Name: Measuring What Matters Demonstrating Professional Competencies To Support AACSB Accreditation
Uploaded: 2026-05-29T17:32:29.107Z
Duration: 1 h 58 s
Description: Measuring What Matters Demonstrating Professional Competencies To Support AACSB Accreditation

Transcript for "Measuring What Matters Demonstrating Professional Competencies To Support AACSB Accreditation": you so much for attending today's webinar, Measuring What Matters, Demonstrating Professional Competencies to Support AACSB Accreditation. My name is Sylvia Nedoshevska, and I'm joining today from Acuity Insights. We have been a Business Education Alliance member with the, AACSB since 2021, and we've had the opportunity to participate in numerous thought leadership activities with them through events like today's webinar, attending and presenting at conferences, and and more, and our solutions, which focus on measuring and developing professional and personal skills of applicants and learners, aligns closely with today's topic, which examines the essential role of professional skills for future business graduates, which are also known as durable skills, especially in the age of AI. Our panelists will be taking questions from the audience at the end of the webinar, so please, enter your questions in the q and a box throughout the webinar, and we'll get to them after panelists have presented. And, of course, I'm sure folks are wondering, this will be recorded and shared with you as well. So we look forward to, to this, conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Can we go to the next slide, please? Before we begin, I want to provide a, brief overview of Acuity Insights. I'll try to be efficient to leave time for our panelists and also questions at the end. Our two main assessments are open response situational judgment tests, also known as SJTs, that measure social intelligence and professionalism. Our CASPER assessment is used to help evaluate applicants holistically at the time of admissions and our professional skills development assessment supports the development of students' professional skills in program. Unlike other tools that focus on academic metrics or knowledge or expected behaviors, our assessments are allowing learners to draw upon their unique life experiences and express the underlying reasoning behind their responses to scenarios and questions. Let's go to our next slide, please. I would like to introduce you to today's presenters. We have three lovely human beings with us. I'll start with Erica Morrison, who's the director and executive, executive and corporate education of, Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University. She's an experienced higher education leader and corporate HR professional with expertise in graduate program development, enrollment management, corporate training, and leadership development. She brings a people centered approach to her work focusing on building inclusive, high impact learning environments that support student success and organizational growth and development. Erica has led initiatives in graduate enrollment management, and admissions, developing strategic pathways that strengthening student strengthen student success and learning outcomes. Her colleague, Leslie Lynch, is an affiliate faculty member at Seagram College of Business at Grand Valley State University. Prior to this, she served as a multidisciplinary business executive with an eye for innovation and creativity. She has worked in several industry sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, health care, and higher education. Her expertise is in organizational change, leadership development, and high performance talent management. And finally, last but definitely not least is Houston Peschel, an associate professor of entrepreneurship, innovation, and sustainable development at Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. He created an entrepreneurial thinking course that is a required course for all 800 Haskayne business undergrads. Out of this course, there have been a dozen students who have started companies and through Houston's mentorship. His research focus is on the scholarship of teaching and learning, specifically developing a new signature pedagogy for business students to be able to be prepared for the uncertain and turbulent future. To date, Houston has published multiple articles on sustainability, entrepreneurship, and the seven skills of entrepreneurial thinking. Next, please. Before we hear from our speakers, I'll take a moment to introduce you to research informed approaches to measuring complex professional competencies. Next, please. Many technical skills are essential, but they're perishable. Tools, platforms, and workflows change quickly. In contrast, skills like communication, judgment, collaboration, resilience, and navigating ambiguity travel well across roles and over time. These are the durable skills employers consistently value, regardless of software or technology shifts. Perishable skills are context specific and evolve rapidly. In business, these can include things like your technical skills in Excel, SQL, Python, Power BI, etcetera, technical workflows tied to specific tools, and other such specific nuanced context. But durable skills are human centered and remain relevant no matter how many how roles, industries, or technology evolve. Examples of that can include communicating ideas clearly across diverse audiences, making decisions amid ambiguity, collaborating effectively across teams and perspectives, demonstrating adaptability, resilience, and self awareness, and exercising ethical judgment and responsible leadership. Unlike perishable skills, durable skills compound over time and are harder to automate, making them essential for long term success, especially in our new AI driven world. Next please. Situational Judgment Tests or SJTs have a long track record of success in this area. They are widely used in the military, human resources, and professional schools like medicine to assess non academic skills that drive real world success. An SJT is a type of assessment that is used to understand and evaluate how an individual would react or behave when presented with a hypothetical social or workplace dilemma. Extensive research has demonstrated the importance of non technical skills such as professionalism and social or emotional intelligence in service based roles. And some higher education institutions and workplaces try to assess social intelligence and professionalism using methods such as unstructured interviews, personal statements, and reference letters, but research shows these methods might be unreliable, overly subjective, and weak predictors of future success and behavior. Situational judgment tests on the other hand have been proven to measure these competencies more reliably due to the standardized structure and the psychometric methods used in their development. Here at Acuity Insights, our version of an SJT for admissions, CASPER, focuses on open ended responses, and that's important because while many SJTs are multiple choice, they're easier to game, especially with AI like ChatGPT. Casper is an open response test asking applicants to explain their thinking in real time. Why does that matter? Because in the real world, especially in fields like business, you don't get to choose from a list. You have to problem solve, collaborate, communicate