USING ACTIVE LEARNING IN THE TEACHING OF ACCOUNTING: A CASE STUDY ON THE BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION'S BACHELORS OF THE UNIVERSITAT POLITÈCNICA DE VALÈNCIA

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) considers significant changes that involve a revolution in the most traditional higher education. Some of them can be highlighted: a change in the professor role, the active participation of the students in the learning process, less emphasis placed on information transmission and greater emphasis placed on developing student skills, and a continuous evaluation system that gives information about whether these skills have been achieved or not.
In this context, an interesting question arises: how this can be done? In this work we present our teaching experience in the Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Management of the Universitat Politècnica de València. The aim of this Bachelor is to prepare its graduates to manage, direct, provide advice to and assess business organizations. General and Analytical Accounting is a subject directly related to this last objective. So, at the end of the course, the student must be able to diagnose the economic and financial situation of a company applying different techniques and managerial tools. For this purpose, we have found that the incorporation of active learning strategies such as role-playing are more appropriate than using only “traditional” lecture. Moreover, this approach allows increasing motivation, key element for learning. The results obtained along the last academic years show that the students achieve better results than using traditional methodologies. In addition, the students perceive the learning experience as useful and satisfying. In short, as a result of this experience, we can conclude that the use of active learning improves both real and perceived quality of accounting students’ learning.