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I am very interested in getting some input concerning courses and exams.
When your University offers the same required (core) course, taught by
different professors, are the course contents and exams always the same?
Does your University have a policy regarding this? I would also appreciate
your own thoughts regarding this if you are teaching at University. In
other words, is it better to harmonize teaching and assessments (exams) or
not and to what extent.


Mike Hanson
Professor, Department of Management
Graduate Course Leader, "International Management"
ESCEM School of Business
mhanson@escem.fr
Tel. (33) 05.49.60.58.34

Mike Hanson asks for input on exams used in multi-section courses. I've
taught semester-length courses at 6 research universities in the USA
(Southern Cal, Illilnois at Urbana-Champaign, Kansas, Nebraska-Lincoln,
Utah, and Wisconsin-Madison) and 1 in Australia (Queensland) and none of
them ever used standardized exams across different faculty members. While
it's probably good in theory to standardize exams, it's also true that
faculty tend to emphasize different concepts. One faculty member may cover
something in depth that is entirely ignored by another faculty member
teaching the same course. For example, I recall a faculty member at Kansas
years ago who emphasized TA (transactional analysis) in his OB course, but
never talked about job design. In contrast, I spent a considerable amount
of time in the OB class on job design, but I never once mentioned TA.


Larry Pate
University of Wisconsin-Madison


At 04:54 PM 12/13/99 +0100, you wrote:
>I am very interested in getting some input concerning courses and exams.
>When your University offers the same required (core) course, taught by
>different professors, are the course contents and exams always the same?
>Does your University have a policy regarding this? I would also appreciate
>your own thoughts regarding this if you are teaching at University. In
>other words, is it better to harmonize teaching and assessments (exams) or
>not and to what extent.
>
>
>Mike Hanson
>Professor, Department of Management
>Graduate Course Leader, "International Management"
>ESCEM School of Business
>mhanson@escem.fr
>Tel. (33) 05.49.60.58.34
>

Our courses are based upon faculty modules that include course topics,
objectives and goals which each faculty must make sure they achieve. They
must have a means for the student's to demonstrate that they have achieved
these objectives. There are suggested assignments and lectures.

The faculty is responsible for designing the course that achieves these
objectives; has the student's demonstrate their achievement. Additionally,
any modifications must result in a course of substantially the same
difficulty (eg. if the module suggests for 8 three page case analysis their
assignments must be comparable) And all courses do require a group project
to build teaming skills.

Other than those limitations, each faculty is expected to customize the
course for their particular expertise.

Conna Condon
Adjunct for: Univ of Phoenix, Baker College, Upper Iowa College
Doctoral Student: Nova Southeastern Univ, SBE
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hanson Mike" <mhanson@ESCEM.FR>
To: <MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, December 13, 1999 7:54 AM
Subject: Just a question


> I am very interested in getting some input concerning courses and exams.
> When your University offers the same required (core) course, taught by
> different professors, are the course contents and exams always the same?
> Does your University have a policy regarding this? I would also
appreciate
> your own thoughts regarding this if you are teaching at University. In
> other words, is it better to harmonize teaching and assessments (exams) or
> not and to what extent.
>
>
> Mike Hanson
> Professor, Department of Management
> Graduate Course Leader, "International Management"
> ESCEM School of Business
> mhanson@escem.fr
> Tel. (33) 05.49.60.58.34
>

In a message dated 12/13/99 9:03:46 AM, you wrote:

>I am very interested in getting some input concerning courses and exams.
>When your University offers the same required (core) course, taught by
>different professors, are the course contents and exams always the same?
>Does your University have a policy regarding this? I would also appreciate
>your own thoughts regarding this if you are teaching at University. In
>other words, is it better to harmonize teaching and assessments (exams) or
>not and to what extent.
>
>
>Mike Hanson
>Professor, Department of Management
>Graduate Course Leader, "International Management"
>ESCEM School of Business
>mhanson@escem.fr
>Tel. (33) 05.49.60.58.34

Mike,
I suggest that the faculty within the department use QFD as a means of
determining the competencies that one would expect from a student passing
given courses. The level of mastery--well use Bloom's taxonomy. On the other
hand, how the terminal competencies are actually measured should be up to the
professor.

If you are interested in a syllabus showing how this may come about or a
booklet on how to incorporate the wants and needs of your customers into your
curriculum by using QFD, contact me at TQM1BOB@AOL.COM//

Most sincerely yours,
Bob Cornesky

Mike:

I am lead professor on a course. All the teachers use my basic syllabus and
the same main text. We all collaborate and share extra readings and
articles, but their use is voluntary. We also create our own individual
assignments and exams.

I make sure the basics are covered, but don't believe in a common exam nor
assignments outside the class since each of us teaching the course has our
own view of the topics and approach to teaching.

I look forward to the others' comments also.

Thanks,

Ted Rosen
George Washington University
School of Business and Public Management