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This exercise should make apparent to introductory accounting students the importance of internal controls both as a deterrent and as an early detector of fraud. We use the fraud triangle (PCAOB, 2010) framework to help students understand and evaluate this fraud. We believe completing this exercise will give students a better understanding of fraud in general, the fraud triangle, and internal controls and their use in preventing and detecting fraud.

This exercise presents an actual embezzlement committed by a long-tenured employee of a local not-for-profit organization. Each component of the exercise contains a series of questions to facilitate classroom discussion.

Student surveys confirm that students learn about detecting and preventing fraud. Students also indicate that they find the not-for-profit setting interesting and would use the principles in the exercise if they become affiliated with a not-for-profit organization.

To our knowledge, this is the first fraud exercise directed at educating students in introductory and survey courses in accounting where students likely have only a minimal understanding of accounting and internal controls.

We present a peer-to-peer teaching approach designed to prepare introductory accounting students to address ethical challenges they will face in the workplace. We describe the motivation, processes, and resources used, introduce an effectiveness measure and discuss refinements so that other universities may adopt the innovation.

Upper division Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) accounting honor society members, with faculty guidance, create and deliver workshops in the 200-level introductory accounting sequence using the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. GVV provides tools to move from recognition to action when confronted with a values conflict. The BAP members had completed the GVV exercises and casework in their upper division accounting courses. Now as peer coaches, they guide sophomore-level business students through the GVV curriculum to prepare them to act on their values when challenged.

Post-training perceptions express consistent beliefs that the introductory accounting students’ skills and abilities had improved with the training. Additionally, introductory accounting students’ descriptions of how they would address values conflicts based on what they learned in the training reflects development of personalized specific approaches.

GVV provides students with an action-based ethics toolkit to build upon as they move forward academically and professionally. The peer-to-peer innovation builds stronger mentor and mentee ties and introduces the business program’s ethical culture to sophomore-level business students.

The innovation won the 2014 Beta Alpha Psi Ethics Award sponsored by Grant Thornton and reflects the first use of a peer-to-peer approach with GVV in a university setting.

I present a background on the use and effectiveness of podcasting in higher education, and provide guidance on developing supplementary video podcasts for use in introductory financial accounting courses. Specifically, I discuss how to create, produce, and distribute exercise-based video podcasts that walk students through problems based on material covered during traditional lectures. I distributed a series of 10 exercise-based video podcasts to introductory financial accounting students at my institution during Fall 2011, and documented high levels of student satisfaction in terms of impact on exam performance. Overall, I contribute to the accounting education literature by illustrating how to use a technology in a way that considers the unique characteristics of introductory accounting courses.

Most undergraduate and graduate financial accounting exercises follow a “forward based” pedagogical approach where students learn how accounting events (causes) are captured in the accounting system and appear on the financial statements (effects). While these forward based approaches are necessary and effective ways to teach the fundamentals of accounting, they provide a relatively narrow procedural perspective on how to use such knowledge. The reality is that many students will be required to solve problems where the ultimate goal is to discern the causes of financial statement outcomes. To solve such problems, “backward based” procedural knowledge is required. Research in cognitive psychology indicates students need exposure to problems that require different procedural knowledge to develop the flexible problem solving schemas necessary to address problems with different end goals (Chen & Mo, 2004). We present a series of financial accounting exercises designed to help students develop skills associated with analyzing financial statement outcomes (effects) to determine the causal accounting events. The exercises also provide a comprehensive review of the primary financial accounting topics typically addressed in introductory accounting courses. This allows the exercises to be used as an ongoing end of chapter review problem or as a comprehensive course review exercise.

