James W. Wolfson
The Defiance College
610 Philadelphia Avenue
Chambersburg, PA 17201
Phone: (717) 263-0531
FAX: (717) 263-6734
Email: djw@cvn.net
The technology tool with which I have been remarkably successful since 1990 in both the Eckerd College PEL program and at Wilson College in Pennsylvania consists of a set of 55 business documents that represent the economic events in one month of the life of a particular business and a "student version" of a popular commercial accounting program. Each student makes journal entries representing the economic events that are evidenced by the documents. Each student learns to make journal entries based upon his or her interpretation of the information content of the same kinds of documents that are used in real business. The exercise contains memoranda from the student's "supervisor" which create direction for working with some of the more difficult documents that never appear in textbooks. Their experience is remarkably more rewarding than the traditional approach to teaching journal entries that employs the use of sometimes-hard-to-decipher textbook and practice set story problems. The computer program is full-featured in terms of entry and reporting modules, including a general ledger, accounts receivable and payable modules, a payroll module, a point-of-sale module, and auxiliary modules for financial analysis and bank reconciliation. Particularly interesting features of this computer-based accounting work include:
The student learns how to create the input for an accounting model of a real business from source documents and management direction. He uses a full-featured commercial accounting program, just like the one he will employ in practice, to process that input. The student then learns to appreciate how to use the financial and management information that the model outputs.
The outcomes from this approach over nearly ten years of use have been remarkable. Students often write on course evaluations that the exercise was their favorite part of the course, as it kept them active and involved. Others have said that it provided a review of accounting principles that had special value because of the realistic setting.
Additionally, I believe that any significant learning experience in accounting principles must include the features discussed above in order to embody the spirit of the AECC recommendations for critical thinking and problem-solving behavior.
First, students reap the benefits described in point 5. above. Second, the use of real data is the best way to prepare students for the real world. Authors and students don't just talk about a situation in the way textbook problems do, students actually examine evidence of economic events in the context of actual company's operations. The more they practice with the "real thing", the better prepared they will be.
I would like to use the remainder of this space to name the types of documents that are used in the exercise, as this would be important to the potential user:
Not Applicable