Innovation or renovation: effective project design for accounting and MBA students

Abstract

It has long been recognized that accounting and finance students need multidisciplinary skills and most degree courses reflect this in the curriculum. In addition, the growth of business administration courses, with a high accounting and finance content, and the constant call for relevance and 'real world' application, has persuaded many academics that educational progress can be made by employing project-based group work to bring together diverse skills and disciplines. This paper endorses that view, but suggests that careful thought is required to match the aims of the project with the developing skills and experience of the student groups. It explores the role of project clients and student learning and also the level of faculty involvement necessary to fulfil learning objectives. These issues are explored within the context of a project on mergers and acquisitions, which combines strategy, economics, accounting and behavioural considerations and has been employed on full-time MBA courses at one UK university (disguised as 'Utopia' in the paper) for more than 20 years. Experience from the project suggests that renovation of old methods is often preferable to major innovations and that the involvement of outside clients needs to be thought through carefully. A semi-live close-bounded version of the project is shown to work better than an open-ended pure consultancy project.Educational Projects Group Work Mba Project Consultancy New Teaching Methods,

Total Cost Analysis in Logistics : Practical Execution, Learning, and Teaching in Higher Education

“…In congruence with Davidson and Major's (2014) recommendation of gradually introducing more and more ill-structured problems, Collett (2000) suggests that live openended projects should only be conducted when students have considerable experience of simulated (fictional) less complex projects.…”

“…Open-endedness is embedded in ill-structured as well as more structured problems. The idea is that students should investigate the issue from different angles and explore alternative solutions (Collett, 2000). This way, students learn that 'truth' and 'certainty' seldom exist in the real world (Karagiorgi and Symeou, 2005).…”

“…However, not all researchers are in favour of case teaching. Collett (2000) refers to such critique stating that cases provide limited experiential learning since they are tightly defined compared to real-world projects. Although some cases are tightly defined, this criticism seems too categorical to be generally valid for all cases.…”

Accounting education literature review (2000–2002)

“…Hughes and Berry (2000) present a case study in which a qualitative research project was used to teach fundamentals of accounting research to graduate students. Collett (2000) describes the development of a merger and acquisitions group project over a 20-year period. The project is included in the second year of an MBA program at a UK university.…”

Finance Graduates’ Knowledge and Skills Development: Graduate and Employer Perceptions in United Arab Emirates

“…Grablowsky and Rowell (1980), for instance, reported that almost 40% of the practitioners thought that business schools were lagging behind business practices, while only about 25% thought that business schools led business practices. Therefore, the calls for educators to broaden curricula had been loud during the 1980s and 1990s, as business schools were being criticized for graduating students deficient in critical skills (e.g., Accounting Education Change Commission, 1990;Adler and Milne;Collett, 2000;International Federation of Accountants, 1996;Nabi, 2003). In a world of globalization and competition, on the other hand, different professional and accrediting bodies produce guidelines for building coherent business programs with expectations for cognitive and behavioral skills, leading to global citizens (Barrie, 2004;Bowden & Merton, 1998, Kavanagh & Drennan, 2008.…”