Review: 2022 AACSB Americas Accreditation Conference

Wednesday, September 14th, 2022

1. Supplemental Accounting Accreditation Q&A:
   • Join this session to learn more about AACSB’s supplemental accounting accreditation for schools interested in an elevated quality assurance system for their accounting programs.
   • Why pursue supplemental accounting accreditation?
     • Recognizes the unique aspects of accounting as a profession
     • Signals quality to stakeholders and potential students and faculty; Speaker specifically identified international students and their valuation of accreditations being more than what he has observed from domestic students.
     • Other: Question was asked whether accounting firms found additional value in the supplemental accounting accreditation. The general consensus was no but that having the general AACSB accreditation did make a difference.
   • Accounting PRT’s usually include both an accounting academic as well as a practitioner. In other words, make sure that you have both perspectives represented in faculty, curriculum, documentation.
   • 2018 Accounting Standards largely align to the 202 Business Standards. You can save time and effort by referring to the business report in the accounting report. There are three general areas.
     • Area 1: Strategic Management and Innovation for Accounting Academic Units
       • Standard A1: Accounting Academic Unit Mission, Impact, and Innovation
       • Standard A2: Accounting Intellectual Contributions, Impact, and Alignment with Mission
       • Standard A3: Financial Strategies and Allocation of Resources
     • Area 2: Accounting Learning and Teaching
       • Standard A4: Accounting Curricula Content, Management and Assurance of Learning
       • Standard A5: Information Technology Skills, Agility and Knowledge for Accounting Graduates and Faculty
     • Area 3: Accounting Academic and Professional Engagement and Professional Interactions
       • Standard A6: Accounting Faculty Sufficiency, Credentials, Qualifications and Deployment
   • Accelerated Path: Designed for schools that were already AACSB accredited and streamlines the process. It reduces redundance in reporting, reduces cost, etc. They skip the eligibility application phase and skills the SER report. Still have a mentor, iSER that speaks to the six standards, and write an accounting CIR report and prepared for visit. Saves a lot of time and approximately $8000 in fees. The accounting accreditation committee (AAC) meets three times a year. Documentation is due two months before they meet.
     • Contact staff liaison (I am assuming Rachel) to discuss interest. They will assign mentor if we wish and give us the timeline.
     • Timeline for iSER is, for us, approximately 2-3 years out for a CIR in Summer 2027.
     • My take-away is that we can clearly do this but need support from the administration in terms of hiring.
2. Continuous Improvement Review Accreditation Q&A:
   • “New” standards appear to be performing well; great consultative emphasis for CIR visits creates added value; Schools committing to societal impact and greater emphasis on strategic planning (this is growing in importance, the leveraging of the strategic plan – make sure we continue to address this).
   • Challenges include communicating the school’s impact story from a strategic point of view as opposed to an ad hoc manner; providing a focused approach to societal impact and selecting measures; identifying the “right” disciplines for tables 3-1 and 8-1; overlooking key element in strategic plans (KPIs, Targets, etc.) and not including societal impact in the plan as required in Standard 1.4; understanding the nuances of Standard 3 (faculty ratios).
   • Pay attention to the notes left in our initial accreditation document. The CIR team will focus on those items and looking for us to have addressed them.
     • Write a great report; outlining who you are, identifying what identifies the school and programs, how the mission is embodied within daily operations, etc. Share the report with the team (i.e. faculty, staff, students, business advisory board).
     • Include accurate and complete tables (integrity)
     • Work closely with PRT Chair (Collaborative)
     • Plan the logistics of the visit, scheduling relevant groups, requesting consultative guidance, have multiple contributors during meetings, etc.)
   • Make sure that societal impact is an overarching strategy that flows through the daily activities of the school (i.e. mission, curriculum, events, etc.).
   • Additionally, more significant efforts in strategic plans are expected. Fluff is no longer acceptable; rather, they want to see KPIs, measurable targets, etc. We need to refine this aspect of our plan.
