SMEs project: a method to encourage interpersonal skills among pre-service accountant

Abstract

Purpose Accounting Education Change Commission reveals that accounting professionals are required to have interpersonal skills. For this reason, higher education requires the dynamics of learning that can foster critical thinking skills, analysis, communication, negotiation, cooperation and argumentation. Therefore, studies in the field of accounting education have led to a project approach to provide students with complex learning experiences to develop various supporting skills in addition to learning outcomes. Interestingly, the methods have its own dilemma with social loafing in groups. Therefore, a lecturer must be able to match it with an appropriate evaluation instrument. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of implementing peer evaluations and project-based learning (SMEs project) on improving the interpersonal skills of accounting students. Design/methodology/approach The population of this research is Accounting students at Medan State University, while the sample is students who are undergoing Cost Accounting courses taken with purposive sampling. The within-sample of field experiment method was conducted in the current study. Furthermore, data analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA analysis assisted by SPSS 19. Findings The results of this study showed that students had an increase in interpersonal skills in their board, and peer-evaluation design resulted in learning satisfaction and fairness in students. Originality/value The results of this study produce practical recommendations for lecturers to innovate their learning activities with actual project design and control group dynamics with accommodative evaluation designs. This study provides new insights in building a comprehensive instructional design, so it can strengthen the concept of instructional and evaluation designs which are integral parts that should match between one another.

Do learning approaches matter on setting the time spent for pre-service teachers?

“…The constructivism approach seeks to design the learning environment in such a way as to be able to lead students to achieve their learning goals (Bada & Olusegun, 2015;Bensley & Murtagh, 2012;Pande & Bharathi, 2020;Schunk, 2012). The learning environment is relevant literature, projects, group work, cooperative learning, cases, exercises, brainstorming, mini-research, and various other instruments whose outcome is the mastery of knowledge following predetermined standard qualifications (Bensley & Murtagh, 2012;Christensen et al, 2019;Dolmans et al, 2016;Opdecam & Everaert, 2018;Pande & Bharathi, 2020;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019). The important point drawn from the results of the study is that the learning environment requires students to play an active role as both learners and practitioners, which later provide them some opportunities to confirm their initial knowledge with the new knowledge they gain from the fundamental theory, research results, and actual practices (Dejene et al, 2018;Dolmans et al, 2016;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019).…”

“…The learning environment is relevant literature, projects, group work, cooperative learning, cases, exercises, brainstorming, mini-research, and various other instruments whose outcome is the mastery of knowledge following predetermined standard qualifications (Bensley & Murtagh, 2012;Christensen et al, 2019;Dolmans et al, 2016;Opdecam & Everaert, 2018;Pande & Bharathi, 2020;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019). The important point drawn from the results of the study is that the learning environment requires students to play an active role as both learners and practitioners, which later provide them some opportunities to confirm their initial knowledge with the new knowledge they gain from the fundamental theory, research results, and actual practices (Dejene et al, 2018;Dolmans et al, 2016;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019). Learning process helping student to constructs new comprehensive understanding and give them learning experiences that teach them how to master new knowledge (Dolmans et al, 2016;Dunne & Martin, 2006;Pande & Bharathi, 2020;Scheer et al, 2012;Von Glasersfeld, 1998).…”

“…In addition, the learning environment requires students to play an active role as both learners and practitioners. Such conditions provide opportunities for students to confirm their initial knowledge with the new knowledge they gain from fundamental theory, research results, and actual practice (Dejene et al, 2018;Dolmans et al, 2016;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019). This information then constructs a comprehensive understanding (Dunne & Martin, 2006;Pande & Bharathi, 2020;Scheer et al, 2012).…”

“…In the accounting education, which aims to prepare prospective accounting teachers, such a learning approach will provide a rich learning experience. With the experience of doing projects or mini-research, students can develop their critical thinking derived from the power of thinking and based on scientific foundations and debates that potentially occur during project and mini-research work (Bensley & Murtagh, 2012;Blumenfeld et al, 1991;Reif, 1981;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019). This gives them a solid footing in decision-making and in developing problemsolving ideas (Dolmans et al, 2016;Korthagen, 2004;Reif, 1981).…”

Communication Skill, Student Engagement and Self-Efficacy: Flow on Effect on Student Online Learning

“…Some previous investigations support this finding; students perceive learning as a media to study in a pandemic era with limited face-to-face meetings and time to lecture. Online learning significantly impacts academic achievement and effective learning (Alcaide et al, 2020;Sagala & Effiyanti, 2019). Besides google meet, online learning can utilize google sites dan Facebook (Akcaoglu & Lee, 2018;Chugh & Ruhi, 2018).…”