Using student-generated cases to teach accounting information systems

This paper discusses the potential advantages of integrating student-generated cases into the accounting information systems course. The benefits of the traditional case method are discussed, and the student-generated case technique is presented as a way of further fostering a creative learning environment, which promotes a deeper understanding of the course material than the traditional case method. Further, this paper discusses how the student-generated case method can help students develop their group interaction skills, as well as their oral and written communication skills.     

An integrated approach to communication skills in an accounting curriculum

While accounting students think that they do not need written and oral communication skills in order to succeed in the profession, educators and practitioners stress the need for these skills. Not only is there a set of perceived factors of success in the field that includes the quality of communication skills, but also managers in many different industries complain that recent graduates are unable to effectively communicate their ideas in writing. This article presents the results of an integrated approach to this problem along with specific methodologies, cases, and heuristic evaluation of the program. In addition, it is proposed that communication skills are best taught within professional accounting programs in core courses rather than being taught solely either as part of general education or by a special business communication course.     

Impact of group exams in a graduate intermediate accounting class

Cooperative learning techniques have been found to be quite successful in a variety of learning environments. However, in university-level accounting courses, investigations of the efficacy of cooperative learning pedagogical methods have produced mixed results at best. To continue the search for a cooperative learning method that is effective in accounting education, this study examines the use of group exams in a graduate intermediate accounting class. We provide evidence of a number of positive effects. Average scores on group exams were consistently higher than average scores on exams taken in individual format. Students adapted to the new assessment format rapidly and effectively. Further, students found the experience positive and believed they had improved important skills such as communication, time management, and teamwork. While some evidence of a free-rider effect and negative behavior associated with it was found in the beginning, this behavior was apparently temporary.     

Developing Accounting Students' Listening Skills: Barriers,Opportunities and an Integrated Stakeholder Approach

Accountants and employers of accounting graduates consider listening to be among the most important communication skills that graduates possess. However, accounting education practices that develop students' listening skills are uncommon. Further, in the case of listening development, the current approach of prescribing that educators do more to rectify students' skill deficiencies overlooks barriers that prevent greater incorporation of listening instruction in the accounting curriculum. An alternative integrated stakeholder approach to develop students' listening skills is proposed. Informed by a broad range of education literature, the approach identifies cross-disciplinary listening development best practice and barriers to the widespread implementation of such practices in the typical accounting programme, before determining and assigning interrelated listening development roles to key stakeholders who will benefit from improved student listening. While student listening development is feasible under the proposed approach, shared contributions by accounting students, the profession and educators are needed to achieve enhanced skills outcomes.     

The Communication Skills of Accountants: What we Know and the Gaps in our Knowledge

Abstract

This paper critically reviews 19 studies published between 1972 and 2012 that investigated the written and/or oral communication skills of practicing accountants. The core aim of the review was to identify skills considered important and highlight gaps regarding what is known about existing and desired communication skills in the accounting profession. Key findings include that most studies did not detail the basis used to select the skills examined, used very broad skill-set categories and/or did not sufficiently incorporate information already established in the literature. Differing views on the importance of communication skills were found between educators and accountants. Knowledge gaps identified relate to the communication skills considered most important at varying career stages and different career paths, the specific types of oral and written communication skills needed and the role and importance of oral versus written and informal versus formal communication skills. A fundamental concern is that much of the existing communication skills research is crucially out of date. Of the 19 studies reviewed, only three have been published in the past decade. This suggests that further research is needed in the area.     

Classroom strategies for improving students’ oral communication skills

Accounting students, while technically proficient, are often weak in, and apprehensive about, oral communication. In this paper, we illustrate how using “communicating-to-learn” strategies can improve students’ oral communication skills and strengthen their accounting abilities. We provide a series of four practical and classroom-tested assignments for improving students’ speaking skills without unduly increasing demands on course structure or grading.     

Vocational skills in the accounting professional profile: the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) employers' opinion

The increasingly dynamic environment in which accountants work has necessitated a reorientation of accounting education. In some countries this issue has raised great interest amongst accounting educators and practitioners. The ongoing debate has already resulted in the publication of several statements and research papers that have raised the question of the relevance of the role of vocational skills in accounting education. Examples of these vocational skills are communication skills, interpersonal skills, and problem-solving skills. This paper reports on the importance that the employers of management accountants gave to a specified set of vocational skills and capabilities and the level of ability of these skills exhibited by students. In order to prioritize future developments an integrated analysis of the two attributes, importance and exhibited level, is enabled by the use of strategic mapping. The results of this study suggest that the employers perceive deficiencies in several capabilities that they have identified as being quite important. These deficiencies exist, in the employers' opinion, both prior to recruitment and on professional qualification. The research also indicates that, in the opinion of these employers, the development of these skills should be a central concern for universities and professional bodies. The employers also indicated that vocational skills should be attained in an integrated way.     

