Ron Rojas

Just recently one of the institutions I work for started an innovative MBA program that is based on competencies. Essentially, a competencies assessment is performed before taking any specific courses in the program in order to assess knowledge and skills of the student against the expected knowledge and skills of an MBA graduate. This assessment, up to a certain degree, allows for students to get constructive credit for some courses based upon their previous knowledge and experience. This allows students to complete an MBA program and less than the traditional time of two years. However, the success or failure of… >>>

One of the most difficult attributes of applying reliability and validity to assessment is recognizing that over time minor changes to content, expectations, or interpretations of content have a cumulative effect that can undermine assessments. In other words, it is very difficult to overcome a static perspective of reliability and validity. Over time, it's very likely that many small changes occur in content, interpretation of assignments, and emphasis on specific content elements. There seems to be much more focus on updating material and less focus on the reliability and validity of assessments. It's possible that very small changes in course… >>>

Since I teach the first course in a graduate business program, many students are not aware of the large amount of skills they are expected to apply during their graduate studies. Accordingly, I take the time to let them know that their first round assignments will also help them assess where they are with respect to the expected skills for the whole program. For me this is a valuable form of diagnostic assessment. During the chats and e-mail conversations for the first unit I inform the students they will be applying 10 skills simultaneously in their first round of assignments.… >>>

E-portfolios are very much like journals, but with multimedia content. In my graduate leadership classes (Masters and doctorate) I’ve used journaling as an assessment tool since it allows me to see how students apply in their workplace what they learn in the classroom. The fact that they have to know the material, find the moment to apply the material, reflect on the event and then document the experience in a journal helps me see progress throughout the session. Although some aspects of the journal may be very personal, I let them know that the Final Exam is a summary of… >>>

Building community is a fast pace, accelerated program is very difficult. With limited time for study and participation, it seems that students would rather focus on content and not on getting to know each other better. Then comes a group project, and because they have minimal personal knowledge of each other, there is a lot of stress and tension among them. This is especially difficult when the group project is the last assignment in the course. One alternative is to create the groups at the beginning of the session so students can start relating and building community. In many of… >>>

Course that have group projects represent a great opportunity to see the communications dynamics between generations. It’s very easy to see, for example, those that want to work offline using teleconferencing and face to face meeting (Baby Boomers) and those that prefer the online (live) chat to complete the project. Or those that have great technical abilities (Millennials) and those students that hate group projects and would rather work alone (Gen X). So as much as students tend to resist group projects within the online environment, the dynamics among them can clearly serve as a generational marker for the facilitator.… >>>

As new students come into the online environment, especially at graduate level, they have already acquired expectations and habits that may enhance or disrupt the communications process. I suspect most already have a sense of using proper protocols, and guidelines, but may need some prompting and encouraging on creating new communications habits and breaking older ones. To me, there is a certain “maturation process” that goes along with communications, meaning that improving communications effectiveness is an ongoing process. Yet in students that take a few classes with me, I get the impression they just want to adapt to the course… >>>

Most of my students are capable to adapting and coaching me as an instructor into the communications tool they feel most comfortable using, sometimes even despite my promptings. But the students I'm worried about he most are those for which English is a second language. When I detect grammar or flow problems with emails or IMs, I’ll attempt a phone call or use a VoIP tool. Interestingly enough, I find that students with difficulties in English as a Second Language tend to also have problems with many communications technologies. I don’t want to over simplify, but telephone contact with students… >>>