Bring Workplace Assessment Into Business Communication Classrooms: a Proposal to Better Prepare Students for Professional Workplaces

Abstract

To help students better understand and be better prepared for professional workplaces, the author suggests that business communication teachers examine and learn from workplace assessment methods. Throughout the article, the author discusses the rationale behind this proposal, reviews relevant literature, reports interview findings on workplace assessment, and compares classroom and workplace practices to suggest areas where we can meaningfully bridge the two.

Mobile or Not? Assessing the Instructional Value of Mobile Learning

“…Mahin and Kruggel (2006), for instance, have illustrated the value of using the self-reported changes that business communication students experience while conducting their assignments to help them crystalize their learning. Yu (2010) discussed an approach that brings workplace assessment into the business communication classroom to enable students to transition more effectively to the requirements of the workplace. And, as we will discuss in more detail below, given the increasing trend toward project-based learning in student groups, both Fermelis, Tucker, and Palmer (2008), for conventional approaches, and Hazari and Thompson (2015), for online courses, have investigated how to best manage and assess team-produced business communication assignments.…”

A Business Communication Assessment Tool Based on Workplace Assessment Processes and Service-Learning

“…Based on this literature review, the assessment project conceptualizes BPC as a social activity comprising 24 BPC outcomes/behaviors (Conrad & Newberry, 2012) and incorporates Yu's (2010) four workplace assessment characteristics in an S-L project to assesses these BPC outcomes/behaviors.…”

“…To overcome this complexity, researchers and BPC faculty have been looking at the industry for inspiration and collaboration. Yu (2010) studied the assessment and evaluation practices of the business world and advised that the BPC faculty should create longitudinal assessment instruments that support collaboration among students and are rooted in their specific context. Several BPC faculty members and researchers have adopted one or another aspect of the workplace assessment process in their course assessments.…”

“…S-L pedagogy enabled the students to experience implementation of learned theories in real life scenarios with actual consequences of their actions (Jacoby, 2015, p. 11). Yu (2010) highlights four aspects of a workplace assessment process/task: longitudinal, contextualized, learning-focused, and collaborative. When student-groups worked on this D-B S-L project, they experienced these four aspects of workplace assessment processes.…”

“…The assessment was spread over the entire trimester of 12 weeks, and it included, as Yu (2010) says, routine tasks like making minutes of a meeting, writing emails, and starting telephone conversations as well as special tasks like persuading and negotiating with NGOs and businesses and giving pitch presentations to corporations and professionals. Following Messmer (2004) and Yu (2010), adopting the longitudinal assessment process enabled this project to create several performance reviews and feedback opportunities for the course instructor.…”