under pressure, and Casper helps assess exactly those qualities in an applicant. And that's why we help close the gap between traditional academic metrics and the human skills that are essential to thrive in the school in schools and in the workforce as well. Next, please. Our professional skills development, which we're talking about today, is an open ended, situational judgment test designed specifically for use during a student's time in your program. This assessment is modular and students complete it in three smaller sections over time, allowing for greater flexibility. Next, please. The professional skills development assessment from Acuity Insights is an open is an in program situational judgment test, as I mentioned, and students are taking this hopefully twice in a year so they can measure progress over time and give you a leading indicator, over the course of a program. As I mentioned, they complete three modules. Each module takes about thirty minutes, and they can be completed in multiple settings within a set window that's set by the program. Each module presents a storyline with several scenarios and each scenario is followed by probing questions that seek to understand the learner's perspective. And students receive individual feedback and skill building exercises that help them improve over time. They don't just complete an assessment, they receive tailored feedback and those resources will actually help grow the skills employers expect. Programs, of course, also receive reports with insights on the development trajectory of their class, including areas where support is most needed. So you'll get a a cohort level report to track the development and trajectory of the class, including areas where they need most support. And then information about each student so programs can monitor those who might be at risk of future professionalism problems and, track their progress to help reduce the likelihood of needing remediation, over time as well. Next, please. So the learner reports are just a sample for you all on screen. Just a moment. Gives you an idea of what the learners see when they're part of this experience. They are able to see their, their scores in terms of, the domains that we assess, which ladder into the competencies that you all care about. And they're also gonna give you additional information in terms of where you might, work on those skills. Can I get the next slide again, please? They also show a trajectory over time. This is two tests. Of course, ideally over the course of a period, program, you'll see, many more, points in this trajectory showing, hopefully, an onward and upward trajectory as time goes on. And the next slide, please. And finally, we have program reports as well. I won't go into too much detail on these as well, but we are looking at being able to help programs understand not only how the cohort is performing, which is what these, these samples show you, but they also will show you individual learner, progress on our domains and be able to tell you, key metrics of who interacted with the test, you know, did they complete all the modules, how much time did they spend to to really help you understand, both the scores and in in context of, other relevant information. Alright. Next slide, please. We're also producing an executive, report showing how students perform as a group and plus insights into what's driving performance and where additional support might be helpful. We are currently developing these reports as well and and talking to schools to help us understand what's the most critical important critical and important information they might need here. And so these reports and the, the learner scores tables can be used for career coaching, closing the loop on standardized activities, and, anything else your program actually needs to determine in terms of curricular, review and CQI or Continuous Quality Improvement. I think I've I've done as quickly as possible. So I'm gonna get to our presenter's next slide, please. We're going to speak with our colleagues at Grand Valley State University, and I believe Eric is going to be up first, talking about SJTs and practice and their pilot experience. Yes. Thank you so much, Sylvia. Leslie and I are very excited to be here with you all today to share our experience with the professional skills development pilot, and we'll talk through some of the changes that we have made to our assurance of learning process and just the overall assessment process. So to kinda set the stage here, our case for change was pretty straightforward. In the fall of twenty twenty five, just this past fall, we redesigned our MBA program to better align with the essential skills that we were hearing from our employers, a lot of those durable skills that you talked about earlier, Sylvia. Secondly, we knew we needed better data so we can make better, more informed decisions that were tied directly to our new curriculum that we launched in the fall versus our old curriculum. And then lastly, we wanted to make sure that we were able to add more targeted professional development resources for our students. And this was a big gap that we had noticed in our, previous approach. So, here over the course of the next few slides, I'll walk us through how we approached this change. We'll talk about exactly what we changed and what we have seen so far from the pilot. So I'll set the stage in terms of structure, and then I'll turn it over to my colleague, Leslie, who will share, a bit more about the faculty and the student perspective and just lend some color, to how this showed up for us, here at CMID. So if you can go to the next slide, please. Here, as we evaluated our previous assessment process, we really wanted to focus on a few high priority areas. One, to better understand and measure our student competencies. We wanted to take the time to make sure we did it the right way the first time. So first, we knew we needed to be more intentional about the assessments, how it was structured, and in particular, how it was administered. Previously, we had relied on more rubric based assessments that were tied to the old program outcomes, and that approach really focused more on some of those perishable skills that we talked about earlier rather than the durable skills that we now had built into our program. Secondly, we knew we needed stronger alignment and integration with the new curriculum, and you'll hear us talk a lot about this because it was a high priority. But in the past, our assessment wasn't embedded into any particular course. It was administered separately by a small group of faculty, at the midpoint of a student's program, but also at the very end of the program. So it gave us more of a snapshot shot in time rather than having a full comprehensive view of a student's development over time. And then lastly was how do we effectively close the loop here? So we were collecting data mostly for reporting purposes, and, yes, it did show student progress over time, but the data was pretty limited. So we were really looking for a tool that would give us more substantial data that would be helpful for us as a program, but something that would also provide resources, specifically for our students in terms of just overall professional development. So hopefully, that provides a bit of context as to why we were making these changes. So now I'd like to shift gears