Assessing the Effectiveness of a Business Career Education Program

Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Jason Ho, Beedie School of Business

Project team: Peter Tingling, Lisa Higashi, and Marissa Funaro, Beedie School of Business, Emma MacFarlane, research assistant

Timeframe: July 2017 to December 2020

Funding: $6000

Program addressed: Business Career Passport (BCP), a Senate Approved Co-curricular career preparation program for the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) students

Final report: View Jason Ho's final report (PDF)

Description: Business Career Passport (BCP) is a co-curricular career preparation program for Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) students. Effective in the Fall 2017 term, this program has been approved by the senate to be a continuance requirement, in which students must complete six workshops within 12 months of their admit term to the BBA program.

This project will assess the effectiveness of the Business Career Education Program via industry professional assessments of the program’s learning outcomes. Industry professionals will review student portfolios and assess each one as if screening for an authentic recruitment process. The assessment will provide a diagnosis of the student’s performance overall, and will provide valuable feedback regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the BCP.

Questions addressed:

• Do student quiz scores in individual workshops predict industry professionals’ holistic assessments of 100 sample portfolios?
• Is there a relationship between industry professionals’ assessments and the assessments of career advisors on the 100 sample portfolios?
• Is there a relationship between industry professionals’ holistic assessments and the rubric scores provided by the industry professionals on the 100 sample portfolios?
• Are student quiz scores’ predictive power for industry professionals’ holistic assessment of the portfolios moderated by students’ prior motives, attitudes, knowledge about career management?
• What is students’ perception of their learning in the BCP program in comparison to the industry professionals’ assessments of their portfolios?
• Overall, what do industry professionals identify as the strengths and weaknesses of the deliverables they assessed? And do they have feedback for how the BCP program could be improved?

Knowledge sharing:  We are looking into presenting out findings to our leadership and appropriate committees or task-forces in our faculty to inform the BBA program. The Career Centre is planning on presenting the findings at career practitioner conferences, such as CERIC Advancing Career Education in Canada.We plan on submitting a paper for publication.

Keywords:  Career development, career readiness, career indecision, student development, business education