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How Do We Know What They Know?Evaluating Student-Learning Outcomes in an MPA Programwhen it was completed. Because the students who completed the Final SkillsSelf-Assessment were in their last semester of study, they never completed anInitial Skills Self-Assessment at the time they entered the program. However, itis still instructive to compare results from the Final and Initial Skills Self-Assessments, in order to determine whether there are any significant trends.(For purposes of comparison, it should be noted that, when the results ofTables 1 and 2 are combined, it produces a total sample size of 35, which isequivalent to the sample size in Table 3.)A simple t-test of independent sample means produces the results shown inTable 4. (See Table 4.) All of the differences between the means on the InitialSkills Self-Assessment and the Final Skills Self-Assessment are statisticallysignificant. The largest differences appear in the areas of budgeting, decisionmaking,organization behavior, personnel, policy, problem-solving, and research.As mentioned earlier, caution should be used in interpreting these results, becausethe two samples are independent. However, because the admission standards thatstudents in both samples entered under were equivalent, it is unlikely thatstudents’ characteristics were so significantly different that it would account forsuch differences in their initial and final perceptions of core content skills.Table 4.Differences in Students’ Perceptions ofKnowledge for Five Core Content Areas onthe Initial and Final Skills Self-AssessmentsSkill Areas t Values p ValuesBudgeting -8.84 p
How Do We Know What They Know?Evaluating Student-Learning Outcomes in an MPA ProgramAnother point of comparison is to analyze results of the Final Skills Self-Assessment, and the Alumni Survey conducted in March, 2008. One relevantquestion on this survey asked alumni to rank the amount of knowledge theygained from each core area — using the same five-point ordinal scale that wasused in the Final Skills Self-Assessment. Table 5 reports the results of thatcomparison. (See Table 5.)In eight out of 11 areas, the perceptions of students just leaving theprogram were higher than the perceptions of the alumni. In the threeinstances where perceptions of graduating students were lower than those ofalumni, the small differences were not statistically significant. Significantdifferences in the eight areas could have been the result of several factors.First, there could have been differences in alumni responses based ongraduation years. To control for this, the data were sorted into two samples ofgraduates — one from before 1998 and one from after 1998. There were nosignificant differences or patterns when comparing these two samples. Second,the differences could have been driven by the non-equivalence of alumniTable 5.Differences Between Students’ Perceptionsof Knowledge in Five Core Content areason the Final Skills Self-Assessment and onthe 2008 Alumni SurveySkill Areas t Values p ValuesBudgeting 0.74 NSDecision Making 2.57 p
Page 1 and 2: Summer 2009 Volume 15, No. 3JPAEJOU
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