Reinventing the Way We Learn Accounting

We live in an age of short attention spans and demands for more productivity. In my role as an accounting professor, if I don’t grab my accounting students’ attention and immediately explain the relevancy of a topic, they tune out.

Today’s young people have a greater aptitude for learning new skills, especially when it comes to new technological applications. They enjoy experimenting, and they don’t mind failing – as long as failure is just a hurdle on the way to the reward at the finish line.

Short attention spans and the need to multi-task are not limited to college students. The nature of today’s business environment requires CPAs to be multitaskers. Thirty years ago when I was a CPA in public practice, we used to take CPE courses once or twice a year to catch up on new standards and guidance. Today, changes are taking place so quickly that we need to be learning new material daily. Our instructional methods and learning habits need to adapt accordingly.

Nano Learning: Breaking Instruction Into Small Pieces

Nano learning breaks instruction into self-contained modules that can last from two to 15 minutes. These small lessons focus on one or two specific learning objectives. Additionally, they’re typically available “on-demand” so students and professionals can learn at their own pace, in their own space, amid their other responsibilities.

Many educators and students feel the best way to learn, still, is face-to-face instruction in small group settings, assuming that time is available and the instructor is motivated and inspired. But what if in-person access is not easy, the class setting is not personal, or the instruction is mediocre? A great instructor from a distance who is available for live chats or video conferences might actually be the superior option.

Blended Learning: Stimulating Every Learning Style

Even with face-to-face instruction, technology now allows us to develop new ways to appeal to different learning styles.

At my university, for example, Principles of Financial Accounting is the first required course for business majors. To invigorate student engagement in a course dreaded by many, I adopted a blended learning approach known as a “flipped classroom.”

Students are required to watch short lecture videos before the first class meeting each week. In the second meeting, students are broken into four groups of 30, with each sub-group broken down into groups of three. The breakout sections are led by four mentors, who are outstanding senior accounting majors. Students do their “homework” during class time in their breakout groups. Hence, what formerly was homework becomes classwork; what was classwork now becomes homework.

Performance Measurement Challenges

One of the biggest challenges we face is changing the way we determine whether a student or professional has learned a topic or skill. Learning should be based on demonstration of competency, not seat time or merely memorizing facts and formulas.

In one course I teach, students can weight their grade according to their strengths and weaknesses (for example, more weight on projects; less weight on exams; more weight on personal journal, less weight on quizzes; more weight on video mastery, less weight on something else). Who can say that the student who performs poorly on tests, yet is able to clearly explain the materials in their journal entries or during oral presentations, doesn’t understand the material? Grasping concept is more important than the format in which they demonstrate their competency.

I believe the main goal of the first financial accounting course should be to help students appreciate the role of accounting in a larger societal context, and to help them become “literate” in business. Literacy includes demonstrating that they can create a cash budget, perform basic Excel spreadsheet tasks, and read financial statements for service, retail and manufacturing entities.

Likewise, as we consider the challenges of continuing professional education, we need to ensure the goals of each learning experience are relevant to professionals and the stakeholders that they serve. And most importantly, we need to look for creative ways for professionals to demonstrate competency in their areas of study.

To learn about the profession’s recommendations for working toward new approaches to learning, read Lighting the Fire: Strategies to fuel the future of learning. To develop your own professional learning plan and access hundreds of online learning tools and resources, go to the AICPA | CIMA Competency and Learning website.

Curtis L. DeBerg, professor of accounting at California State University and founder of Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship. SAGE operates in seven states and 25 countries.When traveling DeBerg delivers live “mini lectures” to his university students via Skype video conferencing.

Accounting classroom courtesy of Shutterstock.

Reinventing the Way We Learn Accounting

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