Perceptions of the benefits of the A3 planner in facilitating project-based learning in accounting education

This paper evaluates ways of instilling project management skills into accounting-based learning by the use of an iterative A3 planner to plan, monitor and review assignment progress. The application of an A3 planner to facilitate a project-based learning (PBL) group assignment in undergraduate accounting education has been critically evaluated in terms of both the student and tutor experience. The study uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative data assisting exploration of perceptions were collected through 100 undergraduate students. A series of focus group discussions were carried out to investigate students’ engagement and tutors’ teaching experiences regarding the adoption of the A3 planner. The results suggest that the A3 planner promotes active planning and effective management of a PBL group assignment. It makes students’ thought processes more visible thereby facilitating and enhancing the tutoring/mentoring process. Moreover a more interactive and transparent approach by doing assignment via the use of an iterative A3 planner has ensured more feedback points and action based efficiency in the doing approach for learners.     

Teaching Innovative Accounting Topics: Student Reaction to a Course in Social Accounting

Accounting students experience degree programmes with a fairly ‘traditional’ range of topics that are taught with an emphasis on technique and learning the ‘status quo’. To the extent that a topic may challenge this pattern by emphasizing new concepts, questioning existing concepts, being more concerned with what accounting ‘might be’ rather than current practice, or some combination of these, some topics may be considered ‘innovative’ additions to the curriculum. Social accounting is an innovative accounting topic that has attracted considerable attention in the literature. This paper reports on an implementation dilemma encountered in a course on social accounting resulting from a clash between preferred student learning attributes and those embodied in social accounting. The use of action oriented teaching strategies to counteract this dilemma is identified. Similar problems and solutions may be applicable for other innovative accounting topics.     

Virtual Office Hours (VOH) in accounting coursework: Leveraging technology to enhance an integrative learning environment

For at least the past two decades, accounting educators have been faced with increasing demands to keep pace with imperatives from the profession and with changes in the practice environment. Rapid changes in information technology applications, both in accounting practice and in academe, have added to the complexity of accounting educator responsibilities. This paper reports on the development and use of a “Virtual Office Hours” (VOH) platform to enhance opportunities to engage students in their learning beyond the classroom environment. This approach has been developed as a result of instructor experience with adding technology applications in the accounting classroom to better reflect practice environment needs. VOH has been implemented in auditing and intermediate accounting courses to develop clear and assured lines of communication between the student and instructor, and to foster the use of information technologies as a normal and expected characteristic of the course learning environment. In so doing, the approach uses tools that students will likely apply in the practice setting to interact with clients and colleagues. This can be seen as an extension of the model conveyed by the AICPA in its Core Competency Framework to leverage technology for student skill building. Student feedback, insights from accounting course experiences with VOH, and suggestions on applicability to other accounting educators are considered in the paper.     

Rethinking the Career Anchors Inventory framework with insights from a finance transformation field study

It is claimed that the re-engineering and automation of routine work should free accountants to adopt broader, so-called ‘value-adding’ roles as partners to business decision-makers. The ‘new world of work’, involving new process-based methods, single instance ERP systems and the wholesale relocation of professional work to lower cost areas, brings opportunities for accountants in systems design and adding value to the business. For many others, the new reality may be a more competitive and less secure working environment, with a mid-level career bottleneck reflecting a polarisation between the upper and lower layers of the finance function.Based upon Schein's theory of career anchors and using exploratory sequential mixed methods, we consider the impact on the career perceptions of individual accountants as accounting expertise, traditionally embodied in people, is codified and embedded within end-to-end business processes in the context of a finance shared service centre. Key findings include new perceptions of careers with greater emphasis on the acquisition of general managerial competence and leadership skills, with the importance of cultivating a sense of ‘global connectedness' to maintain individual employability. Suggestions are made to update Schein's Career Orientation Inventory to better reflect the reality of accounting in the ‘new world of work'.     

Meeting threshold learning standards through self-management in group oral presentations: observations on accounting postgraduate students

This study explores the development of student self-management skills through an oral presentation task. It is motivated by the challenge to maintain consistent quality in students’ oral skills and to incorporate national accounting curriculum requirements for threshold learning standards into an accounting subject. The study has been conducted in Australia using a sample of postgraduate accounting students, and the task required the students to prepare a group presentation using action learning. The data were collected using in-class observation and a survey. Students indicated that they were more confident and comfortable in preparing and presenting the oral presentations as compared with their previous experiences. This was especially due to students having a second opportunity to improve their presentations allowing a better understanding of the expected standard. The oral presentation task benefitted all students but was especially useful for those who had limited experience speaking in front of a larger audience.     

