Graduates of the Finance MS program will be capable of providing their employer with advanced critcial thinking skills.

Finance MS graduates will have an advanced understanding of financial principles.

Students will be able to apply knowledge of Finance in solving complex business problems.

At least 80% of Finance MS students will score better than 75% on selected questions in various 500 level Finance courses.  Finance faculty members collaborated on the selection of the embedded questions.  The faculty members effort ensured that all core concepts were addressed on each exam.

This assessment was a follow-up to the initial assessment conducted in the fall semester of 2009. The assessment was made in two parts. The first part involved a series of short problems involving calculations deemed necessary for success in the course. The second part involved a selection of 20 multiple choice questions covering a variety of different international finance topics covered throughout the course.
This course is a graduate-level course that is required of students in the M.S. in Finance degree program and is an elective open to other graduate business students, mainly those in the MBA program. The course examines various problems associated with the financial management of companies operating in a global business environment. The primary objectives are as follows:

·         Gaining factual knowledge (e.g., types of global markets, institutions, and instruments, foreign currency calculations, tools used to manage foreign currency exposures, etc.). Questions 2-4, 6, 11, 12, 15, 17, 19 and 20 assess student proficiency in this area.

·         Learning fundamental principles, generalizations, and theories (e.g., factors associated with the appreciation/depreciation of foreign currencies and used in forecasting exchange rates). Questions 7-10 and 18 assess proficiency in this area.

·         Applying course material to different scenarios common to businesses operating in a global environment. Questions 1, 5, 13-14, and 16 assess proficiency in this area.

In terms of the first part of the assessment, it appears that there are very few problems for the students in handling the basic calculations necessary for success in the course as the overall course average was 91.1, down slightly from the previous assessment average of 93.1 but still quite high overall with no individual questions posing any particular difficulties.

In terms of the second part of the assessment, we find very mixed results. The students appear to be mastering the first course objective, basic factual knowledge, quite well with an overall average of 88.8 percent of correct responses in this area.

However, the second course objective is clearly a weak point in the course with overall correct responses of only 59.2 percent. In fact two of the questions (10 and 18) were successfully answered by less than 40 percent of the students indicating a weakness in the course coverage in these areas.

Questions covering the third course objective show some positive and negative characteristics as students did well with some of the basic questions (1, 13, and 14) but considerably worse in others (5 and 16). The material addressed by questions 5 and 16 will need to be more clearly addressed in future semesters.

The course assessment did not explicitly examine the differences in results by degree program. With only four of the students in the M.S. in Finance program, it was deemed that there would be very little value added in examining the results by program. In addition, the MS degree is being phased out so assessment results are likely no longer necessary.

 

The course is assessed by using a series of multiple choice questions, selected by the MS Finance faculty, that are embedded within the exams given throughout the semester.  The faculty have selected the questions based on ten core learning objectives for the course.  The learning objections are listed below.

1. Understand the corporation and the role of the financial manager
2. Understand the role of financial markets and institutions
3. Have a clear understanding of accounting and finance
4. Understand time value of money and its application to corporate finance
5. Demonstrate an understanding of and ability to value bonds and their appropriate yields
6. Demonstrate an understanding of and ability to value stocks
7. Demonstrate an understanding of and ability to apply the various tools of capital budgeting.
8. Understand risk and return and opportunity cost of capital
9. Understand cost of capital
10. Understand corporate financing and governance.

 The overall performance on the embedded questions was 71.04% (a score of 16.34 correct out of 23 possible. 

Improvements to Finance 539/International Finance:  Some modifications appear to be needed. As discussed in the International Finance findings, the difficulties that the students have are in understanding some of the theoretical principles associated with international finance as well as selected applications areas. More emphasis will need to be made in these areas.

Improvements to Finance 531/Security Analysis and Portfolio Management:  Performance on each learning objective is relatively consistent.  One shortcoming of our process is that each objective is not assessed via the same number of questions.  For example, LO 1 is assessed with one question while LO 10 is assessed with 10 questions.  This imbalance will be addressed in the future.  Performance on LO 3 (accounting and finance) was lowest, but this may be due to the fact that only one question was asked.  LO 8 (risk and return) was assessed via three questions, yet students only answered correctly 59.5% of the time.  Risk and return is perhaps the hardest topic taught in the corporate finance class, and there is no prerequisite course in investments required to take FIN 531.