Jeri Mullins Beggs, Accounting
Rewarding Accountability and Professionalism in the Classroom (PowerPoint)
It is important for students to learn the importance of professionalism and accountability before they enter the workforce. Unprofessional behavior will hurt them on the job, and it is better to learn to act professionally, or be punished for not acting professionally, in the classroom than on the job. However, few instructors have formal methods for rewarding professional behavior and accountability in the classroom, nor do they talk about these issues with their students. This session will describe several methods for rewarding accountability and professionalism. In particular, the problems associated with group projects will be discussed along with the benefits of creating group contracts and improving the process for collecting group evaluations. For classes that use client projects, managing client and student expectations for client projects will be used as an example of creating accountability and professionalism. Finally, the benefits of including an individual professionalism score as part of the grading system will be reviewed.