just a little bit and walk through how we redesigned our process, as we worked through this pilot program. So next slide, please, here. So program structure and integration. At a high level, this slide shows how we restructured our process and what we've seen so far to date, as a result of the pilot. So here you can see, overall programs assessed. We have, two programs that we piloted here with our professional MBA program and our executive MBA program. Both are cohort based programs, so it was built in success there in terms of having a target audience. Both of those programs are delivered in person. In terms of how we administered or when we administered the assessment, in February of this year, we administered the first assessment. So for our students, this is their first year, and it was the beginning of their second semester, so getting them early on in their program. We'll then assess our second iteration in April of next year. This is essentially for that same group, their second year or their final semester in the program. Next is more around how we aligned the assessment to the curriculum. So we were very intentional with where we placed the assessment in the program. So instead of a one and done experience, if you will, for our students at the beginning of their program, We've now built in several opportunities for both students and faculty to revisit these development conversations really all throughout their program, and Leslie will, shed a little bit more, of light on this later. So if you were to look at our curriculum, you'll see we have a lot of leadership development courses that are built in almost every semester of the program. So we decided to anchor the assessment in one of the first leadership development courses, which was one of Leslie's classes, and we're now creating almost a red thread that will help carry throughout the entire program. An added benefit for our executive MBA students is that they have executive coaching services in addition to that. So, it can clearly tie those development conversations with their executive coaches, in terms of how they discuss their assessment results and how they can address those moving forward. So altogether, this created for us a much more comprehensive development experience, which is really, you know, what we were going for in terms of this pilot. In terms of outcomes, so what actually did we see? First, we had a 100% participation in the pilot. As I mentioned before, these are cohort based programs, and they are all in person and face to face. We intentionally carved out class time for the students to complete the assessment, so they had dedicated time and space to be able to focus on completing the assessment without having a lot of the other distractions that they might have in their day to day lives. Secondly, the results were quite validating for us. It was very interesting to see how closely the results aligned to what we were already seeing in our students and in particular, how they were showing up in the classroom. So validation was very, helpful and important for us. I think the third benefit here, the results, proved to be quite beneficial for both the students and for the program. Our students now have clear insight into where they can focus in terms of their development, both inside the classroom, but also outside of the classroom. And we also have better visibility into where we, as a program, can continue to identify those gaps and make tweaks and changes that will continue to further, our efforts there. And then lastly, it's led to, quite honestly, more intentional and meaningful conversations with our faculty and our students. Again, Leslie will share a bit of her experience there in just a moment, but, it proved to be not just a one and done, one point in time conversation, but it really is now structured to be built throughout the entire program. So all in all, it's been so far a win win for us here at Seidman. As you can go to the next slide, this, now is my last slide here, which, essentially outlines the key for success factors for us coming out of this pilot. So it hits on the things that we learned, but also the things that we're going to continue to build on. So first for curriculum alignment, and integration, those were top priorities for us. So we found that by embedding the assessment into the right course at the right time, we were able to ensure a 100% participation, and it almost created a natural framework for us in integrating it throughout the curriculum, to ensure we have very good ongoing engagement with our students. So, again, it's not a stand alone activity. It's really a starting point that will continue to build out over the course of time. Secondly, consistent communication made a really big difference for us. And here I have to give a huge shout out to the Acuity Insights team. They were just incredible to work with. For those of you that are on the call, you will find that the resources that Acuity provides will really set you up for success in effectively communicating not only the why to your students, but also the how. So, you know, we put a lot of effort in making sure the students knew why they were taking the assessment, what to expect from the process, and in particular, how they could use those results and resources as they continued in their development. And and overall, we just found that level of clarity really set the tone for us and for our students. Next is faculty and student engagement. So this has certainly been a major strength for us. We now have more actionable insights that provide support and meaningful development conversations. So, again, it's not just the conversation starter. It really helps to build that continuity, over time. And then lastly, for us, closing the loop. So the quality of the data that we're now getting is significantly better than our previous process. And what's nice about it is that it is directly tied to the durable skills that are built into the core of our new program. And, again, it just provides students with feedback that they can actually use, which for us was a major gap in our previous process. So for us here at Seidman, we'll, we'll continue to build on these learnings as we move forward. We have our next round of cohort starting this fall, and we already have some, changes that are going to be taking place to make it, even better for our students. So with that, hopefully, that helps set the stage and kind of the structure I will turn it over to Leslie so she can add a bit more color to what I just shared. Leslie? Thanks, Erica. Alright. So I'm gonna try to shed a little faculty light on this. Erica brought this idea to one of our MBA faculty meetings. And, as she was introducing the idea, I'm like, this is so well aligned with the courses that I have the opportunity to teach with our MBAs. So at a series of three leadership courses, leading self, leading others, and leading the organization, the the, assessment that we receive from acuity, interpersonal skills, interpersonal skills, critical thinking, social and ethical responsibility, all of that lines up so nicely with leading self leading others. And I knew I wanted to quickly raise my hand and be involved in the pilot. So I introduced the idea to our students in one of our we meet on Saturdays. I introduced on one Saturday. I said this is what we've got going on. We'll be doing the assessment in