Presenter:
Joseph A. Mauriello, New York University
Description:
The teaching-learning of the basic course in financial accounting recognizes that accounting is a recording and reporting language science utilizing standards in the form of concepts, principles, and guidelines, applicable to the basic processes of classification and valuation. The limits of knowledge are defined by the legal and business documents employed and a comprehensive chart of accounts to record to record the vast number of diverse events and their impacts on the elements of assets, liabilities, and equity.
The learning of accounting requires the condensation of detail to comprehensible levels. Debits and credits, the technical language, are synonyms for the layperson terms of increases and decreases. The debits and credits have double, opposing meanings in their recording of direct changes in the three accounting elements, and of the superimposed system of recording operational changes, classified as revenues, expenses, gains, and losses, that impact on equity.
The learning system consists of a comprehensive chart of accounts presenting items which record practically all the financial events of business; the chart is then condensed, without loss of accounts, to facilitate learning. In short, accounts of like activity characteristics are assembled to form knowledge groups, consisting of a leader knowledge-bearing account and similar, represented member accounts. The groups shrink detail, and thereby enhance learning without diminishing knowledge.
Accounts are numerically coded as in practice, and letter coded for learning, resulting in a structure of primary, component additive, contra, and adjunct accounts to form a group-account, item-characteristic methodology of learning.
Note: The foregoing synopsis describes a new comprehensive system of teaching and learning the basic, core course in financial accounting, causing the teaching to be scientific, logical, and fully understandable by the learner in one-third of the traditional learning time.
