INTRODUCTION

In most accounting curricula, students enroll in the first accounting information systems (AIS) course after they have completed at least two accounting principle courses and are familiar with accounting fundamentals. The courses the students have taken at that point, however, tend to explore accounting topics as discrete subjects: individual chapters in textbooks are devoted to assets, liabilities, equity and so forth. Because accounting topics tend to be taught in this fashion, many students enrolled in the first AIS course have a poor understanding of how the data they are journalizing flows through an accounting system. Further, many students do not understand how accounting topics are integrated into a system, nor do they perceive the importance of this understanding.

One of the challenges of the first AIS course, thus, is to provide opportunities for students to understand how all of the diverse bits of information they have learned about accounting are organized into a unified whole. Although the first few chapters of many AIS textbooks introduce material relevant to this objective, many students have trouble linking this material to prior learning because they have not previously thought of accounting fundamentals as part of a system.

In order to help students relate their prior learning to the concept of a system, an in-class activity titled “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” was developed and combined with a textbook reading and a required reflection paper. Over the years, many students have expressed their support for this pedagogical approach when they responded to the last question in the required reflection paper, which asks if the project was helpful to them personally. Some of these comments are presented in the Appendix A as Exhibit 1.

As encouraging as these qualitative statements are, it was decided to conduct a pre-and post-treatment exploratory study to quantitatively determine the impact of the “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” in-class project and the related assignments on student perceptions of the importance of learning about AIS. The research questions examined in this project were as follows:

1. Does the combination of a textbook reading, an in-class project, and a reflection paper affect students' perceptions of the importance of learning AIS?

2. Are GPA, accounting-related work experience, and gender related to any changes in students' perceptions of the AIS course after a textbook reading, an in-class project, and a reflection paper?

3. Does requiring students to write reflection papers after the in-class project have an incremental effect on the students' perceptions of the importance of learning AIS?

It is important to note that the focus of this study is on how the pedagogical technique described in this paper changed student perceptions and not on what the students actually learned or comprehended.¹

A great deal of research has been conducted concerning the ways in which pedagogical techniques impact various types of student perceptions. For example, studies have been conducted which explored how pedagogical techniques can change student perceptions of the accounting principle course (Caldwell, Weisbar and Glezen 1996; Miladenovic 2000; Geiger 2000). In 2008, Ferreira and Santosa found that in a managerial accounting course, student performance was negatively affected by the negative perceptions of accounting that students brought to the subject. Their findings also suggested that positive student perceptions of accounting by the end of the semester had a positive impact on student performance.

Building on these studies, accounting educators have begun to explore the relationship between student perceptions and performance in AIS courses. For example, Stanley and Edwards (2005) explored the effect of on-line multimedia on student perceptions of accounting information systems cycles.

Because previous research has reasonably established that there is a positive relationship between students' perceptions and improved academic performance, this study does not further explore that relationship. Rather, this study assumes that a positive change in student perceptions of the AIS course will improve student performance in the course. As a result of this assumption, the exploratory project described in this paper explored the relationship between one pedagogical technique and student perceptions of the importance of learning AIS as well as the impact of GPA, accounting work experience, and gender on any change in student perceptions.

In the first section of this paper, the “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” in-class activity is described while the second section describes the methodology used in the exploratory study. The third and fourth sections present the findings of the study and conclusions respectively. The teaching notes for the in-class activity are in a separate file.

IN-CLASS PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Although the “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” in-class project is designed to be used very early in a semester, students should be introduced to the concepts of audit trails and transaction cycles before the in-class project is implemented. Students need this information to gain a better understanding of the points made during the in-class exercise. Instructors who have a student population familiar with this material will not have to include this discussion before the in-class project.

Because my students are not familiar with the concepts of data flows, audit trails, and transaction cycles, I use the “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” in-class project at the end of the second class period of the course. The first day of class, I discuss material in Chapter 1 of the Romney and Steinbart (2009) textbook, including the objectives and components of an AIS and the characteristics of useful information. Following this discussion, I distribute to the students a list of activities that occurred when Dexter bought a surfboard from Surfing USA. This list of activities is presented in Appendix A as Exhibit 2.