class. When we're together, the next, and the feedback from the students have was overwhelmingly positive. I've got a couple on the slide here that I'd like to share with you, and then I'll talk specifically about maybe one or two different incidences. The acuity insights assessment is a way for me to think about where I am right now and what I need to continue growing to advance into a higher level of leadership. Remember, these are MBA students. It's not just about pointing out strengths and weaknesses. It's about recognizing the difference between my current skills and the skills required to move forward. So thank you. Next slide, please. Another student's comment was this exercise definitely brought new perspectives that I hadn't considered before. I realize now how important it is to exemplify the strengths and areas of improvement Acuity Insights suggested. So as Erica mentioned, we administered this in class. We had a 100% participation. When the students came back after they took the assessment, I'm like, I wonder how that went, and they're like, that was, you know, that was a lot of thinking and I, I you know, they're they're they're judgment questions. So they were a little bit like I'm not sure how, you know, I'm anxious to see these results. Not sure when the results came back, acuity was amazing. They turned it around for us very fast. So when the students were in their next class with me, they had the results. So I had them have some quiet reflective time, read their results in class, and then I had them pair up with some students that they know them, work with their small groups that they had, formed early in their MBA career. And the exchange of information and knowledge where they said, what do you see how do you see do you see this? It was just, an amazing experience of the students really learning from their results, but also the affirmation that they've received from their colleagues and how they see them show up in classes with them and on their group projects. So one particular student and, you know, then I'll wrap up and pass back to Sylvia, one of our students who can sometimes question just about everything in the classroom, which can be amazing, but can also be, like, oh my gosh, one more question. He was very curious and, perhaps I might even say skeptical. So I asked him, you know, in after his assessment, how did this go? And he said, I'd like to sit down and talk with you more about this. And I said, okay. Well, I'd love to sit and chat about this. I want you to finish up the leadership gap analysis, which is their final project in my leading others course. So they had to take the results of their acuity insight. They had to look at it from a leadership perspective in a leadership model and then identify gaps that they need to close and then use the acuity insight tools as well as any other resources they had to identify ways that they were gonna close the gap. So I asked him to finish that up first, and then we would sit down. So we sat down, a bit after that, and he said, honestly, I have no idea what to say. That was so spot on. And while I have had people communicate this to me before, it never really reached me until I saw these words in writing. So I counted that as an enormous huge win. He has tons of potential, tons of headroom. There were some things in the acuity insight report that I think were important for him to have a bit more self awareness around and really start to close some of those gaps. So, for those examples with our students, I am thankful, and we will run this again with our students. I have them in their final capstone project, which is, in the MBA program, a corporate consulting project with a business from our community. The critical thinking growth by the time we get to that capstone and we're able to assess the acuity insight assessment again, I'm just so excited to watch that growth and how they're going to apply that into that consulting capstone project. So high five, all good stuff from our perspective. I finally feel like I've got a way that I can give my students some sort of coaching and insight on the human skills, and that, as many of you know, is very tricky to do, especially when you're dealing with rubrics. It it's just not as easy. So, anyway, thank you. Shout out, to Acuity, and I'm gonna pass it back to Sylvia. Well, thank you both, and thank you for, just your feedback on the assessment itself and how your students took that. It's really, wonderful to hear that they've taken it in stride and are really trying to understand how they can improve those skills as they move forward in in their in their careers. I have so many questions for you, but I'm not going to get distracted. I'm going to pass it over to Houston so, he can talk about, geodes for development, independent value top of business skills. So we're looking up, and and those questions coming in the chat, and I would like to advise just Thank you, Sylvia. Appreciate it. If we could advance the slide, that'd be great. So I'm gonna, dive into a topic that I think is all very top of mind for all of us as educators, especially in the business school. And that's, what we're seeing, AI doing to both within the classroom, but also how do we prepare our students for this future that's, you know, if you if you believe that we're in the singularity at the moment, we can't predict what the future of skills will look like, or the needs of the students. So we need to prepare them for that. Advance the slide, please. And so I've been diving into this for the last two years, and and I've been really trying to figure out ways to measure skills that that acuity is is able to measure. And so I've been, working with the team for a few years now, and, I've been really passionate about this idea of how do we change our curriculum to meet our students where they're at. I'd, the the course I'll be talking about is for a first year business class. So and it's called design your life. So it's very focused on using design thinking to shape and craft the the skills they need to engage in in life. And, what I was noticing is that it was very difficult to assess. It was very hard to figure out where is a student at? It's a class of 60. So how do I know where the students are gonna be on these tasks? But I think we all have heard enough now, that that AI and the skills our students need are not technical, but they are these durable skills, which is great because, you know, I was just at a conference the other day, and and someone brought up soft skills, And everyone jumped on that person to be like, they're not soft. These are these skills, which is great. We're now transitioning to understanding what our value proposition is here. And so I think that we need to understand for the students as partners and to believe that the students are on a journey on how to develop these things that maybe are difficult to measure with traditional assessment methods. Assess the slide, please. I'm sorry. I I advanced the slide. And so something I'm also passionate about is the UN IDGs. And I've got a slide in a second just to explain what those are. These are the inner development goals. So this was my initial kind of crack at it. I have to say, okay. AI's got all this technical thing nailed. So how do we prepare students? And when I dove into the United Nations, you know, development goals kind of framework, I was just blown