This article explains the rationale for, the design of, and the implementation of business simulation episodes for eliciting a developmental shift from knowing to thinking in introductory accounting courses. Using business simulations this way responds to a long-standing need for learning experiences that create opportunities for students to work on developing the higher-order thinking skills required for success in business and the accounting profession. The needed capability can be characterized as critical thinking: the ability to solve problems that cannot be described with a high degree of completeness, cannot be resolved with a high degree of certainty, or elicit disagreement from experts about the best solution. This use of business simulation, illustrated with an episode from the Safe Night Out (SNO) simulation, immerses students in the life of an evolving business for which they develop a continuing stream of business advice based on the application of accounting principles. Emphasizing communication skills, alternative viewpoints, and the effect of assumptions on decisions, the simulation episodes demonstrate the usefulness and importance of accounting to business decision makers. The intent of shifting from well-structured end-of-the-chapter problems to more authentic work, like that in business simulations, is to develop higher-order thinking skills while generating interest in the accounting major and increasing the usefulness of accounting in the minds of nonmajors.
As student learning outcomes and retention receive more attention in higher education, failure rates in principles of accounting courses, gate-keeper courses for business majors, are coming under scrutiny. This study shows promising results from use of a learning innovation, ultra-short online videos, for addressing three common reasons for poor performance: intimidating class environments, low aptitude, and low motivation. For students at all achievement levels, tutorial use rates were above 60 percent, even though there was no course credit for viewing them. Students using the tutorials had significantly lower course drop rates and better pass rates. Tutorial use was correlated with higher exam scores, although the effect was moderate. Based on analysis of the two-year periods before and after implementation, the use of tutorials was correlated with higher course grades. Tutorial use remained at high levels two years after implementation even without instructors encouraging students to use them.
This paper develops the motivation for collaborative discovery learning online and explains its application in a master's course in information systems assurance. In discovery learning, participants learn to recognize a problem, characterize what a solution would look like, search for relevant information, develop a solution strategy, and execute the chosen strategy. In collaborative discovery learning, participants, immersed in a community of practice, solve problems together. In collaborative discovery learning online, participants seek the knowledge they need and solve problems together in a virtual environment. For this purpose, virtual environments are characterized by web-based access to resource materials and participants' work and web-based discussions occurring in real time (synchronously). This approach to learning prepares students for work environments in which new problems are the norm and professionals work collaboratively to solve them in virtual spaces. The paper makes a case for the course being more effective than lecture-based instruction because of its use of collaborative discovery learning online, more accessible because participants may be anywhere they have Internet access, and more affordable if the development and delivery efforts could be leveraged across multiple universities.
In recent years, learning has been reconceptualized from an additive process characterized by an individual's acquisition of knowledge to a socially enabled developmental process in which learners continually reorganize knowledge structures and create new representations. In the new view, learning is defined as the development that results from social interaction that affords learners increased access to roles in expert performances. Accepting the dual cognitive-social nature of learning creates a new problem for instructors: designing learning experiences that meld the cognitive and social aspects without subordinating either to the other. This article addresses the problem by presenting, justifying, and exemplifying an approach to designing learning experiences that support learners' development of capabilities so that they learn to do without assistance things that they could initially do only with assistance. The goal of this design approach is for learners to develop capabilities that they first experience in assisted or collaborative learning situations. Formally, this approach comprises designing learning experiences within learners' zones of proximal development (ZPDs), “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (see Vygotsky 1978, 86). The article illustrates the design phases with explanations of learning experiences for a master's course in information systems assurance.
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