be used to introduce the accounting cycle, return on investment, net present value, etc. Toys (i.e. large Legos) can be used to demonstrate the movement of inventory for purchase and sale journal entries. Legos can also be used to demonstrate keeping track of material, labor and overhead in a job- order costing environment in managerial classes. Having small groups create a business and address the accounting and non-accounting issues involved, make up some transactions specific to that business and create financial statements for those transactions offers collaborative learning. Tere is often a great deal of diversity in foundational accounting courses: Marketing, management, finance, economics and accounting majors are all in the same class. It’s key for instructors to make it as applicable as possible. Some examples include: Discussions of internal control violations in the workplace, relating time value of money to debt payoff and retirement, managerial budgeting and cash budgets related to personal finance budgeting, the need for non-accounting business owners to have some financial literacy, etc. Te more students can connect technical concepts to their personal lives, the more it will stick for them. Constantly trying to convince non-accounting students why they need some basic financial information for their future business life is essential (as well as for their personal life).


Edgar Dale, an American educator,


developed the Cone of Experience. Envision a cone where the tip of the cone is reading and lecture. Tis is the part of the cone where the least retention takes place. As the cone widens, we retain more information by giving a talk, doing a demonstration, looking at an exhibit or doing a simulation. todays’ student needs less opportunity for traditional lecture and reading and more opportunities to demonstrate their skills. Tis is also reflected on the new format of the CPA exam. Dr. Carla Lane discusses Howard


Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences: Visual- spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic and logical-mathematical. Traditional K-12 education focuses mostly on visual- spatial, linguistic and logical-mathematical. Many students do not do well in those environments and need opportunities to learn and express themselves in more artistic ways. Instructors need to find ways to offer learning opportunities through other non-traditional means: Creating a rap song about debits and credits, explaining a concept to a classmate in their own language or auditing/correcting another students’ work. Te historic “Bloom’s Taxonomy” is incorporated into the new CPA exam format. Lower levels of remembering and


understanding are still tested. Industry and the new exam format also require higher-order levels of thinking such as application, analysis, evaluation and creativity. Tese are skills needed for today’s accounting professional and non- accounting business professional. Higher level skills can be oriented into lectures by asking additional higher level questions. Ratio, trend and horizontal analysis can be used for evaluation and analysis. Producing a statement of cash flows is a great way to synthesize many concepts, apply it to the company and evaluate the results. Accounting educators today must embrace the present and the future. Technology is here to stay. Printed textbooks will probably become extinct. Traditional teaching models are no longer as effective as they were 40 years ago. Tere are many new resources and applications to help teach a subject that has been around for centuries and help shape the future of


the profession. Sources: Dale, Edgar. Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching, 3rd ed., Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1969, p. 108


Lane, Carla. Te Distance Technology Learning Guide.


Anderson, L.W. (Ed.), Krathwohl, D.R. (Ed.), Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Ob- jectives (Complete edition). New York: Longman.


May/June 2018


CPAFOCUS


7


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32