away by saying this is a standardized way to say these are the skills to be resilient and to be a citizen of the world in an AI, you know, turbulent future. And then when I when I layered what Acuity did, they came very close to matching up, which was great. They they, were was a way to measure these things that was was a challenge. And I enjoy that it's a validated assessment as we heard from our previous speech speakers that there these situational judgment tests really allow the students to be measured on this. And then the key for me is I can't just refresh my PowerPoints every every year and be like, okay. It's good enough. You know, like, the in the past, you could probably get away with not having to update your, your approach to your class as frequently or as in-depth. But how do we know what we need to teach in our classroom, based on the 60 students that I have? So now I'm able to use this assessment method of acuity to let me know, wow, this cohort has some really long tails on on various skills or, well, they've got a lot of strength in this area. And then I can sit back and adjust my exercises. I can adjust my engagement, my speaking notes, my cases, anything I'm doing based on this. So let's just go and, jump onto the next slide, which is the UN ITGs. And again, I'm not gonna dive into this too much, but I I love these. I I think they're really good. They're kind of my my anchor now when I'm creating courses of understanding is is this how do we create an assurance of learning around these five skills? So I'd encourage you to go engage on these, but at being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting. And I haven't mapped them perfectly over to what Acuity does, but many of them do map very closely. So this is kind of this idea of how do we draw on global initiatives around setting our citizens up no matter where they are in the world. These are skills I think we can all agree upon, and to me are more resilient to the, the disruption that AI is creating. Please advance. And so how am I doing this? Basically, I'm going through this this process. I've I've, with the help of Acuity's team, applied for, a grant called the SSHRC and my tax grant, where we're partnering with a private company, which is Acuity, and then we're seeing how this works within our class. And so this is kind of like a little mini AOL within my class. So first thing I'm doing is kind of assessing where they're at. The very first day, they're going to go through the assessment. I will use the reports and understand right away where are those students at. I can create an intervention in the pedagogy, in and support and bring in key guest speakers or key resources throughout the term to address maybe the the gaps or the the the weakest areas that the cohort has. And then at the end of the term, I reassess it. And so if we advance to the next one, I'll maybe just dive a little bit deeper into this this model. And so this is for a first year class. And the key thing here, and this is more, maybe a bit of a soapbox. But I I really think that if we're going to embrace some of these durable skills, we need to reassess if a GPA and a grade, a letter grade, a percentage grade is the best metric for students to engage in this. And so I launched the very first, at least at our school, pass fail that's gamified. They earn points based on the direction and kind of this idea of universal design for learning. So if they're really, you know, introverted and and and anxious, maybe they don't wanna present and go and do too many interviews with people. So there's other ways that they can they can engage in the learning that way. And so they earn points, and if they get a certain amount of points, they pass. So that's just kind of the context there. Again, this is a first year course that's designed to help students get the most out of their university career. Meaning, they go and engage next to curriculars. They develop a network. They they figure out how to public speak, but they also do their coursework. And so what I'm doing with these 60 students is what I said before, the pretest. I then go through and I've developed a podcast because what I found was that students really, want to connect with people, but it's hard for me to bring in somebody, especially with how diverse our our student population is. So for example, if I have an indigenous student and I don't bring in an indignant sorry, an indigenous speaker into the class, then that person might not feel connected. And so I really reflected on how can I have better representation of bringing in mentors, bringing in, you know, recent graduates to explain their journey in consulting or as an accountant or as marketing? So I I developed a really short format podcast where I bring in kind of early graduate students to basically have a honest conversation about what what their what what they've done and how that maybe was different from where they were at their first year. And so by using this podcast and the the exercises in the class, I can take the initial assessment. I can use this intervening time to set up what the the the optimal kind of design of the classes, and then I can reassess. So we're gonna do this in the fall. And then if we go to the last slide, the key thing here is it isn't just in one class. I'm going to measure this in the first year. I'm gonna measure it after their mandatory courses, which is they're called the three seventeen. So this is about their second and third year. And then I'm gonna measure it. I also teach the capstone, which is their final course. And then I'll measure it there, basically, when they've got one foot out the door. And so this will be a four or five year project with Acuity to understand and then report back to the AACSB and AOL community on how to move forward. And then the last slide. And so, basically, I just wanna, you know, thank all of you for joining. And if anybody wants to engage on this or wants to, like, share on how to improve it, I would love to love to connect. But really, the students benefit because they get a better feedback. They'll report they they understand what that strong employability signal is and how to emphasize that in their LinkedIn and their or or maybe where they're weak and where to fill it in. For me, I get some data. I get to actually have something. So rather than being like, I think the students need this. I mean, I'm not 17, 18 years old. So my ability to relate is a lot harder even though I try and use students as partners as a teaching philosophy. It still is a lot easier than you can see this data that acuity provides. And then finally, for our institution, we now will be have more, opportunity to really see how that assurance of learning will, will develop. So thank you for your time. Hopefully, I was within my ten minutes. I will turn it back over to our hosts. Alright. Thank you so much, Houston. And thank you for that. I love the way that you've designed the assessment, tracking through your program, both the entry point mid program and their capstone or exit. I think that midpoint really allows you to be able to make adjustments, in the middle of the program. Without that data point, you really don't have the chance to help those students grow so that at the end, they actually are, on track in terms of their future careers. I love the I love this, where this is going. This is fantastic. And