The influence of self-efficacy beliefs and prior learning on performance

This research examines self-efficacy beliefs and prior learning of accounting students to determine how useful these variables are for predicting academic success in accounting courses. Self-efficacy beliefs are the confidence one has in the ability to perform certain tasks or skills (Bandura, 1997). As Bandura (1977) argued, the results here showed that confidence in one's ability to succeed is the most powerful predictor of academic success. This research provides pathways for increased student success by indicating that a focus on enhancing student self-efficacy will lead to higher achievement. The implications of this research for accounting education practice is discussed.     

Ethics and professionalism: Bringing the topic to life in the classroom

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the benefits of enhancing student understanding of ethical perspectives and professionalism in the workplace. An ongoing challenge for accounting educators is the need to address ethics in a way that will hold student interest, especially when most students have yet to experience an ethical situation in a work setting. We have developed a classroom game that incorporates the Institute of Management Accountants’ (IMA’s) Statement of Ethical Professional Practice, a newly revised model of ethical conduct. In this game, students identify how the IMA’s standards and principles are either upheld or violated in mini-case scenarios from workplace settings. The game facilitates student reflective thinking – a learning process where an individual addresses a problem that has many reasonable solutions rather than just one answer. The approach was introduced in managerial and cost accounting courses and has been employed also in an intermediate accounting setting. Feedback suggests that the game holds student interest, fosters reflective thinking, and can be used across multiple courses.     

The effectiveness of using spreadsheets to teach financial accounting

There have been numerous attempts to integrate micro-computers into the teaching of accounting courses in higher education. Two of the reasons that have been suggested for using computers on accounting courses are: firstly, the educational benefits and, secondly, that students will then be equipped with the computing and spreadsheet skills that they will require in the workplace. One method of using the computer is to use it as a computational tool, allowing the student to develop models from scratch. Such an approach was developed by Marriott & Simon (1990a). However, as there is little evidence regarding the educational effectiveness of using such methods, a rigourous and structured research project was conducted using first–year accounting degree students at Cardiff Business School. This article outlines the rationale for the project and analyses the results obtained. The results indicate that while spreadsheets can be successfully integrated into an accounting course, their use had no measurable impact on test performance. However, the use of computers can still be deemed to be worthwhile as the students' computer skills are enhanced and it permits further integration in other courses where educational benefits may be more readily obtained.     

Formative assessment in accounting education and some initial evidence on its use for instructional sequencing

Formative assessment (FA) provides instructors and students with feedback to improve learning. Across a variety of education settings FA is one of the most effective classroom interventions for improving student learning outcomes. Yet the accounting education literature is almost devoid of any work related to FA. One barrier for developing FA in accounting education is the significant background knowledge needed to implement FA successfully. The purpose of this paper is to provide some of that background. The paper includes conceptual discussion from the general education literature to explain how FA improves learning and discussion of research that has identified features that affect the efficacy of FA practice. One of these features is how instructors use FA data to adjust instruction. An empirical study illustrates that accounting educators can use FA data to inform a decision about instructional sequencing. Instructional sequencing principles have been used to develop new accounting curricula and courses, and accounting education research has used empirical data to inform an instructional sequencing decision. The current study tests, using a sample of introductory accounting students, alternate versions of two FA tasks to determine which version is better for identifying deficiencies in student learning outcomes. Results suggest that one version of each task is better for identifying deficiencies, but an adjustment to instructional sequencing may be needed to ensure efficacy of one of the tasks, depending on how the FA practice is implemented.     

