Experiential International Accounting: A Distance Learning Approach

Sharon Lightner
San Diego State University

Executive Summary

Dr. Sharon Lightner at San Diego State University, with the help of a team of individuals and companies listed in Table 1, developed and offers a remote access experiential international accounting course to students around the world in real time using the most current communicative and collaborative technology. The course was first offered during Spring Semester 1998 with students from Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the USA, each attending class from their home country. Accounting practitioners as well as accounting standards setters from the participating countries collaborate by attending class to share their experiences and thoughts concerning specific accounting issues. The class has been offered each semester since its development with Hong Kong participating instead of Japan during Fall 1998 and Spring 1999.

The Class Participants: Faculty, Students, "Big 5" Practitioners, and Standards Setters
Accounting faculty members from selected universities in Hong Kong, Spain and Switzerland accepted an invitation to participate with San Diego State University (SDSU) in an experiential international accounting class. Each faculty member from the four participating countries identifies five students, a standards setter, and one or more practicing accountants to participate in the course. Each student is proficient in the English language, has completed at least one financial accounting class (or equivalent training), has access to the Internet and has moderate computer skills. Representatives from the standards setting bodies attend one class to share their viewpoints regarding standards setting in their country, harmonization of accounting standards, and specific accounting issues. "Big 5" practitioners attend three classes to share real experiences related to several technical accounting issues covered in the course.

All participants "attend" class from their home country using multi-person audio and video software that has been donated by software companies for use in the course. If a "Big 5" practitioner or standards setter cannot come to the home country's campus to "attend" class, the students from that particular country assist in familiarizing the practitioner or standards setter with the technology so they may "attend" from another remote location.

Course Implementation
The course extends over a 12-week period and consists of three modules: cultural issues, standards setting, and specific accounting issues. Although there are some individual assignments related to learning the necessary computer technologies at the beginning of the course, most of the assignments for the course are completed by a group (team). Each of the 20 students is assigned to two different teams: a national team and an international team. There are a total of four national and five international teams.

Each national team is comprised of the five student enrollees from each of the countries: Hong Kong, Spain, Switzerland, and the US. The national teams provide information about their national culture, the history and process of standards setting within their country, and the national standards of specific accounting topics. Each international team is comprised of a student enrollee from each of the four countries. The international teams reach consensus on various cultural issues, suggest a process for developing international standards and apply this process to development of international standards for several specific accounting topics.

Class is held on a weekly basis at 11 p.m. USA time. This is 8 a.m. in Spain and Switzerland and 4 p.m. in Hong Kong. Students from each country gather around one or more computers in a lab on their campus equipped with a camera and microphone. Before 11 p.m. each country connects to SDSU's server, which hosts software for multi-person video, multi-person audio, and text chat. During the two-hour class time, students present their completed work. Work presented during each particular class time is submitted prior to class. Most national and international teamwork is submitted via file transfer software to a web server at a local Internet service provider in San Diego. Links to the work, specified in the course Web site, become active when each national team's work had been transferred to the web server. In most instances, students are not told how to present their work. However, PowerPoint presentations become the norm during the course. Students in all countries open the PowerPoint presentations and view the slides as the team "talks" their way through the presentation. The multi person audio software has moderator tools that allow the class participants to "raise their hand" when they want to speak. This allows the SDSU professors to control the audio and maintain a semblance of a controlled classroom where people speak as they are acknowledged.

During one of the class sessions, standards setters from each of the four countries are invited to "attend" class to actively engage in discussions concerning standards setting in their own country as well as the possibility of harmonization of accounting standards. During three class sessions, practicing accountants from each country attend class and share their experiences and viewpoints related to specific accounting topics.

In a final evaluation of the Spring 1998 course, the students were asked on 5 point scale (5 being the highest), whether they would like to take another course using this format and how they would assess this course in relation to other courses in the curriculum at their university. The average score from all participants was a 4.81 and 4.67 respectively. An interesting aside: three of the SDSU students traveled to Switzerland and Spain during June 1998 and met the students from the other countries. During Fall 1998 and Spring 1999 one of the Swiss students came to study at SDSU and is living with his international team member from the USA.

The course continues to be offered. The faculty from all countries are now working as a team in revising the syllabus. Additionally, the faculty from various countries are working together to institute exchange and internship opportunities for the students in all participating countries.

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