Students are told that they need to write the appropriate journal entries for these activities for the next class period. Students are also told that some of the activities do not require journal entries and that they need to identify those activities. Individual instructors will need to decide if they want to attach points to this assignment. Whether or not the assignment is graded, the students must be prepared to discuss the journal entries in the next class session.

During the first part of the second class period of the semester, I discuss a reading assignment and complete a homework problem dealing with audit packages. In this discussion, I focus on introducing the concepts of audit trails and transaction cycles. After we discuss the textbook material, I ask the students for the appropriate journal entry for each of the activities related to Dexter buying a surfboard. These journal entries are presented in Teaching Notes Appendix B as Exhibit 1.

As the students identify the activities that do not require a journal entry, I ask the students if any data would be collected for that activity. For example, most of the students realize that when Dexter calls on the 2nd, the sales department would log in the call and collect some basic facts about Dexter. Through these questions, they realize that the company would be collecting operational data that is not journalized.

After discussing the journal entries, I ask the students if they have ever thought about what happens in a business when activities such as those on the list occur or how the necessary entries are journalized. Most traditional-aged accounting students have not considered such issues because they have not had appropriate work experiences. At this point, I distribute the handout that describes the organizational structure of Surfing USA, including its approach to segregation of duties. This handout is presented in Appendix A as Exhibit 3.²

After discussing the handout, the students are divided into at least two “companies.” Each “company” is then divided into the six Surfing USA departments described in Exhibit 3. Each “department” is given a sign tent with the name of the department as well as the following source documents.

• Treasury: blank bank deposit slips

• Sales: a three-part sales order and a three-part invoice

• Purchasing: a three-part purchase order

• Receiving: a two-part receiving report

Once the class is organized into companies, each activity is analyzed as described in the Teaching Notes.

As the students work through each of the activities as indicated in the Teaching Notes, I ask the students what departments are involved in the activity, what source documents would be filled out, who needs to get copies of the source documents in order to properly perform their duties, and who should make any necessary journal entries. I remind the students that all of these questions must be answered without violating the internal control concept of segregation of duties as outlined in the Exhibit 3 handout.

The students struggle with these questions because, although they are familiar with the accounting fundamentals related to the activities, they have not thought about how those fundamentals are related to processes. By the end of the project, multiple copies of the source documents are distributed throughout each “company” and audit packages are more or less created. In my experience, the revenue cycle and expenditure cycle audit packages are usually combined into one. The general atmosphere in the classroom ranges from confusion to frustration to mentally engaged.

Many students express frustration with the complexities of the paperwork flows and trying to figure out who needs to know what without violating the concept of segregation of duties. A few students have asked for the right answer concerning the disposition of the documents. I tell those students that we will be exploring these issues the rest of the semester and remind the students that their reflection papers are due the next class period. The assignment is presented in the Appendix as Exhibit 4.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

To measure the effect of the textbook reading, the “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” in-class activity, and the required reflection paper on student perceptions of the importance of AIS, I conducted a pre- and post-treatment exploratory study for three semesters. In this study, all students participated in the textbook reading and in-class activity, but only the treatment group completed the reflection paper. The research questions presented earlier in this paper were converted to the following hypotheses:

• H₀ The combination of a textbook reading, an in-class project, and a reflection paper did not affect student perceptions of the importance of learning AIS.

• H₁ GPA, accounting-related work experience, and gender are not related to any changes in students' perceptions of the AIS course after a textbook reading, an in-class project, and a reflection paper.

• H₂ Requiring students to write reflection papers after the textbook reading and in-class project had no incremental effect on the students' perceptions of the importance of learning AIS.

This study was conducted at a Midwestern medium-sized regional state university; the college of business is AACSB accredited. Because I am the only faculty member that teaches AIS at this institution, the surveys were administered to one hundred percent of the accounting students enrolled in the AIS course each semester.