   • The session moved to a Q&A mode; Dr. Lynn Richardson asked about the importance of research quality. The response was that research quality expectations should be tied to mission. Tie/Explain this through the narrative, linking the quantity and quality of research to the school’s mission. The narrative in the CIR is important; it needs to tell the story…and I am adding this, but you need a story to tell.
3. Keynote I: The Future of Higher Education – A Time for Leadership
   • Speaker: Scott Van Pelt: Demographic, technological, and economic demographics represent forces that are forcing the need for change. In his book, they looked at the history of higher education (backwards, forwards, and sideways) and out of that, were able to identify found new realities:
     • The ongoing proliferation of new distributors and providers:
       • Coursera’s rapid rise is a prime example. But other competitors include companies like Google that offers certification 100% online. They have partnered with major employers to help “graduates” advance their careers. These programs are flexible and low cost.
     • The demand for any time, any lace education:
       • Traditionally, fixed time, fixed location, bundled. Now, on demand, flexible, unbundled. Right, wrong, or indifferent but online is where it is at due to the flexibility of location, time, etc.
     • The rise of just in time education:
       • Short-term, agile learning experiences that can be immediately applied in a person’s current job. Within the medical field, knowledge doubles every 73 days. This is much short that the quote from 20 years ago that more broadly stated that it doubles every 18 months. Automation continues to replace task-oriented skills. Half of time spent on current job tasks could be automated within the next 10-20 years.
       • This means we have three new needs: industry partnerships, new credentialing models, and lifelong learning. Employers are increasing expecting employees to upskill while in the job; there was a significant increase from 6#% in 2018 to 94% in 2020.
     • A pivot from inputs to outcomes
       • We must update our traditional teaching practices (i.e. from the traditional lecture to more experiential learning opportunities). Utilize SMEs, learning science experts, instructional technologists, and data-driven roles each come together to create learning design. Think self-paced learning to that learners that need more time, have it while those that need less can complete their assignment, module, etc. and move on to their next task; creating outcomes as the constant rather than time. Perhaps setting assignment goals where a learner must score at least 80% before they can advance to the next assessment?
     • More discussion of badging and micro-credentials. The speaker related current traditional programs to that of the music industry and albums. Disruptive technologies altered that reality to create digital sales of individual songs. He believes that education is headed in a similar direction.
     • What they know, what they can do, evidence of achievement leads to digital learner-owned credentials.
     • Discussed equity issues, stating that we need to address access disparities, stating that African American access to high-speed Internet access is roughly 8% lower than for whites while Latinx access is approximately 15% lower. We need to develop curriculums that keep this in mind as we develop programming.
4. Altus Assessment – Moving Towards More Holistic and Standardized Admissions in Business Education
   • Challenges include fully and fairly reviewing applicants, ensure diversity, etc.
   • GPA “can” be a good predictor however, grade inflation, working students, etc is challenging
   • Personal statements are problematic as are reference letters. They are poor predictors of student success. Standardized tests represent a hurdle that may unfairly impact some student segments.
   • Life experience, leadership background, and potential can represent more equitable admissions per an AACSB article.
   • Casper that assesses social intelligence and professionalism; Snapshot communication, and self-reflection.
     • Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs): provides insight into how learners may react in hypothetical future situations.
     • Their exam prompts prospective students with videos and/or textual prompts to which learners respond in the form of short essay responses. Takes approximately an hour.
     • Each scenario is scored by multiple raters to come up with an aggregate score, approximately 2-4 weeks as the assessment is administered.
     • WIth 9 scenarios, learners receive an average score across 9 scenarios scored by 9 different raters.
     • Applicants can be ranked based on a formular, rubric, and qualitatively.
     • Casper measures a LOT of constructions including collaboration, communication, empathy, etc.
