Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations: Volume 16

Examine the effectiveness of online tutoring software to ameliorate poor performance in intermediate financial accounting.

Probit regression analysis comparing users versus nonusers of online accounting tutoring software, as well as analysis of student achievement pre and post-technology adoption over a 10-year period.

We confirm prior research findings that the number of terms that have transpired since a student took introductory financial accounting, whether they took the course at a two-year college, or if they needed to repeat the introductory course, are all negatively associated with performance in intermediate accounting. We find evidence that an online tutoring system, ALEKS®, helps moderate these negative correlations. Results suggest that in upper division courses where student knowledge of underlying basic material is uneven, online tutors are an effective tool in bringing students up to an equal level of competence without sacrificing class time.

Provides empirical evidence on the usefulness of online accounting software as a review tool in intermediate accounting.

Disadvantages experienced by accounting students due to when, where, and how they learned introductory accounting can be overcome quickly.

Although vendors of intelligent online tutoring software market their product as a useful review tool for intermediate accounting, academic research has not examined the effectiveness of these products.

The subject area of the assignment is financial accounting and AICPA core competency skill development. This instructional tool enhances coverage of financial accounting topics in undergraduate Intermediate Accounting courses and graduate level Financial Accounting courses.

This paper provides a series of mini-cases which can be assigned to students to complete either in writing, through a brief presentation or both. Assignments can be completed on an individual basis or as a group. This provides flexibility for targeting different skill sets.

Mini-cases are short and less time-consuming than traditional cases, so instructors can use multiple assignments with different formats in a single semester. This provides students the opportunity to improve skills over a number of assignments within a semester.

A list of supplementary materials is made available and includes sample mini-cases, sample search results from the AICPA Codification, and sample memorandums.

The mini-cases provided in this paper are designed to facilitate the development of AICPA core competencies. This includes communication and leadership skills, strategic and critical thinking skills, problem solving, anticipating and serving evolving needs, synthesizing intelligence to insight, and integration and collaboration.

The subject area of the assignment is cost accumulation. This instructional tool enhances coverage of cost accumulation topics in graduate level Introductory to Management Accounting courses.

The assignment entails visiting a small business and interviewing the owner to learn about the company’s process for determining costs of products and/or services. Such active learning hones leadership and critical thinking skills by requiring students to employ interviewing and listening techniques as they act as business advisors to discuss cost accumulation processes with small business owners. The assignment provides flexibility since a range of business types can be used from a landscaping business operated out of one’s garage to a mid-size manufacturing company.

Students see how a small business accumulates costs and gain experience analyzing the effectiveness of cost accumulation systems and providing recommendations.

A list of supplementary materials is included, covering teaching notes, assessment data, and grading rubrics.

Student feedback suggests that students value the opportunity to engage in a realistic exercise that allows them to draw linkages between textbook material and the real world, while also acting in a consulting role to apply class concepts to small businesses. Furthermore, assessment data based on grading rubrics indicate that all students meet or exceed instructor expectations, thus increasing the viable use of this course project.

Discuss the importance of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to accounting education.

This study first examines the current trends and events underlying the reasons for increasing the incorporation of the FCPA and related anti-bribery issues into the accounting curriculum. Then best practices of increasing FCPA coverage and presenting the material to students are presented and explained.

The recent increase in FCPA and anti-bribery prosecutions, the penalties assessed, and the costs of internal investigation and compliance are significant. In addition, corruption is a way of life in many countries. Thus, the need for consultants, auditors, and accounting firms knowledgeable about FCPA issues is growing, especially as the FCPA has a books and records provision and demands effective internal control. However, universities have been slow to acknowledge this trend.

Pedagogical strategies for including FCPA issues in the accounting curriculum range from incorporating role-playing and developing case studies in existing classes to creating separate stand-alone FCPA and anti-bribery classes.

Accounting students, during their future business careers, will be better prepared to identify, evaluate, and choose appropriate actions/responses when faced with FCPA and bribery situations.

Despite the underlying trends that indicate the importance of integrating FCPA issues into the accounting education, many universities have lagged in introducing this subject area into their curriculum. This study is the first to provide the rationale and multiple pedagogical methods for facilitating accounting student education about identifying FCPA issues and selecting proper responses.

Explore perceptions of the importance of information literacy among different stakeholders, and gain a better understanding of its role in the accounting curriculum.

Literature review, stakeholder surveys, and written feedback.

The perceptions of academics, employers, and alumni uniformly highlighted the importance of information literacy for continuous learning in an evolving environment. The feedback included open-ended questions where the alumni emphasized the importance of the area over the different stages of their careers. While there may be differences in perspectives of academics and employers/alumni on information literacy, with the latter more likely to hold a pragmatic perspective related to career advancement, the overall consensus highlights the need for a systematic approach to the area. Student feedback suggested that the learning process occurred over stages in the college curriculum. Overall, the results of this exploratory study indicate the value of planning the course curriculum systematically to enable students to develop information literacy skills incrementally and in relation to their specific areas of specialization.

Highlights the value of information literacy in deeper and lifelong learning.

Students are better equipped for continuous learning to meet the challenges of changing environment.

Although information literacy is an important pedagogic area, accounting academic research does not appear to have addressed its implications for student learning.

This paper provides a useful template for integrating the teaching of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) into the accounting curriculum.

We document the evolution of the dedicated IFRS course taught at Drexel University, sharing our department’s experiences teaching it at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

We identify instructional delivery options for teaching IFRS either as an independent course or as a supplement to an existing financial reporting, advanced accounting, or special topics course. We discuss the different approaches we have used to deliver such material and present our recommendations for best practices.

Recent surveys note that academia’s slow integration of IFRS into the classroom does not match the expectations of many accounting practitioners, particularly those with an international presence. With more than 100 countries around the world, including most of the emerging and major economies such as China, Brazil, and Germany, having already adopted IFRS, accounting firms expect job candidates to be conversant with international accounting standards and to be appropriately prepared in anticipation of an SEC decision to adopt IFRS.

This paper provides academics who intend to begin teaching IFRS with the essential information they need to keep their students current with global accounting trends.

The subject area of the assignment is accounting education and testing techniques.

This paper details an effective method to create individualized assignments and testing materials. Using a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel), the creation of the unique assignments and answer keys can be semi-automated to reduce the grading difficulties of unique assignments.

Because students are using a unique data set for each assignment, the students are able to more effectively engage in student to student teaching. This process of unique assignments allows students to collaborate without fear that a single student would provide the answers. As tax laws (e.g., credit and deduction phase-outs, tax rates, and dependents) change depending on the level of income and other factors, an individualized test is ideal in a taxation course.

The unique assignments allow instructors to create markedly different scenarios for each student. Using this testing method requires that the student thoroughly understands the conceptual processes as the questions cannot be predicted. A list of supplementary materials is included, covering sample questions, conversion to codes, and sample assignment questions.

This technique creates opportunities for students to have unique assignments encouraging student to student teaching and can be applied to assignments in any accounting course (undergraduate and graduate). This testing method has been used in Intermediate I and II, Individual Taxation, and Corporate Taxation.