Advances in Accounting Education

Thomas G. Calderon, Thomas G. Calderon

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781838672379
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Contabilità
• Index: Business

Advances in Accounting Education (AAE) is a high-quality publication of both empirical and non-empirical research that investigates vital matters within teaching, learning, and curriculum development. By focusing on these topics, it works to support the improvement of accounting programs at colleges and universities, as well as foster innovative discussion and significant contributions to faculty development.
This 24th volume features 11 peer-reviewed papers surrounding five key themes: (1) research on student attitudes and behavior, (2) cases and pedagogical approaches in tax, (3) financial reporting and introductory accounting, (4) research about the CPA exam, and (5) international perspectives. It considers a variety of topics within these themes, from student study choices and changes in ethical attitudes over time to policy implications for the accounting profession. It even includes an instructional case for use in intermediate accounting courses and a comprehensive pedagogical approach (with a case) for teaching a complex topic in taxation. With international and nuanced perspectives from expert voices in the field, AAE is essential reading for students and accounting educators. Some practitioners and regulators in the accounting profession may also find useful policy-related nuggets in Volume 24.

THEME 1

RESEARCH ON STUDENT ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR

STUDY CHOICES BY INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNTING STUDENTS: THOSE WHO STUDY MORE DO BETTER AND TEXT READERS OUTPERFORM VIDEO WATCHERS

Earl K. Stice, James D. Stice and Conan Albrecht

ABSTRACT

We use student-level online resource usage data for students in four different introductory accounting courses to explore the impact on exam performance of both student study effort and students’ revealed preferences for reading text or watching video lectures. The online learning tool tracks student study choice (read text, watch video, or skip) on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. We match these usage data with student performance on course exams. We find that students who study more material earn higher exam scores than do students who study less material. We also find that students who self-select to do relatively more of their studying through reading text score higher on exams, on average, than do students who self-select to do relatively more of their studying through watching videos. Specifically, holding the overall amount of study constant, a student who chooses to spend the highest fraction of her or his study time watching video mini lectures earns exam scores 10 percentage points lower (six-tenths of a standard deviation) than a student who chooses to spend the lowest fraction of study time watching videos. Our results demonstrate that at least for introductory accounting students, increased study effort does indeed have a positive impact on exam performance. Our evidence also suggests that the highest performing introductory accounting students choose to learn accounting proportionately more through reading than through watching. These results are a reminder that when we talk about using “technology” to help our students learn accounting, the written word is still an important technology.

Keywords: Online learning; education technologies; video lectures; textbooks; study effort; reading

Every instructor who has taught introductory accounting has been presented with this question from a worried student who has just received a lower-than-expected score on the first accounting exam: What I can I do to increase my exam scores? The instructor’s response to this question usually boils down to the following age-old remedy: Study more.

Surprisingly, this intuitive instructor-to-student advice is more a statement of faith than of science. As detailed below, past research presents mixed results on whether increased study effort improves student performance in a specific course. This paper directly addresses the question of whether increased study effort improves student performance in introductory accounting classes.

In addition, the increasing popularity of online video material (such as that produced by the Khan Academy¹) raises the question of what continuing educational role is to be played by the reading of text. For example, a set of essays in The Futurist addressed the question of “what our emerging visual culture means for the written word and the future of civilization” (Tucker, 2007). In one essay, an author stated bluntly: “Will [new] technologies ever make it possible to be an educated illiterate? My guess is yes” (Wagschal, 2007).

In the context of these perhaps-premature predictions of the demise of the usefulness of the written word, our study examines whether university-level accounting students choose to spend their individual study time primarily reading text or primarily watching video lectures. We do not attempt to determine how students should spend their study time; we only describe how students choose to study, reading text or watching video lectures, when given that choice. We also compare the relative exam performance of reading students and watching students.

To quantify student study effort and to explore students’ choices of reading text or watching videos, we employ detailed online resource usage data – automatically collected by learning software – for students in introductory accounting courses in both the United States and Hong Kong, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. With respect to this issue of varying preferences for learning method, it is important to state that we do not survey or otherwise query students about their learning style preferences. Rather than examining what students say about their learning method preference, we instead observe actual student choices. The courses in which we collected student data are accounting principles I, accounting principles II, introductory managerial accounting for undergraduate students, and introductory financial accounting for MBA students. Students used the online resource to read text, to watch corresponding video lectures (with synchronized PowerPoint slides), or to do a combination of both. The online learning system tracks the amount of material studied through reading text and watching videos. We associate these student-specific usage data with student-specific performance on course exams.

