Preparing Students for the Real World: Building Two Required Accounting Courses Around Hands-On Business Experience

How do you prepare accounting students for the realities of the workforce, not just the exam? In this panel session, academic leaders and a practicing firm owner share how one university set out to close the gap between the classroom and the profession. The team built a hands-on learning experience around QuickBooks Online, the most widely used accounting software in the United States, because it gives students a first-hand view of how a real business actually operates. The goal was never to teach software. It was to show students how the pieces of a business fit together and to build the judgment employers are looking for. Panelists walk through how the idea took shape, how they built buy-in across faculty and administration, how the effort grew into two required courses, and what bringing a working practice owner into the classroom has meant for the student experience and for the outcomes the program is now seeing. Faculty and program leaders will leave with a practical playbook for designing workforce-ready courses, partnering with practitioners, and making the case for curriculum change at their own institution.

Learning Objective(s): 1. Describe how prioritizing workforce readiness, rather than software instruction, shapes the design of hands-on accounting courses that let students see how a real business operates. 2. Identify the steps academic leaders and a practicing firm owner used to build institutional buy-in and turn a concept into two required accounting courses. 3. Evaluate the indicators of student workforce readiness produced by a hands-on, practitioner-led curriculum in order to assess similar approaches at their own institution.

CPE Information: Accounting - 1.2CH

Program Level: Basic

Prerequisites: None

Advance Preparation: None

Delivery Method: Group Internet Based

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