Fall 2008
By Anna C. McAleer and Kristin Wentzel, PhD
Many college accounting programs emphasize the use of Excel in their undergraduate curricula because of the high demand within the profession for tech-savvy graduates capable of manipulating complex spreadsheets. At La Salle University, we recently moved away from a traditional, broad-based introductory computer science course to one that is specifically tailored to the needs of business students. This redesigned course emphasizes the use of Microsoft Office to help students understand and apply these applications in a business environment. Furthermore, to emphasize the interdependence of accounting and technology, La Salle also experimented last year with a linked, or "double," course format where the introductory computer skills course was tied to the introductory financial accounting course.
Tailored for Business Students
La Salle requires all business majors to enroll in the new computer science course mentioned above. (Liberal arts majors still take a general introductory computer science class.) Some first-year student rosters were linked so that these students attended both their computer science and accounting courses as a cohort group. An advantage of the double format is that business school faculty, who teach both courses, can more easily construct assignments that emphasize both accounting and technology concepts. While pure team teaching is not used, the pairing concept allows faculty to work together to structure sequencing and coordinate assignments. All intro tech courses use the same text and general syllabus, but the faculty in the mathematics and computer science departments teach unlinked computer science sections, with no coordination with the introductory accounting sections.
The majority of introductory financial accounting textbooks include Excel-based problems, but first-year students generally do not have the expertise to create the spreadsheets necessary to successfully analyze the data without direct involvement from the accounting instructor. Since most introductory financial accounting courses do not allocate enough time for instructors to bolster students’ Excel skills, a goal of this revamped computer science course includes teaching students to download financial statements and insert the data into an Excel spreadsheet. The focus then turns to manipulating the data using formatting techniques and formula calculations. This exercise instructs the students on making the spreadsheet user-friendly for decision makers, using appropriate input tables, and organizing data for analysis.
In the doubled sections, instructors can easily incorporate the Excel-based accounting assignments to emphasize the link between accounting and technology. For example, when students download financial information, they can then analyze the various components of a company’s balance sheet, create pie charts to show the relative size of debt and equity components, and draw conclusions about the use of debt versus equity for financing. Students then submit a Word document that includes graphs to support their written conclusions.
Student Perceptions
Students’ comments at the end of the semester suggested that the linked courses illustrate the interdependence of accounting and technology more effectively than stand-alone computer science courses, even when all sections use the same text designed specifically for business students. We surveyed all students enrolled in our introductory accounting course regarding their perceived knowledge of Excel skills and their perceptions of the interdependence between accounting and technology. Overwhelmingly, students who participated in the linked sections more significantly recognized technology as a useful tool in accounting, and more strongly agreed that accounting and technology were related than those students who took the new computer science course in an unlinked format. Furthermore, students in the linked sections reported significantly higher perceptions regarding their ability to download financials and work with the data, most likely because the students examined similar company data in both their accounting and technology courses.
From a pedagogical standpoint, the joining of technology and accounting early in the curriculum better prepares students for subsequent courses in accounting and finance, and better prepares students to enter an accounting profession that relies heavily on technology. Furthermore, based on our survey findings, there appears to be an advantage to formally linking the two courses using coordinated assignments to more strongly emphasize the role of technology in accounting and to enhance students’ ability to incorporate their Excel skills into accounting courses.
Anna C. McAleer is an instructor in the accounting department of La Salle University in Philadelphia. She can be reached at mcaleer@lasalle.edu.
Kristin Wentzel, PhD, is an associate professor in the accounting department of La Salle University. She can be reached at wentzel@lasalle.edu.
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