Evaluating a newly developed Business Communications Course

Edward Palmer and Nishani Singh
University of Adelaide

Keywords: evaluation; EAL students; course design

Background: Success at university is highly dependant on students' proficiency level in academic literacy skills. It is critical that attention continues to be fixed on English as Additional Language (EAL) students. These students, who are often struggling with cross-cultural transition, require strategies, which will allow them to access postgraduate programs with greater success. The Business Communications course at the University of Adelaide grew out of this need. From the very outset of the planning, development and design of the course, evaluation through a series of pre and post-tests, focus groups, independent observations and surveys was an integral feature. It was important to evaluate and verify that the course had met its primary aims and objectives.

Methodology: Students taking Business Communications were pre-tested throughout the course as a formative exercise in order to determine their proficiencies in writing, reading interpretation; oral presentation academic discussion and group work and library skills. Assessments profiles were also designed to develop student proficiency in these areas and the in-built evaluation made use of these assessments as defined end points for the students. Student surveys were used to inform teaching staff throughout the course, and focus groups were held involving students and teachers of the course to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the assessment profiles and their effect on student learning. Measures of student improvement, as defined by increases in formative to summative assessment, were defined prior to the course onset as parameters for measuring the success of the course.

Results: The course is ongoing and at this stage results of the evaluation are unknown. Measures of success or otherwise will be determined over the next few months and be reported at the conference.

Conclusion: Evaluation of the success (or lack of) the Business Communication course did not depend solely on student surveys, which are often criticised as being non-objective and lacking perspective. Nor did it rely only on exam results, which do not necessarily provide a meaningful and accurate assessment of a course. Pre and post-tests written into the course, provided an indication of students' progress and thus the strength of the course.