but let's go to the next slide, which we are going to be on grade slide, I believe. There we go. Thank you. Before we get to our q and a, I would love to, share our latest thought leadership report, which, highlights the importance of assessing the professional skills that drive student success. It shows, how situational judgment tests, provide an evidence based way to evaluate competencies like judgment, communication, ethics, and and to Houston's point as well, but laddering into the things that your program or course is is measuring as well to support better admissions and learner development decisions. You should see a poll come up on your screen right now where you can indicate if you'd like to receive this report in your inbox as well as additional information about the professional skills development tool we've discussed today. So I'll give you all a moment to do that while I take a peek at the chat and and look up for any questions. Alright, Sebastian. While we're doing that, I'm gonna go back. There was a question earlier about, sharing a concrete example of a question from our SJT. And so I'm gonna give you all moment just to go back again to the poll about whether or not you like our reports. And let me just pull up my example here. Alright. So in this example, it was a text based scenario where two friends are co leading a a group project together for major college assignment, and it is a, a type of mobile phone, actually, scenario where one person is saying, hey. I finalized the project schedule so we stay on track. This project is a huge part of final grade. And the other person responds and said, this is too rigid, Kendra. The group members wanna talk about task division before you finalize, and they go through this interaction and text. And so after the, students review these scenarios, but some of them are videos, some of them are text based. In this in this case, for this specific scenario about co leading group project together, which is definitely something that happens in in day to day life, but here at Acuity as well. The first question they're asked is, how could the co leads, Alex and Kendra, collaborate more effectively with the group to create a clear and realistic project plan? And there's a typed, answer available to, again, this is an open ended situational judgment test available to the student. And the second question that is, posed to them is imagine that a group member is concerned about the way the co leads have distributed project tasks. How should this group member share their concerns with their co leads? And, again, there's a tight response for the for that student as well. Right. Alright. One second. Alright. Perfect. And, Nash, I think we should have results. Let's see where we're at. Okay. Thank you. Alright. So I am going to open up q, q and a as well. I see we've got one. Let me just check my list here. I think we've got one here that I think Houston, do you anticipate issues with the student motivation at the undergraduate level? I know, our friends at Seidman had a 100%, participation, which is absolutely amazing. But they did have this cohort based approach. And how might that impact things in a longer program at the undergraduate level? What do you think? Yeah. I mean, from a from the undergrad, what we've found, like, with my gamification, they earn points by doing it. So, again, they're motivated by the external gratification. But what I found with things like this, when we've done it with team dynamics and other, is that they're really hungry for this type of feedback. And they're really hungry for something that is is personalized to them. So I don't, foresee any challenges on this because they know that when they go to an interview, they need to be able to speak to these. And this is basically giving them some context and understanding. So so I I haven't found, like, we get we get very high, you know, participation in these things even without motivating them with the marks. So I'm pretty optimistic. I I think that the students are ready for it. And if it's delivered in an elegant way like the acuity, you know, report is, and it's useful, then then I think it's it's cold for them. It's really valuable. Alright. Perfect. Thank you for that. I look forward to seeing how that plays out in the fall. I'm really excited. Alright. Let me see here. I'm just trying a few questions. Let's see. We can I just wanna note as well? We can provide more scenario examples during a call with our teams. And for those of you who are wondering, we can absolutely share more as we go through with those. Let me see the next question. My gosh. There's so much coming up in my chat right now with the questions. I think someone mentioned, communication and the surprise I know you mentioned foreign language skills and how there's a a key communication competency if I'm working outside the Anglo English speaking context. And so, we have some, coalition on this on the on the Casper side in terms of low co and d for for demographic differences. But we can give you more information on a call with our with our team in terms of what that fits out as. Any questions for for our speakers as well in terms of, how their programs have or will be interacting with our, program? Let's see. We've got so we got a customizable, can we customize the durable skills that are prioritized, with the university priority? They are static. However, what we did as part of the development of the professional, skills development test is align them broadly with, all competency, frameworks across all professional programs so that we are able to actually go in and see that our our domains encapsulate those competencies that you are looking at in your program. And so while they're not specifically, customizable in terms of plug and play, they are already taking into account, that higher level competency. But we'd love to, obviously, chat more about that with, with folks as well. Okay. Actually, we got a question here, and this, I think, will be forever. I'm about maybe I'll start with Erica. Erica, can can you provide some insight into how you got buy in from your dean from this project? I think that's actually, I think most folks will have. Yeah. Absolutely. And and, Leslie, please feel free to chime in here. I think one thing that we have going for us, Dean Lawson, who is the dean of the business school here, is very interested in process improvement and trying new things and looking at things differently. So I think having her as a leader, we could certainly state the case for why we needed to. I think the other big component to this was that we had just launched a new revised MBA curriculum. So it was easier for us to make the case to say, we have a new curriculum that incorporates many more of the durable skills than we had in our previous program, And we really needed to have a slightly different assessment process so we could clearly understand how close to home those changes were hitting and where we needed to, make some changes and and and move the mark there. So I think having the the data for sure, we certainly had our case for change with program changes. But I do wanna tie back, to what you were just talking about, Sylvia, in terms of kind of that competency map. So early on in our experience with Acuity, we shared with them, our full revised curriculum, all of our learning goals, and they literally went course by course and outlined how each of the courses and the learning objectives clearly tied back to the competencies that we were assessing. So it was very clear data to say, here are the competencies that we are integrating into the new program, and here's how they align to the competencies that are assessed in the assessment. So I think it was a a a pretty easy case for us to make because of all those factors included. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you so much. And, Houston, do you have anything you wanna share in terms of getting buy in from your leadership? You know, we just went through a leadership change. So we we've recently changed our dean, and every pretty much all the leadership roles have changed. And so there's this real enthusiasm for for evolve evolving. The culture's changed. There's a lot of buy in. There's a lot of new staff that are really excited about this. There's also a lot of new faculty that are really excited about this. So this this is, I think, potentially, if we we we look at it as a golden age for education because if we don't figure out our value proposition, for the students, there's so many options for them now. Online, you know, what in person, like, what are what what are we doing as a business school to attract and retain these students? So, you know, I I think the leadership is aware of that, and they are excited for change, because of it's almost a necessity now, which before it was a hard sell. It's like, well, this has been working for the last twenty years. Why do we need to change? Where now it's like, if we don't change, they you know, there's there's a lot of evidence, especially here in Canada, where colleges are are closing their doors or closing programs and doing courses because they just can't afford to continue them on. So I think this is a good opportunity. And being the entrepreneur, like, this problem, if you solve it, you're going to come out in front, not only for the students, but for your business model. So that's, yeah. I'm optimistic. I think of that. I love I love to hear that. And then I think those opportunities opportunities up quicker change and leadership change are great ones to build the leverage to make, you know, lots of improvements overall in your programs to to help your students and your programs succeed. We have a really great question at that I'm really good to hear about. We had someone ask, which is better? Having a unified set of program learning, outcomes or objectives depending on your, terminology for each individual program or having one unified set of PLOs for all bachelor's programs and another unified set for all master's programs? I'd be curious what you think in terms of that continuum across undergraduate and graduate education. I'm not sure I'll use the same language that you just did, but I think I might have perspective here. I come from the business environment before I joined the college. One thing that's particularly interesting that we do as an MBA faculty is we try very hard to speak each other's language. So when we can connect the dots on this is what we're going after in the program, we're gonna enter students in, We're gonna develop them in this way. And when they are graduating, we are going to affirm that they can indeed successfully demonstrate the things that we say. We do that, I think, collectively as a faculty to tie all those things up. So I I think that's what you're asking. So if I didn't know what was going on in the, you know, accounting classes or the finance classes or the Econ classes or if I didn't understand all of that, it'd be very hard for me to understand how I'm best preparing my students for their final capstone and then eventually to commence. So I I think that's what you're asking. Yeah. That's really, really helpful, context. Thank you so much for that, Leslie. And if anybody else has any thoughts as well. I might chime in actually quickly as well just to I thought I actually work with programs on, quicker objectives a fair bit. And one thing that I I think about is that, there might be different levels of objectives or outcomes that are required. There might be something more at that faculty level that is wider or collected across all graduates from Seymour, from Haskayne. You wanna think about in terms of what you want your school to be known for in in terms of its graduates. But at the program level, they might be slightly more nuanced and different because what you expect from an MBA is gonna be different from some of the graduate with ecom, for example. And so I think in terms of that question, that that's how I would approach that as thinking about, you know, the higher level competencies for your school in general, and then thinking about how those might look at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I don't know if anybody has any contradictory thoughts, but I'd love to hear those. Yeah. I know. I mean, I haven't talked about curriculum all day, so I'm gonna try not to derail that conversation. But, there's lots and lots in terms of curriculum design. I see a really, I see a question as well that loose backed idea of we we asked you all about how you got your deans, you know, aligned with this idea. I'd love to know, how you got mentors or coaches or or and, obviously, they're one of our faculty as well. Or is there a place for mentors and coaches to be engaged in this process in your schools? Is that something that you've envisioned? Like, how do you right now, if it if it is, you know, Leslie and Houston that are involved in this, how do we is there an appetite or need to bring this wider? How do you get more people involved? How do you distribute the load across your program and your graduates? I I think what's key for us at our institution is, like, we have a lot of the big four accounting firms in Canada that, hire our students. And so it's understanding they are kind of the the people who will will take them from our journey at your university and onwards. And it starts kind of in co ops and internships in their second year. And so a really healthy feedback loop to say, hey. Your students are really technically good, but they're kind of a little challenged when there's a problem that is unclear or if they are faced with a tight deadline, you know, like, what whatever the feedback is from them is essential because it's changing so fast on their end as well. And so I think it's, like, not just closing the loop inside of the institution, but it's understanding who the community is, where these students are going in. And then on like, working very closely with the hiring managers to say, what are you seeing? And then bringing that information back to the faculty and the students. And so when you talk about mentors and people, what we do is, like, hey. Here's an example of a student. So for, I was mentioning the podcast. I heard from Deloitte recently that, you know, that they these are the skills. They were pretty specific on what they were looking for. They need to be better developed. So I found a student in my my kind of LinkedIn, group that that really accentuated that, and I brought them in and just asked them how they developed that. You know, what was that like? And then I share that with my students to be like, here's somebody you can relate to. It's not a gen x person. It's somebody who just graduated a couple years ago, who is in the same role