In this paper, we describe our approach to incorporating the basics of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) into introductory financial accounting courses. Prior survey evidence suggests that IFRS receives little coverage in such courses, with two primary reasons being a lack of available time and insufficient IFRS teaching materials tailored for introductory financial accounting (Zhu, Rich, Michenzi, & Cherubini, 2011). The objectives for our IFRS procedures were to provide all business students with a basic knowledge of IFRS and an understanding of the similarities and differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS. We utilized an integrated, comparison-based methodology, and developed teaching materials that were incorporated into each chapter discussion through short vignettes, brief examples, and a comprehensive exercise. Evidence from a student survey suggests that a strong majority believe that IFRS coverage is important, and that our procedures contributed to their learning on the topic. Furthermore, the student survey suggested that the comparative nature of our IFRS procedures enhanced understanding of U.S. GAAP. As a result, our procedures provide guidance to accounting instructors looking to introduce students to the basics of IFRS or other complex topics within the time constraints of a crowded course.

This chapter describes three active learning activities developed for use in the introductory financial accounting class: an interview with a financial statement user, an internal control paper, and a financial statement project where students analyze two competing businesses. We gathered student surveys and direct assessment data to see if these activities add value to the introductory accounting course.

The learning activities were originally developed using Fink’s (2003) Taxonomy of Significant Learning, aligning the activities with Fink’s learning dimensions, which also support the higher order learning skills in Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Students completed surveys by comparing how well traditional class activities (i.e., homework and tests) and the new activities support the core competencies of the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). We also asked students open-ended questions on how they felt about these new activities. Researchers then compared pre- and postadoption assessment data to investigate the impact of the new learning activities on class completion rates and grades.

Based on faculty comments and student survey results, the three active learning assignments appear to be more effective in developing many of the AICPA’s core competencies and real world skill sets valued by professionals, providing more value than traditional teaching methods. In addition, the passing rates in the course at the Youngstown State University increased by 12% after adopting the learning innovations.

This chapter provides guidance on the types of questions appropriate for use with clickers in an introductory financial accounting course. This study further examines whether the use of clickers improved learning outcomes as measured by the students’ test scores. Our findings show that students had a positive experience with using clickers. We find that test scores were higher in the semester when we used clickers compared with the semester when we did not use clickers. Clicker scores also were positively associated with students’ test scores. Clickers may serve as a useful educational tool to assess assurance of learning of introductory financial accounting. The instructor receives immediate feedback regarding students’ understanding of the materials, and the students also receive feedback about whether their understanding is correct. Both the instructor and students can then work on reviewing materials that the class does not understand well.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how brief exercises in introductory and advanced marketing courses can help business students achieve a broader understanding of what Big data and data analytics mean in the workplace. These short analytics problems fit into the culture that we are building at our institution to create analytics cases for courses within our business curriculum.

A database of 1,500 customer reviews for a fictitious sporting company was created. Two exercises based on text mining and sentiment analysis were developed to be tested in introductory and advanced marketing course. Students were introduced to the basic concepts used in data analysis and the creation of R code for extracting sentiment words was demonstrated. Students then used pivot tables to identify patterns in the given data set. Students in the introductory course completed a short exercise while the students in the advanced class developed a detailed memo.

Results suggest that students in the introductory course are significantly more aware of the use of data in the industry as well as methods to deal with Big data after completing the exercise as compared to their knowledge at the beginning of the exercise. Students in the advanced course are able to identify patterns, detect shortcoming and propose strategic plans based on their analysis of the data.

Proposed exercises in the study are developed with an aim to help business schools develop a culture supportive of analytics. The purpose of these exercises is to make students aware of the importance of Big data and analytics early on in their curriculum and reinforce their exposure in an advanced course.

This research applies a quasi-experimental research method to investigate the impact of an innovative resource titled “Accounting Exercise” (teaching intervention using physical movement and lyrics) on learning motivation and performance on a group of students enrolled in a first-year undergraduate accounting course in Japan.

Five classes were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (two classes) or a control group (three classes). In the experimental group, 90 students participated in a 15-min “Accounting Exercise” at the commencement of lectures over three consecutive weeks. The remaining 133 students assigned to the control group did not participate in the Accounting Exercise.

The findings indicate that the Accounting Exercise provided stimuli in maintaining students’ learning motivation. This finding is important for entry-level students where learning motivation has the potential to influence students’ future decisions on major areas of study and career choices.

This finding is important for entry-level students where future career options are decided. This effect is also believed to contribute to reducing the declining numbers of students in accounting majors.