment Report: Academic Year 2010-2011
School of Business
Chair: Marylou Shockley
Faculty Leads: Brad Barbeau and Cathy Ku
Background
During this past academic year, BUS has followed both the Assessment Plan and our Program
Improvement Plan (PIP). BUS has carefully aligned all planning documents to reinforce the
discipline of focused implementation; this is particularly important with “squeezed resources”
due to the State budgetary crisis. We consider this Assessment Report a “progress summary”
only; assessment is a long-term effort that will continue through fall 2019.
This report addresses several areas: 1) the insights from our team effort, working on
assessment of General Knowledge Outcome (GKO) 3, Apply Critical Thinking and Analysis
(Quantitative and Qualitative) to Decision Making (henceforth “Critical Thinking”); 2) the
processes and evidence gathered as we conducted our assessment; and 3) what we are
planning to do the coming 2011-2012 academic year.
The steps followed for this review were:
o Step 1: Consulted with Becky Rosenberg on the definition of Critical Thinking and
reviewed associated literature. We then used the fall 2010 faculty retreat to
brainstorm what we mean in BUS when we describe critical thinking. The CTLA
co-op on Critical Thinking in Spring 2010 was also used to develop our definition
of critical thinking. Over a period of several faculty meetings we developed a
definition of critical thinking and a rubric based on that definition (see
attachment).
o Step 2: Conduct an inventory on where in the curriculum Critical Thinking is most
emphasized. Also create the rubrics and grading standards on critical thinking
for use in the BUS curriculum through a series of discussions among the full-time
faculty at faculty meetings. We reviewed rubrics used in BUS, at other
universities, and provided by AAC&U (VALUES) as input to our discussions.
o Step 3: Decide in what course or courses to gather evidence. Through our
discussions, we chose to focus our assessment primarily on BUS 211: Reading,
Writing and Critical Thinking. We did an initial round of evaluations of a Critical
Thinking exercise from the BUS 211 course to test our rubric.
o Step 4: We collected a set of student papers in spring 2011 from a BUS 211
course assignment. The assignment was an in-class essay asking the students to
write a critique of one of three articles that were provided to them.
o Step 5: Eight papers were selected at random from the student papers. At the
spring 2011 retreat, each faculty member was assigned three papers to review,
and each paper was reviewed by three faculty. The faculty reviewed and scored
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each paper using the CT rubric that was created. The data from these reviews
were then summarized on a matrix showing the range of scores on each paper
and across the papers, providing a snapshot of the relative achievement of the
CT outcomes.
o Step 6: The output and conclusions from the spring exercise will be discussed at
the fall retreat to create an implementation/ improvement plan for the CT
outcomes.
Summary of This Year’s Learning and Insights
As indicated in our assessment plan, we assessed General Knowledge Outcome (GKO) 3, Critical
Thinking. This year’s assessment work was led by Brad Barbeau with support from Cathy Ku.
Our primary focus was on Bus 211, Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking in Business I. The
reasons included the following:
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Faculty time was limited.
Business 211 is the only course in which Critical Thinking is an explicit element of the
course with course assignments specifically designed to that topic.
The School of Business full-time faculty team did much of the assessment work. Our part-time
faculty members were highly cooperative, gathering the evidence documents we needed.
Following are the key findings and insights:

Defining Critical Thinking and its Attendant Skills: Early discussions indicated that the
faculty had widely varying definitions of Critical Thinking and how it might be assessed.
Through a series of discussions and iterative modifications of the criteria and standards,
we were able to come to a clear and articulate understanding of critical thinking. This
common understanding will be important to our ability as a faculty to develop students’
CT capabilities.

Norming Time, Deliberation, and Consensus: During the Winter 2011 faculty planning
days, the faculty devoted a day to applying and reviewing the rubric, using a set of
student papers collected during the Fall 2010 term.

Interaction between the rubric and the assignment: In addition to the norming process,
in which faculty work to develop a common understanding of the criteria and standards,
there is further source of variance in the assessments that arises from differences in
understanding of the assignment itself. Differences in understanding what the
assignment is asking the students to accomplish lead to variances in the assessment
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outcomes. In effect, the assignment needs to be normed as much as the rubric applied
to the assignment needs to be normed.