Drivers of Teaching Effectiveness: Views from Accounting Educator Exemplars in Australia

Abstract

This paper summarizes the views, obtained via a survey instrument created by the authors and reported in studies by Stout and Wygal, of 22 accounting educator teaching exemplars from Australia. Each of these individuals has been cited for teaching excellence through receipt of one or more formal teaching awards. The paper responds to calls in Australia for increased attention to the dimensions of teaching effectiveness and to initiatives in the United States calling for a broader sharing of information among members of the academy regarding the characteristics of teaching effectiveness. Little direct evidence from the field of accounting education is available to date regarding such characteristics or antecedents of teaching effectiveness in the student learning environment. Our research therefore extends in a fundamental way the work of Stice and Stocks and Stout and Wygal. Specifically, perceptions from a sample of award-winning non-US faculties regarding the ‘drivers of teaching effectiveness’ in accounting education are recorded and analyzed. In decreasing order of perceived importance, drivers of teaching effectiveness are: having a student focus; commitment to teaching (as a profession); high levels of preparation/organization; the ability to link subject matter to the practice environment; and, instructor skills and attributes. This paper adds to our understanding of the drivers of teaching effectiveness and begins the process of creating a worldwide knowledge base in accounting education. The paper should be of interest to accounting faculty members interested in improving their teaching effectiveness and/or mentoring junior faculty members.     

Widening participation and contextual entry policy in accounting and finance

The paper examines the performance of accounting and finance students entering university via a ‘widening participation’ scheme that seeks to attract students who have been historically under-represented in higher education. Focus is placed on the policy of providing contextual entry offers that recognise that academic qualifications be judged in the social context in which they were achieved. Accounting and finance recruits the highest proportion of ‘widening participation’ students at a UK ‘Russell Group’ university and provides a key arena for investigating widening participation policy. The study is based on a quantitative analysis of relative performance levels over 12 years and interview findings with 27 students. The quantitative results show that those receiving contextual offers perform at least as well at university level as students with equivalent entry qualifications, thereby supporting contextual entry offer policy. The paper also provides insights into why accounting and finance is popular with ‘widening participation’ students.     

Smart work and hard work: explicating a learning orientation in strategic management accounting

This paper examines the skills and aptitudes necessary to undertake a strategic management accounting project. It argues that individuals involved in such projects are required to work both smart and hard. This argument is developed theoretically by reference to the work of educational psychologists who have identified two different types of goal orientation which people pursue in achievement situations: the learning orientation and the performance orientation. Evidence that strategic management accounting requires a learning orientation is provided by means of a case study which describes its use in a competitive tendering situation. This is followed by a discussion of the potentially symbiotic relationship of strategic management accounting and organizational learning. The discussion leads to the specification of a research agenda that may have significant implications for the practice and learning of management accounting.     

Accounting students’ choice of blended learning format and its impact on performance and satisfaction

Using online platforms to deliver educational content, some institutions have developed blended courses that combine the advantages of online instruction with traditional face-to-face (F2F) teaching. This study compares accounting student performance and satisfaction in two blended formats with similar content and design, i.e. F2F+ vs. Online+ courses. It also assesses the characteristics of students who choose the latter option over F2F+ courses. Students in four advanced accounting subjects were surveyed and their course performance was obtained. Results indicate that the main determinants of students’ decision to register for an Online+ course are retaking the course, increased weekly work hours, and belief that this type of blended course facilitates learning. Results show that students in advanced accounting courses with equivalent content and design perform similarly and have the same level of course satisfaction across course delivery formats, as hypothesized under equivalency theory.     

Experiential Learning – A Case Study of the Use of Computerised Stock Market Trading Simulation in Finance Education

Abstract

Finance is a popular programme of study in UK higher education despite it being a challenging subject that requires students to understand and apply complex and abstract mathematical models and academic theories. Educational simulation is an active learning method found to be useful in enhancing students’ learning experience, but there has been limited pedagogic research attention on its use in finance education within the UK. This paper, utilising an on-line survey, provides a snapshot of the current usage of finance-related simulations across the 97 UK universities offering finance programmes. The paper also reports the findings of a case study that offers insights into the effectiveness of introducing computerised simulation into a postgraduate finance course from both a student and tutor perspective. It highlights an enhancing learning experience for students through concrete experience and reflective observation, increasing their understanding of difficult and complex finance concepts.     