   • Snapshot is their other soft-skills tool they use to measure soft-skills of prospective learners.
     • Communication, self-reflection, and motivation
     • Applicants record their responded as short videos
     • Similarly, scored by multiple raters
5. (A2) Upskilling and Reskilling Your Faculty – Overcoming Resistance to Change
   • Upskilling and reskilling is not an option, it is a must due to experiential learning and student competitions, continuous improvement, outreach activities, corporate engagement, and online learning. These things require that faculty continuously upskill and reskill to stay current and relevant.
   • Faculty are resistant to change due to:
     • tenure system
     • educational industry
     • workload (i.e., teaching, research, and service)
     • culture
   • Overcoming Resistance to Change:
     • Annual faculty report (points based on various activities to help ensure/encourage “merit”/raise eligibility)
     • Recruitment Processes (mix of tenure track AND fixed term faculty)
     • Faculty Development: Sending faculty to workshops in areas the school wishes to develop and emphasize (i.e., case writing workshops).
     • International Exposure:
     • Students’ Online Evaluation: Consider including informal evaluations as well where students may add additional detail beyond the traditional university evaluation tool.
     • Center of Learning and Teaching (CTL): New faculty MUST complete training at CTL: Perhaps we could do this with ACUE/QM?
     • Second SPeaker:
       • Peer Faculty Learning
       • Grad/MBA Mentor/Coach
       • New Online Course Series
       • Annual Faculty Activity Report:
         • Provides faculty the opportunity to articulate how their efforts help the college and university achieve their mission.
6. (B3) Engaging Stakeholders & Framing Processes for a Successful Accreditation
   • Did not get a lot of out this session, presumably because of our recent accreditation efforts
   • One cool thing they did though was to include links in their accreditation documents to their annual magazine/newsletter that includes lots of societal impact examples. So, rather than reinventing the wheel, they could simply point back to those already created sources which helped tell their story yet managed the work effort.
     • My takeaway is to make sure we archive our newsletters for use in future reports
     • Consider making sure that we include stubs within our newsletters to make sure we are capturing that information all along that is aligned with AACSB items.
   • You need strong leadership (voice) to champion accreditation efforts
   • Broad engagement: combine standing committees with short-term task forces which make things seem more attainable
   • Attend AoL Seminars I&II
   • Attend Continuous Improvement Review seminar
   • Attend Societal Impact seminar
7. (C1) Where do Indirect Measures Fit In?
   • Direct vs Indirect Measures:
     • Direct: Require observation of student work, performance based, samples of student work, individual level, granular, identify specific problem, non-student assessors
     • Indirect: Do NOT observe actual student work, opinion-based, for a general population of students, can be group-level, can be global, identify general issues, students can be assessors
   • Learning analytics systems are essentially indirect measures (i.e., Canvas Analytics regarding student performance, data from EAB, etc.). We have LOTS of data in various systems around campus, but it is not utilized to its full potential.
   • Define, capture, report, predict, and act (Campbell, 2007)
   • Consider adding indirect measures to end of course evaluations (perhaps AoL measures)
   • Consider pulling indirect measures from Canvas
   • Hire/assign student workers reach out to alumni, complete alumni surveys, etc.
   • Our First/Next Destination Surveys seem to be really on target with the data collection we are doing relative to the conversation I had with representatives from six other schools at the table at which I was seated.
   • One of the speakers made a reference to being very careful when using indirect measures only to assess a program. Such programs need to be small, niche, specialized and likely use multiple indirect measures to evaluate that particular objective.
   • We could also use data regarding student suspensions, EAB data related to advising, interventions, etc., data from our students attending the accounting lab, etc.
   • Karen Tarnoff, one of the presenters, provided an example of placing tutoring outside of classrooms on days in which exams were administered, noting that as students were leaving, they were much more likely to become aware of and later utilize those resources later in the semester and in subsequent semesters once that resource stared them in the face after that initial poor performance.

