Integrating to one program for re-accreditation

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to delineate lessons for business schools seeking re-accreditation and that face previous peer-review improvement expectations, strategic and operational imperatives similar to those faced at College of Business Administration (CBA) in University of the State Capital, all pseudonyms to mask their true identity. Design/methodology/approach Based on qualitative case study method, CBA’s Assessment Director, Gabriel Mouton, again a pseudonym, serves as the central protagonist whose interactive dialogical and technology-enabled change processes provide instructive practical lessons around the management of assurance of learning (AoL) for re-accreditation. Findings This paper offers a tripartite change focus in AoL for re-accreditation: balancing program goal integration with discipline differentiation, adopting an interactive dialogical shared governance process over a top-down or bottom-up process and technology-enabled straddling program depth and breadth. Research limitations/implications This paper is unique to CBA’s path-historical institutional change experiences in the USA with rich-shared faculty governance that may need to be first developed before emulation in institutions where such a tradition is absent. Practical implications The experiences narrated in this paper offer universal lessons for business schools aspiring to continuously improve their AoL and, in the process, uphold program meaning and quality standards for stakeholder relevance and re-accreditation. Social implications The experiences narrated in this paper offers lessons for tying program quality to external stakeholders’ expectations in the community, including for international business schools. Originality/value This paper advances an original tripartite change focus specifically relevant for business schools seeking re-accreditation and that are concurrently grappling with multiple strategic and operational imperatives.

Assurance of learning in business education – what exactly are we assuring, and whose business should it be?

“…Each institution has discretion as to its program, course or unit objectives, and set thresholds for student attainment and evaluation of grade performance. Through the AoL process, areas of improvement are identified, assessment modes or weightage is amended, and such feedback mechanisms are filtered into each course or unit to then be re-assessed in subsequent iterations, otherwise known as “closing the loop” (Michael, 2019). AoL is often associated with accreditation agencies such as the AACSB, where these results are a vehicle to evaluate student performance against a myriad of indicators – from “hard” technical competencies (e.g.…”

“…Each institution has discretion as to its program, course or unit objectives, and set thresholds for student attainment and evaluation of grade performance. Through the AoL process, areas of improvement are identified, assessment modes or weightage is amended, and such feedback mechanisms are filtered into each course or unit to then be re-assessed in subsequent iterations, otherwise known as "closing the loop" (Michael, 2019).…”