Development of an instructional practices scale for business school curricula

As reflective educators, we seek to use instructional practices offering the greatest benefit to our students. Such benefits are easily seen and understood by the professor, but less often are clearly recognized by the students. To fully evaluate the impact of various activities on students, it is essential to explore the pedagogical practices they engage in, both within, and outside of the classroom. The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to measure the variety of instructional activities used int eh business curricula. The instrument that will be described in this session contains thirteen scales drawn from a total of 58 developed items. The survey gathered responses from 189 business students from four US-based universities: two state-supported (public) and two private. Based on Varimax factor analysis rotation, the scales were left intact. All 58 items aligned on the thirteen scales as predicted. Using Cronbach's Alpha, the reliability of the thirteen scales was supported: all Alpha’s measured above .83. The focus of this study is to validate the instructional groupings. The instrument will also serve to measure the delivery of classroom and institutional-guided learning practices for sound instructional practice.