Thursday, September 15th, 2022

• AACSB Advocacy and Thought Leadership
  • Advocacy: Platforms to amplify
    • Advancing Value: Brand the AACSB logo everywhere (i.e., on the website, in fliers, etc.). Leverage it to raise brand awareness.
    • Answer these questions:
      • Why did your school pursue AACSB Accreditation?
      • Who benefits from the process?
      • How has the accreditation process (or CIR) enhanced your school?
        • Value and ROI:
      • What impact are you making?
    • Review AACSB resources; specifically Influential Leaders (to spotlight influential alumni) and Innovation That Inspire (to share innovative, engaging work being done within the college)
    • Hashtag and tag AACSB in social media posts. For example, the hashtag for this specific conference is #AACSBaccreditation.
      • Their most engagement is occurring through LinkedIn
  • Thought Leadership: Content to Share:
    • Range of research, actionable insight, and multi-media content on trending and important topics relevant to business education and its stakeholders. Information related to this come from all over the place and is disseminated through various channels.
    • Engaging in thought leadership is important because it keeps you current, encourages continuous improvement, etc. (See slides for more examples).
      • Review AACSB Insights for lots of Thought Leadership content
      • Review AACSB Recent & Notable for content related to societal impact, DEIB, lifelong learning, etc.
      • Upcoming content will cover New Value Proposition for Business Education, Societal Impact Thought Leadership, and Edtech Readiness
• (E1) Learner Progression and Student Success
  • Standard 6: Learner Progression
  • As part of their strategic plan, they developed 9 “clusters” to address over the next 5 years. Some of these were specifically tied to learner progression and student success.
  • Diversity Cluster Metrics to Track:
    • Representation; Retention; Recruitment; Selection; Promotion; Development; Pay & Benefits
  • Student Engagement Cluster
    • Student engagement survey which includes mental health, food security, time spend at Tarleton outside of class time questions.
    • Design undergraduate degrees with more flexibility
    • Increase faculty and admin knowledge of students support services (i.e., training faculty how to respond to student in distress or similar mental wellness training by x date
    • Student support lunch and learn
    • Deep reflection on internship experiences
    • Faculty survey on student interest in engagement
  • Dr. Melinda Cline: Utilized LinkedIn to interact and engage with alumni; Utilize Advancement Alumni Data Sheet to help guide questions (this could be useful for updating our First/Next Destination Surveys as well as follow up surveys).
    • She handles this largely manually by calling them directly; when she does not get ahold of them, sometimes she will connect to them through LinkedIn to make the connection there; She gets about a 40% success rate with two contacts at which point, she moves on.
    • They get rich feedback (NOTE: Ask about preparedness for the work force and/or graduate school) about salary ranges, employment status,
    • She recommends a dedicated faculty member with release time, LinkedIn great tool but often not current, alumni are interesting to talk to, many contemplating graduate school but need personalized advice, many want to engage/give back (direct to web site); provide guidance (i.e., Career Service) if they are struggling.
    • If they feel like they did not learn everything they needed to learn, ask them what they would have liked to have learned more about to help your program improve and adjust to changing needs. Her findings found they want more career readiness skills, internships, career services, studies abroad, and brand awareness and promotion (with employers) to help raise the value of their degree with the people that are writing their paychecks.
    • Long story short, alumni tend to love their school. But, often, they are not able to leverage how their degree provided value and helped to leverage/improve their position. We MUST teach them the value of their degree to help them make that translation to improve their satisfaction with attending your school.
• Keynote II: State of Accreditation Discussion with Stephanie Bryan

#AACSBaccreditation

NOTES:

• AACSB is ISO Certified and as part of that effort, conducts satisfaction surveys and anything under 90% they work to address.
• Begin working on CIR so that we have a better idea of what the content/expectations are and can make adjustments as necessary to meet the 2020 standards and prepare for the accounting supplemental accreditation.

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