THE IMPACT OF INTRODUCING ACTIVE LEARNING INTO AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNTING COURSE

One of the primary objectives of a college accounting course is that students learn and retain concepts for use in later courses and the student's eventual career. For this to happen, students need to attend, be motivated and participate in the learning process. Yet, there is some evidence that students of introductory accounting courses do not display these characteristics, possibly as a consequence of the dominant use of traditional teacher-centered models. This paper documents the start of a transformative journey for one accounting lecturer and analyses the impact that the transformation has had on student learning. In particular, the paper discusses the author’s transition from a teacher-centered model to an active, learner centered model that is based on the constructivist philosophy. An action research model was used to enact and support the transition while a mixed methods approach was used to analyse the impact. This consisted of a student questionnaire with both Likert-scale and open-ended questions as well as an analysis of student performance on terminal exams. The results indicate that student performance in the final exam increased by 14% as a consequence of the active and collaborative approaches that were adopted. From the quantitative questionnaire data, students perceived that their learning environment challenged them to collaborate, to do good work, and, generally, to adopt a deep approach towards their learning. The dominant theme that emerged from the qualitative data was the use of in-class problems to encourage active learning and how those problems positively impacted on knowledge construction. While improvements were demonstrated, further issues were also identified. Therefore, the first author will continue to adopt the action research cycle for some time to come as teaching methods are refined and the author continues to learn and improve alongside students.