‘Lights,Camera, Action!’ Video Technology and Students' Perceptions of Oral Communication in Accounting Education

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of an authentic assessment item on three dimensions of oral communication in accounting education: skills, self-efficacy, and relevance. An explanatory mixed methods design is used to explore students' perceptions of their development. The results indicate that an elevator pitch assessment has a positive impact on all three dimensions. In particular, the employed video technology fosters greater self-awareness and a more accurate perception of skill levels, and enhances students' self-efficacy. The contextualised learning experience also enables students to better appreciate the relevance of oral communication to their future careers. The paper extends the literature on video technology, self-efficacy, and generic skills development in accounting education, and provides relevant stakeholders with evidence of an authentic activity that can assist with bridging the skills-expectation gap.     

A profile of communication apprehension in accounting majors: Implications for teaching and curriculum revision

Practitioners have consistently noted that entry-level accountants exhibit inadequate communication skills (Andrews & Sigband, 1984). Academics and practitioners agree that accounting students' writing and oral communication skills are the two major areas needing more attention in the curriculum (Simons & Higgins, 1993). Daly (1978) and McCroskey (1984) have found that poor communication is a result of either poor skills, apprehension, or both. This suggests a need to determine the level of apprehension in accounting majors prior to making curriculum/classroom changes. This study examines the level of communication apprehension in accounting majors. The results show that accounting majors have higher apprehension toward both written and oral communications than other business majors. Gender differences were found only for oral communication apprehension, with female accounting majors reporting the highest apprehension. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Accounting Undergraduates' Perceptions of Cooperative Learning as a Model for Enhancing their Interpersonal and Communication Skills to Interface Successfully with Professional Accountancy Education and Training

To interface effectively with professional accountancy training, accounting educationalists should ensure that they turn out graduates who possess the interpersonal and communication skills required of today's accountant. Attainment of these skills is promoted by group work. However, little empirical evidence exists to help academics make an informed choice about which form of group learning enhances interpersonal and communication skills. This paper addresses this deficiency by comparing perceptions of skills enhancement between accounting students who experienced traditional or simple group learning and those who undertook cooperative learning. The findings reveal that the cooperative learning cohort perceived their learning experience to be significantly more effective at enhancing interpersonal and communication skills than that of the simple group learning cohort. This study provides evidence that cooperative learning is a more effective model for delivering interpersonal and communication skills than simple group learning, thereby creating a more successful interface between academic accounting and professional accountancy training.     

Priorities for the development of vocational skills in management accountants: A European perspective

In recent years there have been many calls for a re-orientation of accounting education in order to include the development of competencies such as communication, group working, and problem solving skills. However, concern has been expressed that the proposed changes are possibly biased towards the interests of public accounting employers. This paper presents and compares the opinions of the employers of management accountants in Spain and the UK, and then by using a weighted importance indicator determines vocational skills development priorities. The factors that the Spanish and UK employers identified as major constraints to the development of vocational skills are also compared.     

Communication instruction: What is being done to develop the communication skills of accounting students?

A survey was conducted to determine what colleges and universities are doing to improve accounting students' communication skills and how they are doing it. Results indicate that much is already being done to improve the communication skills of accounting students, and that more programs are being planned. The survey revealed that accounting students at most of the responding colleges and universities have access to formal instruction in business communication, and that some communication programs are tailored for accounting majors. In addition to communication programs already in effect at the time of the survey, several schools were planning to add either an accounting communication course or an integrated skills program.     

Developing critical reflection: An integrated approach

The increasing impact of globalisation and digitalisation on accounting reinforces the need for accounting education to develop students' core professional skills such as communication, analytical skills and critical thinking, as well as their ability to evaluate the relativity of their knowledge and acknowledge learning needs. This paper reports on a comparative study that explores outcomes from surveys of two separate student groups as they engaged with the elements and components of a task designed to develop their skills and ability to reflect on the currency of knowledge. Findings show merit in the design's integrated and interactive approach, including the transition of students' perspectives, with critical reflection developed through sequencing individual and cooperative learning, oral and written exercises, and formative and summative assessment. Survey responses from students indicate that they responded positively to the challenge of critically reflecting upon research and articulating the relativity of their knowledge.     

Generic skills in accounting: perspectives of Chinese postgraduate students

This study examines Chinese accounting students’ perceptions of skills required for a professional accounting position in Australia and of the emphasis placed on skills during their postgraduate Master of Professional Accounting (MPA) course. The study is motivated by concerns about international students’ inadequate generic skills and their difficulty in securing professional employment. We find that Chinese students perceive ‘communication skills’ to be the most important for their professional employment in Australia, but at the same time they tend to overemphasise technical skills and underemphasise other desirable generic skills.     