We find that students who study more material, whether through reading or watching, earn higher exam scores than do students who study less material. We also find that students who self-select to primarily do their studying through reading earn higher scores on exams, on average, than do students who self-select to primarily do their studying through watching videos. The video lectures are designed to cover all of the material and examples in the same depth as that found in the text; this design mitigates confounding effects potentially caused by differences in coverage between the text and the videos. In short, a student is able to learn all exam-relevant material solely through reading text or solely through watching videos.

Overall, it is not the case that students, given a free choice, will always choose to study by watching video lectures rather than by reading text. In fact, our evidence suggests that the highest performing accounting students choose to learn accounting primarily through reading.

To confirm our results, we perform robustness checks employing more precise control variables. We use a subset of our data, taken from undergraduate introductory accounting students in a large, open-enrollment course. This course contains both students with a broad cross section of declared majors as well as students in all classes, from freshmen to seniors. We find that even after including declared major (majors in business and science compared to majors in the humanities and other nonquantitative majors) and class standing (freshmen compared to all others) as control variables, students who choose to study primarily through reading text outperform students who choose to study through watching videos. This result holds even after controlling for amount of study. It is also interesting to note that students with declared majors in business and science outperform students who are declared majors in the humanities and other nonquantitative majors, even after controlling for amount of study and mode of study. Also, first-year students (freshmen), who presumably have less experience with engaging deeply with challenging material, underperform other students, even after controlling for amount of study and mode of study.

This paper proceeds as follows: The next section contains a review of the literature. We then state our hypotheses. We then describe the technology we use to deliver accounting material, side by side, in both text and video format and explain how the technological tool records student usage data. We then detail our research findings, and this paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the research, our conclusions, and possible avenues for future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Contrary to the intuition of most students and instructors, there is no well-established connection between study time/effort and associated academic performance. This counterintuitive result is summarized by Olivares (2002):

[T]he study time-grade association literature has provided inconsistent findings: some researchers have found a positive association, others a negative association, and yet others no association between study time and grades.

For example, Eskew and Faley (1988) find that their measure of effort/motivation is significantly positively associated with exam performance. However, their measure is based on scores on unannounced, one-question, in-class quizzes (with just the highest 10 of 23 scores counted) and is very rough, essentially reflecting the frequency of class attendance. As an alternative proxy for study effort, Doran, Bouillon, and Smith (1991) use student forecasts (made during the first class period of the semester) of their expected weekly study hours in an accounting principles course. As acknowledged by the researchers, this student-reported, ex ante measure of study effort is “prone to large amounts of estimation error.” This effort measure was not found to be associated with exam performance.

Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner (2008) do find a positive association between their measure of student study effort and first-semester grade point average (GPA) for college freshman. Their study effort measure is the average of the student-reported number of daily study hours for four 24-hour time diaries completed at different times during the semester. Note, however, that this study effort measure is more a proxy for overall student study habits and does not establish a tight connection between study effort and performance for any particular subject. Olivares (2002) measures study time/effort using end-of-semester student-reported number of weekly out-of-class hours spent studying for an introductory psychology course. After controlling for student cognitive ability and for student-reported course difficulty and teacher effectiveness, Olivares finds no impact of study time/effort on the final course grade.

Credé and Kuncel (2008) perform a meta-analysis of the relation between time spent studying and academic performance. They find a significant correlation between time spent studying and freshman GPA, but an insignificant correlation (aggregating data from 17 studies) between time spent studying and performance in individual courses. In contrast, Barbarick and Ippolito (2003) use student-reported study hours to find that increased study time does increase exam scores in an introductory soil science class. Plant, Ericsson, Hill, and Asberg (2005) use student-reported study hours and find that this measure is significantly positively related to GPA, but only after controlling for cognitive ability and quality of study.

Nonis and Hudson (2010) examine factors influencing cumulative and semester GPA for students in undergraduate business strategy, finance, and marketing courses. They find that increased study time (as reported by students) is associated with higher cumulative and semester GPA, but only for students whose survey responses indicate a high ability to concentrate. For students with a low ability to concentrate, increased study time has no impact on GPA.

Some past research has shown that students who spend more time doing homework perform better in courses. For example, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study of the scholastic habits and performance of 15-year-old girls and boys worldwide demonstrates that “on average across OECD countries, girls spend 5.5 hours per week doing homework while boys spend a little less than 4.5 hours” (OECD, 2015). This homework time difference contributes to the fact that 14% of boys, but only 9% of girls, perform below the proficiency level in all three core subject areas of reading, mathematics, and science.

In a study focused on introductory accounting students, Yu (2011) finds that after controlling for teacher effectiveness and for the ex post self-reported level of effort the student is willing to spend on accounting, student-reported study hours is not related to course grade. In a particularly unsettling finding, Guney (2009) reports that when analyzed in a multivariate setting, the number of student-reported study hours is actually negatively related to course grade for introductory accounting students. In short, the evidence is inconclusive on whether the amount of study actually improves st...