Find It, Fix It, and Thrive: The Impact of Insisting on Proficiency in Prerequisite Knowledge in Intermediate Accounting

Abstract

Success in upper-level accounting courses depends on adequate prerequisite knowledge because the learning process is sequential and hierarchical (Bentz 1975) and because prior learning provides cues for encoding and combining (Sternberg 1984). Building expertise requires a strengthening and organization of links between knowledge and not just a high volume of known facts (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 2005). Since incoming knowledge matters to later learning, this study investigated how enforcing the prerequisites impacted course outcomes in intermediate accounting. The prerequisites were enforced using a proficiency test administered online in a system that also offered tutoring to remedy any learning shortfalls. Students received all-or-nothing credit (100 percent or 0) for mastering adjusting entries and the financial statements. Students proficient in prerequisite skills earned better project and cumulative final exam scores in non-prerequisite areas. Grades in Intermediate II were also better after adding the proficiency test, compared to the two prior terms. The intrigue of these results goes beyond improved student outcomes in Intermediate I and II, because the testing and remedial instruction used an existing tutoring product, requiring no institutional resources or changes to course preparation, instruction, classwork, exams, or the project.

Progression to intermediate level courses; is a “pass” enough?

“…This result is consistent with the literature on prior learning, showing that foundational knowledge is important (Airasian et al , 1971) and that pre-requisites in finance education are necessary to establish that base (Blaylock and Lacewell, 2008). Pre-requisites knowledge is important in both finance and accounting education, as the development of the necessary skills in these numerically based subjects is crucial for a student’s ongoing chance of academic success (Sargent, 2013).…”

Experiential Learning in the Classroom: An Accounting Cycle Simulation Project

“…The accounting cycle has long been a foundational topic in financial accounting. Most pedagogical research (for example, Jones and Roberts, 2005;Brink, 2013;Sargent, 2013;Fanning and Grant, 2017;Jones et al, 2019, among others) has a procedural emphasis and mainly focuses on the development of cases and projects in which students progress through the steps in an accounting cycle with basic or complex business transactions given. Bergner and Brooks (2017) used the game Monopoly as a learning tool to review for an accounting cycle exam.…”

An Experiment Using Two Methods of Teaching Accounting for Leases in Intermediate Accounting

“…Scott (2017) reports that using unique cases for each student vastly reduced the amount of plagiarism and improved academic integrity. Sargent (2013) reports that students proficient in prerequisite skills earned better project and cumulative final exam scores in nonprerequisite areas, and grades in Intermediate II were also better compared to the two prior terms after adding a proficiency test. Plucinski (2010) describes that students with low GPAs benefit more from the addition of post-lecture quizzes, while students with higher GPAs benefit more from the addition of prelecture quizzes.…”