INSIDE

By Roger A. Gee
San Diego Mesa College
Email: rgee1@san.rr.com

The theme in this issue of the Communicator is hands-on learning. It’s not a new concept in education. When I took Accounting Principles back in 1961, the course included a hands-on learning project—a manual practice set. Being the son of a merchant, I thought that the practice set was going to be easy. It required double-entry bookkeeping, however, and my father used single-entry bookkeeping in his business. Implementing the rules of debit and credit was harder than I expected.

I remember that my classmates and I sort of bent the hands-on learning rules. We went for an easier way to record and post all those transactions. The management majors got us organized. The practice set became our group project before collaborative learning was popular. We copied each other and adjourned to the local beer bar. It was New York State and the drinking age was 18. One student completed the practice set on his own. He got the lowest grade.

It is 1999 and hands-on learning is back on the front burner. This time it comes with a computer. This fall, hands-on learning in my classroom will include projects that integrate Microsoft“ Office products. My students will do the work on spreadsheets and explain what they did using word-processing and presentation software. For example, they will create the illustration shown below in Excel, then copy and paste it into a PowerPoint presentation so that they can explain the financing activity.

I also plan to require a stock portfolio project in place of a practice set. Students will use the Wall Street Journal to purchase, monitor, and sell stocks. They will record the transactions using spreadsheet software. They will get company data from actual annual reports and calculate the financial measures on spreadsheets using cell-based formulas. At the end of the semester, the students will be organized into groups to interpret the data that they have organized. They will copy examples from their spreadsheets and paste them into word-processed reports.

You have the opportunity to include hands-on learning as a part of competency-based instruction in your classroom. Let your students do some work using computer software and explain what they did. They will understand it better and they will tell you that the work is interesting.