An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Timothy J. Fogarty
Case Western Reserve University

Paul Michael Goldwater
University of Central Florida

Steven W Thornburg
Washington State University

Abstract: A confluence of circumstances have led an ever-expanding set of schools to feature various versions of distance education. This “future of higher education” has been embraced without consideration of important differences between this mediated environment and more familiar face-to-face ones. This paper studies the gendered patterning of communication on a discussion board used as part of an introductory cost accounting course at a large public university in the southeastern U.S.A. The results show that females are much more enthusiastic participants. Furthermore, female students are much more likely to request assistance, and more likely to pepper their free-form commentary with an emotional subtext. Implications for further research are drawn.

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