Creating a “one-line” rubric: In order for upper division courses to follow through on
supporting students’ development of CT skills, the evaluation of CT skills must be a
component of upper division courses. However, since this principle will apply to all of
the GKOs, it will not be possible for upper division courses to include full rubrics for each
GKO. Out of this realization we developed a simplified “one-line” CT rubric that can be
easily employed in courses that utilize (practice) CT skills but do not explicitly focus on
CT as an element of their curriculum.

Specific Findings from the Analysis Process: The specific key findings from our
assessment work the fall 2010 and spring 2011 semesters will form the basis of our
implementation plan development for fall 2011. These include:
o Bus 211 assignments: These assignments need to emphasize critical thinking
skills; business content mastery is secondary. However, it is clear that critical
thinking skills, which are process-based, cannot be applied independently of
content knowledge. Greater depth of content knowledge leads to more
effective application of critical thinking skills. Put another way, mastery of
critical thinking skills is necessary but not sufficient for effective application and
demonstration of those skills; deep content knowledge is also necessary (but not
by itself sufficient, either).
o Doing CT vs. Assessing CT: Students should be able to apply critical thinking skills
to business decision making, as well as assess the quality of CT evidenced in the
work of others (e.g., be able to distinguish between fact and opinion). This in
fact may be an important distinction and may define two different, although
related, skillsets: being able to apply CT skills to decision making, and being able
to assess the quality of CT that went into a decision.
o Outcome from BUS 211: Students are considered meeting the critical thinking
outcomes for BUS 211 if they have mastered the standards for critical thinking.
Common standards and rubrics must be adopted in all sections.
o Buy-in from part-time faculty: There is a potential disconnect in the program
review process when the process is carried out by the full-time faculty but
implementation is dependent upon part-time faculty efforts in the classroom.
The learnings and the rubrics must be communicated effectively to the PT faculty
in way that ensures their understanding, ability and intention to implement
desired changes.
o Integrating GKO 3 critical thinking throughout the upper division curriculum:
The development of effective CT skills in our students is a task that begins with
the assignments in BUS 211, but also requires further practice, reinforcement
and development in the upper division courses.
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Actions for Academic Year 2011-2012
Assessment tasks needed to be accomplish Fall, include the following:
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We will re-visit the findings and develop an implementation plan to “close the loop.”
This will begin at our Fall 2011 Retreat.
During the fall, we will solicit the input of part-time faculty (especially the EngCom
faculty) to implement standards and rubrics for CT.
We will then integrate these standards into the rest of the BUS curriculum.
We hope to do this by securing funds again to build into the curriculum workshops for
our part time faculty members as we did last year. This means securing the funds.
Assessments needed to be accomplished Spring, include the following:

We will begin the assessment of our next General Knowledge Outcome (GKO) 2, which is
Function Effectively in Cross-Functional Teams (“Teamwork”). This effort will be led by
Cathy Ku with John Avella. We are following our Program Improvement Plan (PIP) that
outlines our assessment plan.

The steps tentatively outlined for this review are:
o Consult with Becky Rosenberg on the definition of Teamwork and understand
the associated literature, plus bench marks on campus. Then use the fall 2011
retreat to brainstorm what we mean in BUS when we describe Teamwork.
o Conduct an inventory on where in the curriculum Teamwork is most emphasized.
o Create the rubrics and grading standards on teamwork for use in the BUS
curriculum. Draw from rubrics used in BUS, across the University, and provided
by AAC&U (VALUES) rubrics.
 Define a set of standards for Teamwork
 Define the criteria for each standard
 Use a norming process to develop a common understanding and
application of the resulting rubric
o (Concurrent with previous step) Decide in what course or courses to gather
evidence.
o Collect data in spring 2012.
o Analyze data at the Spring 2012 retreat.
 Review and discuss the assignment or other evidence that will be
assessed. Ensure a common understanding of what the evidence is
intended to demonstrate.
 Review the rubric
 Assess the evidence
 Review and discuss the assessment data
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o Develop and implement a plan to better assess teamwork outcomes of BUS
students beginning Fall, 2012.
ATTACHMENT: CT RUBRIC, ONE-LINE CT RUBRIC
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