Comparative evidence about the verbal and analytical aptitude of accounting students

Concern over the declining quality of accounting students has led to widespread changes in accounting education. Yet, surprisingly little evidence exists to indicate that we can draw better students by changing curricula and teaching methodologies. This study adds to the rather small sampling of work on the relative quality of accounting majors. It focuses on the retention and attraction of high quality students with both analytical and verbal skills. The results show that the accounting major attracted and retained top students from the University. Students who chose an accounting major, however, tended to be stronger in analytical than verbal skills and this gap widened with attrition. Analytical skills related more strongly than verbal to performance in the introductory accounting course, although verbal skills became more important in more advanced coursework.     

From Plagiarism‐Plagued to Plagiarism‐Proof: Using Anonymized Case Assignments in Intermediate Accounting

Plagiarism in accounting case assignments is a serious problem that undercuts the important objectives the case assignments are used to achieve: the development of students’ critical thinking skills and the advancement of their written communication skills. This paper examines plagiarism behavior through the lens of fraud theory by targeting two elements of the fraud triangle: rationalization and opportunity. Efforts to target rationalization by changing student perceptions of peer behavior were not effective. This led to a shift in focus to the assignment itself which was providing the opportunity for misconduct. Students were sidestepping authentic engagement in the assignment by gaining access to published solutions or peer submissions from previous semesters. One failsafe design response to this problem is to use only originally written cases. However, writing a large number of original cases each semester is unrealistic within many instructors’ workloads. This article instead proposes the use of a case refreshing strategy that makes cases appear unique to each group of students. When this strategy was introduced in an intermediate accounting course, there was a dramatic decrease in plagiarism and a corresponding improvement of the academic integrity environment in the course.     

Critical thought on critical thinking research

Calls for improving the critical thinking ability of accounting students have been clear and repeated in both the accounting education and professional accounting literature. Although numerous ideas for developing critical thinking skills have been generated, there remains a significant lack of empirical evidence, in both the accounting education and higher education literature, that any specific instructional method can enhance the critical thinking skills of students. Given the lack of empirical support for success in the development of critical thinking skills, the value of further efforts to develop students' critical thinking skills must be questioned. The premise of this paper is that accounting programs and faculty wanting to address the issue of developing critical thinking skills in their curricula should be able to empirically examine whether their efforts are achieving the desired effects. This article first presents a brief review of prior research on critical thinking skills development and then offers suggestions to improve the design of future research on this topic. The authors attempt to provide guidance on the design of more powerful empirical tests of promising curricular strategies so that accounting faculty can determine if their attempts to enhance student critical thinking skills are meeting expectations.     

Jinan Qingqi Motorcycle Co., Ltd

The case deals with the decision in mid-1997 of StarInvest, an American investment company, on whether to subscribe to a new issue of 230 million B shares by Jinan Qingqi Motorcycle Co., Ltd. Qingqi Motorcycle is incorporated in the People’s Republic of China, and B shares were tradable only among foreign investors. The case solution is in the form of policy report from Daniel Campbell, asset manager at StarInvest, to his Investment Committee. The report contains his assessment of the opportunities and risks from China investment in general, and his recommendations on the Qingqi Motorcycle stock issue in particular. The objective of this case is to introduce students to the unique accounting issues and investment environment in China. From working on this case, the students should become familiar with the developmental steps and basic features of China’s accounting standards and capital markets. An important theme that should be emphasized by the instructor is that institutional environments are more important at influencing the accounting information in a country than the accounting standards as written on paper. The case has been used in an international accounting course offered to the MBA students. It could also be used in a similar course offered at the undergraduate level. Students having completed an introductory financial accounting course should have the required knowledge and skills to work on this case. The case can be used either as an individual assignment or as a group assignment.     

Excel in the accounting curriculum: perceptions from accounting professors

Public accounting firms emphasize the importance of accounting graduates being proficient in Excel. Since many accounting graduates often aspire to work in public accounting, a question arises as to whether there should be an emphasis on Excel in accounting education. The purpose of this paper is to specifically look at this issue by examining accounting faculty's perceptions of Excel in public accounting and accounting education. We survey 245 faculty members at over 100 accounting programs. We find that a majority of faculty incorporate Excel in their accounting classes consistent with their perception of Excel importance. However, we find that students are not fully proficient in Excel based on faculty's perceptions. This study contributes to the accounting education literature by identifying possible disconnections between Excel skills faculty include in the accounting curriculum and specific Excel skills faculty believe new hires (i.e. recent accounting graduates) most often use in public accounting.     

Knowledge base and skill development in accounting education: Evidence from China

This paper presents the result of a survey on the required knowledge, skills, and pedagogy for accounting education as perceived by accounting practitioners, educators, and students in China. Respondents generally agreed to a series of knowledge and skills that are important to the training of accounting students, although some variance exists among the respondent groups regarding the perceived importance of those knowledge and skills. The findings also reveal that the respondents were dissatisfied with the present delivery of the needed knowledge and skills. Thus it is contended that accounting education reform in China is not only necessary, but imperative. This study also makes a comparative analysis with similar studies in the US, in terms of commonalities and differences in respondents’ perceptions between the varied economic, technological and cultural environments in China and the US.