Abstract:

In today’s educational context, assessment is gaining ever more relevance in the learning process. As such, innovative methodologies are applied to guarantee the correct evaluation of skills acquired by the students. In this frame of reference, this work considers the experience of a new assessment methodology applied to the Final Master Thesis of an MBA programme. Such a thesis consists of a Business Plan which the students need to develop while proving the viability of the business idea proposed. The assessment of this thesis is divided into two parts: first, an assessment of the written thesis that makes up 60% of the final grade; and second, an assessment of an oral presentation in front of an academic board that is worth 40% of the grade.

This evaluation methodology is based on the use of several rubrics, both for the continuous assessment of the thesis by its supervisor as the Business Plan is crafted, and for the evaluation of the academic board. The different rubrics include several indicators related to the level of detail expected in each part of the Business Plan, the proficiency of the students, the viability of the business idea, and also the communication skills during the presentation.

After applying this rubric-based evaluation method, we were able to acquire information on both the evaluation of supervisors and members of the academic board. The data shows that the gap between the marks given by supervisors and by academic boards is narrowing when compared with the gaps obtained before the rubric-based methodology was applied. This is very promising, as it implies a more objective assessment of the students by all actors involved.

Based on this experience, several improvement areas have been identified. Future lines of work include applying this rubric-based methodology to other Master's programmes, in order to consolidate the results obtained and further identify opportunities for improvement.

Keywords:

Assessment, rubric-based, final master thesis, higher education.