Communications for
Accountants Course

Dennis Bline
Bryant College

Synopsis

Accounting practitioners and accounting educators have recognized for some time that accounting students need improved communication skills to become successful professionals. Accounting educators have generally addressed this need by increasing their communication expectations in class. The most common way to increase communication expectations is through a greater number of written assignments and/or presentations. The success of such a strategy is contingent on the transferability of current student communication skills to a business setting. Such a transfer of ability may not be possible because students are generally asked to communicate to demonstrate knowledge of a particular subject to the instructor while business communication is generally developed to help a business person solve a problem. Without instruction, students may not be prepared to develop communications to help solve problems rather than show knowledge.

This document outlines a required sophomore level course that has been developed to enable students to understand the difference between communicating to show knowledge and communicating to address a problem. Students are given instruction in areas that emphasize business communication priorities such as audience focus, organization, structure, and conciseness. They are then given assignments that require them to communicate to different audiences. These assignments are designed to enable each student to practice the skills discussed in class. In addition, students are required to provide feedback to peers on both written and oral assignments. As a result, they are introduced to another skill that will be necessary in practice, peer review.

Evaluation of the course's success has been undertaken in two ways. First, the quality of writing samples were examined in a pre-post manner using holistic scoring. Results indicate that student-writing quality did not significantly improve over a one-semester period. This result was expected because changes in communication ability are expected to require repeated practice over a period of time. Second, student apprehension to communication activities (oral and written) was assessed at the beginning and end of the semester. Preliminary analysis indicates that sophomore students required to take the course have a significant decrease in both oral and written communication apprehension. Seniors taking the course as an elective did not have a significant decrease in apprehension but their beginning of semester apprehension was lower that the beginning of semester apprehension of sophomores.

The change in sophomore apprehension to communication activities is important because communication researchers have observed that apprehension is related to students pursuing electives that require communication skills. They have also observed that communication apprehension is a significant factor in student selection of major. If the "Communications for Accountants" course is successful at decreasing student apprehension to communication activities, it may impact the type of students that ultimately become accounting professionals. Reduced apprehension may result in accounting majors pursuing more courses that require communication skills. As a result, the communication ability of accounting majors would increase as the students have additional opportunities to practice communication skills.

It is not possible to make students good communicators in one course but the first step has to be taken if accounting educators are going to make any progress in improving overall communication skills. The "Communications for Accountants" course is the correct first step.

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