Development of and student reactions to an international consolidation case problem

Use of case problems is a well established pedagogy for enhancing student learning. This paper describes development of an international consolidation case problem and reports how students responded to its assignment. The case problem could be effectively used in accounting classes such as international accounting and advanced accounting. Further, the case could be used to introduce professional accountants, who may not have previously faced this issue, with a basic overview of the international consolidation process. The issue of consolidation is typically covered in advanced accounting courses, and international financial reporting is covered in international accounting or intermediate accounting courses. The international consolidation case described in this paper makes a unique contribution by incorporating both consolidation accounting and international financial reporting (specifically, foreign currency translated financial statements) into one comprehensive case problem. When a subsidiary corporation is located in a different country from the parent corporation, the difficulty of consolidating the financial statements becomes more complex than for a strictly domestic company, as a result of different GAAPs and different currencies. The case problem has been used in two southwestern US universities. Student feedback indicates that the problem was well received and benefited student learning.     

Performance in Accountancy Courses

This paper seeks to determine whether student performance differs in what can be termed ‘academic’ and ‘professional’ undergraduate courses. The results indicate that student performance is lower in courses that are required to meet the academic requirements of the Accountancy profession than in other courses offered by the Department. Whilst this result was to be expected, the surprising result of the study was that ACA Accountancy courses experienced higher failure rates ACA Commercial Law courses.     

What skills and attributes does an accounting graduate need? Evidence from student perceptions and employer expectations

For some years there has been much debate between various stakeholders about the need for accounting graduates to develop a broader set of skills to be able to pursue a career in the accounting profession. This study uses mixed methods to examine perceptions and expectations of two major stakeholders: students and employers. Findings indicate that students are becoming aware of employers’ expectations in terms of communication, analytical, professional and teamwork skills. Although employers are still expecting a good understanding of basic accounting skills and strong analytical skills, they are also requiring ‘business awareness’ and knowledge in terms of the ‘real world’. Both students and employers report that many of the ‘essential’ non‐technical and professional skills and attributes are not being developed sufficiently in university accounting programmes.     

Accounting for crime in the neoliberal world

This paper examines the recent European public sector accounting reform which introduces controversial calculative practices for the recognition of criminal activities in national accounts. Namely, accounting for unlawful drug production and drug trafficking, and accounting for prostitution. Challenging the presumption of accounting neutrality, this study analyses this “accounting for crime” policy from a semantic and an epistemological view point as a cognitive system of creation of meaning and formation of knowledge. The analysis reveals the polyhedrality of neoliberalism, and the way it exerts its influence on society through its circuitous discursive process of social construction and transfiguration of reality which flows crosswise its multiple dimensions. At the macro level this policy operates as a ‘hegemonic project’: It bonds together the economic and political interests of different ‘historical blocs’, making the implementation of these practices a matter of ‘common sense’. At the micro level this policy functions as an ‘apparatus of governmentality’: It encapsulates the cognition of crime within a panoptic logic of economic rationality, transforming its outcome into a contributory value of a country's prosperity. In this context, this study outlines the centrality of accounting practice as a pivotal tool of the neoliberal ideology: It permits extending the realm of calculative methodologies to the commodification of human weaknesses, addictions, and sexuality, in a rational process of accounting to balance the supply and demand of sex and drugs, between prostitutes and clients, pushers and addicts.     

Rationality and Politics in Pit Closure Decisions

This paper considers whether pit closure decisions can be justified solely on financial grounds. It examines a variety of approaches drawn from accounting and economics, which may be arranged in a crude ‘hierarchy of sophistication’. The paper's conclusion is that the pit closure problem is far more complex than has generally been portrayed to the public, and that satisfactory solutions to it cannot be derived solely from within traditional accounting or economic approaches. The paper is a pedagogic exercise which exposes the limitations and partiality of accounting and finance by applying them to a particular, well-documented case. The paper argues for the inclusion of externalities and social welfare considerations in a planning framework for British Coal guided by Schumacher's principle of conservation.     

A forecast of achievement from student profile data

A compelling case has been made by accounting leaders for the increased use of groups to enhance learning in the classroom. If an instructor wants to form groups based on achievement or skill levels at the beginning of an accounting course, the purpose of this paper is to show that achievement levels can be forecast from profile data obtained from students on the first day of class. Specifically, results of this study indicate that the intent of a student to major in accounting and the grade he or she made in Introductory Financial Accounting provide an accurate forecast of the achievement of that student in Introductory Managerial Accounting. Additionally, the study's findings suggest there is some basis for a template that can be applied to forecast achievement levels of students in other accounting courses.