During the time frame of this study, I taught two sections of the first AIS course in the two fall semesters and three sections in the one spring semester. In the two fall semesters, students in one section were part of the control group and students in the other section were part of the treatment group. In the one spring semester, students in the largest section were part of the treatment group while students in the other two sections were part of the control group. A total of 205 students participated in the study; 111 students were assigned to the control group and 94 students were assigned to the treatment group.

FINDINGS

Demographic Similarity of Groups

The demographic profiles of the treatment and control groups are presented in Table 1. Because this study used three demographic variables, the collinearity of the variables was tested. A Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated for gender/accounting-related work experience while Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for GPA/work experience and GPA/gender. None of the p values calculated were less than .05 (0.906, 0.467, and 0.900 respectively); therefore, the three demographic variables are not related to one another. Collinearity is not a concern in this study.

TABLE 1 Demographic Profile of Groups

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Analysis indicated that the control and treatment groups' variances for the three demographic variables were the same for each variable. A Student t-Test indicated that the GPA variable was the same for both groups (p = 0.186). Further analysis using the Mann-Whitney test indicated that accounting-related work experience (p = 0.737) and gender (p = 0.884) were the same for both groups. These analyses indicate that although students were not randomly assigned to the two groups, the control and treatment groups are demographically the same.

Findings Related to Hypothesis H₀

To determine if the combination of a textbook reading, an in-class project, and a reflection paper affected students' perceptions of the value of studying AIS, paired t-tests were performed. As seen in Table 2, this analysis found that student responses to survey questions “a” and “b” did change significantly in the desired direction while student responses to question “c” did not change significantly. This finding indicates that the pedagogical techniques being studied favorably changed students' perceptions concerning the specifics of the AIS course but did not change student perception of the need for an AIS course. Because student perception of the need for the AIS course was high on the pre-test (5.94), apparently the students gained a greater appreciation of specifics related to AIS through their experiences without affecting their perception of the need for the course itself. Based on these findings, H₀ was rejected.

TABLE 2 Change in Student Responses to Survey Questions (Control and Treatment Groups Combined: n=205)

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Findings Related to Hypothesis H₁

To determine if GPA, accounting-related work experience, and gender were related to the change in students' perceptions, several analyses were performed. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for GPA and pre-treatment student responses for each of the three survey questions. A Spearman's rho³ was calculated for accounting-related work experience/pre-treatment student responses and gender/student pre-treatment student responses for each of the three survey questions. As shown in Table 3 Column A, only accounting-related work experience was correlated with the student pre-treatment responses to question “c.”

Before the relationships between the three demographic variables and change in student post-treatment responses was analyzed, a Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for the pre- and post-treatment student answers for each survey question. This analysis found that student answers were highly correlated between the two surveys. In order to remove the impact of this correlation, the difference between each student's pre- and post-treatment responses for each survey question was calculated and used in further analysis.

TABLE 3 Correlation of GPA, Accounting-Related Work Experience, and Gender to Changes in Student Responses to Survey Questions (n=205)

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To analyze the relationship between the three demographic variables and the change in student responses, Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for GPA/difference in student responses for each of the three survey questions. A Spearman's rho was calculated for (1) accounting-related work experience/difference in student responses and (2) for gender/ difference in student responses for each of the three survey questions. As shown in Table 3 Column B, accounting-related work experience is also correlated with the difference in student responses for question “c.”

Table 4 presents the differences in student responses for the three categories of accounting-related work experience. According to this data, the pedagogical combination had no effect on the responses of students with “no work experience.” This group of students valued the AIS course in both the pre- and post- tests as indicated by the mean responses of 6.07 and 6.04 respectively. However, the pedagogical technique did affect the responses of students with work experience. The responses of those with internship or work experience increased 2.6 percent from a mean response of 5.72 on the pre-test to 5.86 on the post-test. The responses of those with both internship and work experience increased 4.0 percent from a mean response of 5.61 to 5.83. Based on these findings, H₁ was rejected.

TABLE 4 Accounting-Related Work Experience Descriptive Statistics For Question C

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Findings Related to H₂

To determine if writing a reflection paper has an incremental effect on student perceptions, one-way ANOVAs were calculated for survey questions “a” and “b,” using the difference between the student responses as the dependent variable. Because accounting-related work experience is correlated with student responses for question “c,” a MANOVA was calculated for this question using the difference between student responses as the dependent variable. By using the difference in the student scores, the correlation between student answers on the pre- and post-treatment surveys was neutralized.

