Sharpen Your Teaching Skills Sessions

Presented on Friday and Saturday at the meeting, sessions in this track will feature presentations by educators from across the country sharing valuable teaching tips that you can put to use immediately in your classes.

May 11, 2018

10:45 am - 12:00 pm
Session 1.01: Challenges Faced by Accounting Faculty Teaching Courses Online
Moderator: Arundhati Rao, Towson University
Panelists: Eugene H. Cantor, University of Maryland, Shifei Chung, Rowan University, Gregory Gaynor, University of Baltimore, John Peter Krahel, Loyola University-Maryland
Distance learning has been around for a few decades. The instructor was in one location broadcasting the lecture via satellite/television to the students in a different location. At the onset, it was a one-way communication. We have come a long way from this form of distance learning. Over the past two decades most universities have offered at least a few fully online and hybrid courses. Now a few institutions offer some degrees completely online. Availability of resources is not an issue; textbook publishers have kept up with the advances in technology and the demands of the instructors and students. The demand for online courses continues to grow but so do the challenges - how do we ensure that our students are learning the materials and stay engaged in this asynchronous learning environment?

1:45 pm - 3:25 pm
Session 2.01: Challenges Faced by Four Year Institutions that Accept Transfer Students from Community Colleges
Moderator: Arundhati Rao, Towson University
Panelists: Eugene H. Cantor, University of Maryland, Kate Demarest, University of Baltimore, Sharon G. Finney, Morgan State University, Alice Lawrie Gardner, Anne Arundel Community College
Most high school students plan to join a 4-year institution, but the reality is an increasing number of students join Community Colleges (CC) and then transfer to universities. This poses numerous challenges for the 4-year institutions. At the onset they compete with the CC for the same students and later accept them as transfer students. In the past when students chose to attend a CC it was mainly because they were unsure of their major or did not feel they were adequately prepared to join a 4-year institution. Today increasing number of students opt to join a local CC mainly for financial reasons. This is also the path for students who did not join any college out of high school or dropped out from a 4-year institution. CC play a vital role in our society. It is the gateway for many students to finally realize their dream of earning a 4-year degree.
From the perspective of the 4-year institutions, transfer students from CC pose various challenges. A few students are very well prepared, mature, have excellent time management skills and are ready to hit the ground running. Most students appear to never have transitioned from high school at all. While this was always a mixed bag, in recent years the well-prepared transfer students is a fast shrinking population. Many transfer students are not ready to navigate a 4-year college, do not have the correct prerequisites for their intended major, are not prepared to sit in large classes, make use of resources on campus, and finally look for jobs.
These problems are universal. A few schools across the nation have dedicated a lot of time and effort into addressing these issues very successfully. But these challenges are constantly evolving.

3:55 pm - 5:35 pm
Session 3.01: Tools to Use for Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning
Presenters: Veronica Paz, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Timothy S. Creel, Harding University
Let's make accounting courses more technology driven. In this digital age, we share several technologies first with an overview  of the technology application and how we adapt its use to various accounting courses. We demonstrate the use of several free tools to add to courses to foster learning and engagement. We cover several apps and tools to use for asynchronous delivery such as Playpostit, Voice Thread, and EdPuzzle. For synchronous sessions, we review and discuss Slido, Socrative Stoodle, and Nearpod. Lastly, for class assessment, we discuss Quizzizz, Kahoot and Flip Quiz. We have used these tools in various courses to gain student feedback.

May 12, 2018

9:05 am - 10:45 am
Session 4.01: Enthusiastically Using H5P for Interactivity in the Classroom
Presenters: Veronica Paz, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Amy Igou, University of Northern Iowa
Looking for a way to add interactive elements to your course, but not an HTML programmer? Me too! You will learn about an open source HTML program; H5P that can be embedded in learning management systems to add interactive elements effortlessly.

11:15 am - 12:30 pm
Session 5.01: Show & Tell: Infographics to Keep and Sustain Engagement
Presenters: Veronica Paz, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Lynnan Mocek, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
A picture is worth a 1,000 words, yet in several disciplines, we still use words and not pictures in our teachings. Accounting is no different. We will show you how to incorporate Infographics as visual aids, in your classroom. We present research in education on how Infographics  are used within that discipline. We apply that concept to accounting and show how to integrate into various accounting courses. We present several uses of Infographics, from the introduction of the syllabus, to lesson introduction and lesson summaries. Easy to use applications make adding Infographics to your course painless. We plan to show how Infographics can easily be made from templates for the syllabus and also how I am challenging my students to use Infographics in their projects.