as you. And so I think making those mentors and guides not too far disconnected from the digitally fluid students is essential. Because I think they kind of that whole okay boomer sentiment is still there a bit. And so I think that there's an opportunity for these skills to not just be like, well, in forty years from now, you'll develop leadership skills. It's like, we we need to, like, rechange that narrative, and we need to engage with the the community that they're going to be going into to ensure that we're delivering what they they are requiring. It's a really interesting perspective. Thank you so much for that. I think I love the idea of closing the loop being extended to the actual employers that are going to be hiring your students. I think that is without that piece, then it will the loop doesn't close when they graduate. The loop actually closed once they're actually in the workforce and playing all the skills, both durable and technical they learned in your programs. It's been And and sorry. Just to kind of follow through on that, like, we've just implemented a one year and, kind of a master's for non business students to come in and learn some business skills or MBA or these other programs. And so we kind of prescribe to lifelong learning. Right? Like, we're all saying that this is the future. But from the business model, it's like, well, then we better have those intersections to be like, hey, you've now done you've leveled up. Why don't you come back and do your next level? You're no longer just a managing. You're now an executive or your leadership or, you know, whatever that might be. So I think it's an opportunity for us to scale our offerings a lot more closely to where they can reengage in their learning career. Yeah. And, if I can piggyback off that, Houston, too, that's something that that we too pay very close attention to, the employer feedback that led to a lot of the changes that we had made in terms of the focus on the durable skills. So employers are telling us, we can teach our, you know, the incoming hires the technical and the functional pieces that they need to know about our business, but they need to be able to effectively communicate. They need to be able to relate to other people, all of those durable skills. So regardless of whether you're in an undergraduate program or graduate graduate degree program, those are all still important and relevant. And so a lot of those things are infused, as we look at the different programs that we offer, but then also, you know, engaging those external partners in continued communication there, but also with our faculty and our mentors and our coaches. So it really starts to become more of a common language that's understood, across the board, and I think that's been, an outcome that we have seen going through this process. Alright. Thank you, Bev. Thank you for sharing that perspective with our, with our listeners right now. We are running low on time. I thought we'd have more. It's already I wish we ended up thirty minutes. I have so many questions for you all. But I I will maybe make room for one more question. Let me just see here. There was a question, I think, I think, for Houston about the capstone project and whether or not you've updated that based on, what you've learned what you're gonna be learning? Is there gonna be a redesign coming in terms of that capstone for, you know, showing those durable skills? So because we're just starting from the first year course, it's actually four years out. But I am redesigning it this summer based on, you know, trying to set it up for because to get something pass fail takes two years in our our world. So I'm trying to get all of the, kind of, the the pedagogy and curriculum set up so that I can have more fluidity and not just be like the traditional capstone course, but something that can be very dynamic and that is kind of focused on these durable skills. So, again, what we're seeing from hiring managers is they don't wanna just see course equals a. They wanna see a artifact. This is what I did. I went to a case competition. I started a company. I can show you that I'm empathetic because I volunteer at the humane society. You know, whatever these are, they need to see artifacts. And so I wanna set up the capstone. So they finish with almost, like, think about an architecture portfolio. It's like, what is that portfolio that they can show to hiring managers that demonstrate these durable skills? So I'm trying to wrap my head around that this summer, and that's the goal is to develop a a way that they have this portfolio of work to show that a and the entrepreneur startups is a great way because it it is the hallmark of all these skills. So I'm going to be drawing on this idea, especially with AI, or how do you start a company with AI and demonstrate these durable skills within it. So, the answer is no. Not yet. I hope so. And, Sylvia, if if we can real quick. So this the the notion of the capstone is something that is an integral part of the graduate program, so we can speak a bit to the graduate program side, and it is something that incorporates all of the durable skills. Actually, Leslie, teaches that capstone. So may Leslie, do you wanna talk a little bit about how you incorporate that into your capstone experience? Yeah. The capstone certainly utilizes any of the technical skills that they've learned through the MBA program, but what makes it better is if they actually can demonstrate the human skills that go along with that because they're now in a consulting project. They are now working with a real life client in the business community. They're representing Grand Valley out into the business community. So we do expect that their durable skills are highly developed by the time we are putting them in front of the business community. And this just helps us get there faster, you know, because we are talking about it. We're very lucky that we're in a business school that allows us to put equal weight to the technical aspects of what you need to learn in a business school, but the human things that you need to learn in a business skill because you're not gonna run a business without it. So I I always tell my students, you're gonna get your first job because you've got great technical skills, but you are going to get promoted because you have really good really good human skills. So let's work on that. And we get to work at a school that allows us to do it and assess it, which is great. That's fantastic. I'm so excited to chat with you. I wish we had an extra thirty minutes. I'm gonna pull up our poll again for those of you who want to get in touch with us and and want to learn more. And while that's up, I'm just gonna close things off. I know we have so many questions that we, didn't get to, from benchmarking and, program specific scenarios. Those are things that are near and dear to my heart. Those are things that we are thinking about. But, please, if you wanna chat with us more, get more information, please complete the poll. We'll we'll get back to you. And thank you so much, everyone, Erica, Leslie, and Houston for joining us. We really appreciate your time. We really appreciate the attendees. You can have other busy days to join us as well. Thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to hearing more about how this all plays out for all of you. Thank you so much for your time.