As seen in Table 5, these analyses found that change in student responses for question “a” did differ between the treatment and control groups. Changes in responses, however, did not differ between the two groups for questions “b” and “c.” Therefore, according to these analyses, assigning reflection papers does incrementally change student perceptions about the difficulty of collecting and storing data, but it does not affect perceptions about the difficulty of establishing adequate internal controls or the importance of the AIS course itself.

TABLE 5 Differences for Pre- and Post Test Responses Between Control and Treatment Groups

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Table 6 presents the differences in student responses to question “a” for the treatment and control groups. According to this data, the reflection paper did change the perceptions of students in the desired direction. Students in the treatment group changed their opinion concerning the ease of collecting and storing data by 14.2 percent while students in the control group changed their opinion by only 5.3 percent. Based on these findings, H₂ was rejected.

TABLE 6 Descriptive Statistics for Question A

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CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

After using a textbook reading, an in-class activity, and a reflection paper for several semesters, the impact of this pedagogical combination on student perceptions of the importance of learning about AIS was explored through a research project using a pre- and post-treatment design. Analyses found that the pedagogical combination increased student perceptions of the difficulty of collecting/storing data and the establishment of internal controls without affecting student perception of the importance of the AIS course itself. Because the students' perception of the need for the AIS course was high on the pre-test (a mean of 5.94 on a 7.00 scale) and remained high on the post-test (5.98), many students apparently gained a greater appreciation of the specifics related to systems through their experiences.

Further analyses of student responses found that GPA and gender are not related to any of the changes in student perceptions. This finding indicates that the combination of a textbook reading, in-class project, and a reflection paper is not biased towards or against one or more of these student groups. The pedagogical technique described in this paper, thus, can successfully be used with classes that include students with a wide range of GPA levels and gender combinations.

Additional analyses found that accounting-related work experience is related to a positive change in student perceptions about the importance of the AIS course. According to these analyses, the pedagogical combination had no effect on the perceptions of students with “no work experience”; however, it did positively affect the perceptions of students with internship or work experience and students with internship and work experience. Although the percentage increases are small (2.6 percent and 4.0 percent), they are in the desired direction and are a hopeful indicator for accounting educators with non-traditional students in their AIS courses.

Any pedagogical technique that can help students increase their positive perception of the AIS course has value. However, more research needs to be conducted to determine if the findings of this study are applicable to other student populations with larger percentages of non-traditional students than the population used in this study. Further research should also be conducted to determine if changes in the pedagogical technique could increase the acceptance of the first AIS course by non-traditional students.

Finally, analyses found that assigning a reflection paper does incrementally change student perceptions about the difficulty of collecting and storing data in the desired direction, but it does not affect perceptions about the difficulty of establishing adequate internal controls or the importance of the AIS course. As encouraging as this finding is, it might be related to the structure of the reflection paper in this assignment. As seen in Exhibit 4, the assignment asked students to relate the classroom experience to their own experiences or expectations. Students might be more familiar with data collection issues than they are internal controls.

Because of the finding supporting the use of reflection papers in the AIS course, further research needs to be conducted to determine if writing reflection papers is related to changes in student perceptions or student learning that were not explored in this paper. Additionally, researchers should determine if reflection papers are more effective if they are not as structured as the format used in this project. Finally, studies should be designed to determine if writing reflection papers is a pedagogical technique that must be repeated in order to incrementally affect student perceptions and/or learning. It is possible that although writing only one reflection paper has an increased incremental effect, writing several papers could be more effective.

This exploratory study does quantitatively indicate that active learning projects such as “Dexter Buys a Surfboard” and reflection papers are valuable experiences for students. Student comments from the reflection papers indicate that many students are aware of the benefits of such pedagogical experiences. These qualitative and quantitative indications that an investment of class-room time can change student perceptions of the AIS course is a first step in the development of additional pedagogical techniques and studies that will further student understanding of accounting information systems.