An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association 2005 Annual Meeting August 7–10, 2005 San Francisco, California Come to the City by the Bay!

Effective Learning Strategies Forum
Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Session 1
Blending Monopoly® and Legos® into Managerial Accounting

Presenter:
Neal Hannon, University of Hartford

Description:
The participants in this session will learn how to incorporate basic concepts of managerial accounting into a semester-long interactive group project. Instructors will view course materials, see student outputs, and be able to use the ideas presented to carry the project back to their respective classrooms.

The basic premise of the session is that students today cannot relate to basic building blocks of cost: material, labor and overhead, unless they participate in a hands-on exercise that blends strong educational content with active learning. Most students have built Lego models, but have never visited manufacturing plants. By assigning costs to material, assembly labor and costs to needed overhead functions, students begin to understand how to relate to product costing techniques.

The use of monopoly in the beginning of the class session reinforces the learning obtained in the prerequisite financial accounting course. Each student first completes a full set of financial statements based upon his completion of a few trips around a Monopoly board. Players from each team "graduate" to the big board, where they begin to play the game for their team. Once a "factory" (hotel) is built, the other members of the team are permitted to begin building Legos models.

Back to Wednesday Sessions

AAA Home Page