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This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

Many face-to-face accounting classes were canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and were subsequently delivered exclusively in an online and distance learning format. This paper investigates the impact of this migration on accounting students' engagement and satisfaction in the early stages of the pandemic. A survey was administered to all the students registered in the undergraduate and graduate accounting programs of a large state-funded university in Canada. The study finds that the variables stress/anxiety, social interactions, instructor strategy, technological accessibility and delivery mode flexibility are related to accounting student engagement, while social interactions, instructor strategy, and engagement affect satisfaction. Using factors previously studied in non-pandemic settings, the study shows what drives the extent of accounting students' engagement and satisfaction during a health emergency. Practical implications include the importance of providing emotional/psychological support to anxious/stressed students, fostering frequent and easy interactions with instructors, and offering added flexibility through asynchronous instruction.

This paper presents evidence of employer and graduate attitudes on the skill set requirements for professional accountants, and whether university accounting programs develop these skills, and in particular emotional intelligence (EI) skills. We use priority indices and strategic mapping to evaluate the positioning of 31 skills. This analysis suggests that university accounting programs could consider increasing the emphasis placed on particular EI and non-emotional intelligence (non-EI) skills while other skills could be de-emphasised. While non-EI skills were ranked higher than EI skills, some non-EI skills are considered well developed in graduates and others are viewed as important but not well developed. While employers expect correspondence between the skills seen as important in the workplace and their expected development in university, there was also reverse correspondence in that employers do not expect universities to develop skills considered less important in the workplace.

Accounting education in recent years has emphasized the need for developing generic competencies and, to this end, has advocated various pedagogies other than the traditional lecture format. The Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres (Canada) started an award-winning program, Vire, Tuelle & Associates (VTA), which uses a mixed teaching approach to develop students' generic competencies in preparation for the Chartered Accountant designation. This questionnaire-based study asked students to rate this approach at the end of their training in the mock firm (VTA) and while they were trainees in an accounting firm. It also asked the office supervisors to assess their trainees' competency levels during the training period. It was found that the mixed approach program significantly enhanced the development/improvement of all 32 generic competencies investigated. After a few months' work as CA trainees, students had not substantially changed their views of the usefulness of VTA activities for the development of their competencies. Students' perceptions of some benefits of the mixed approach differed significantly according to accounting work experience and prior academic performance. The office supervisors generally viewed the UQTR trainees as being highly competent or excellent. This study provides educators, schools and professional accounting bodies with feedback on the mixed approach to help them develop similar programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines results of a flexible grading system that allows each student to influence the weight allocated to each performance measure. We construct a stylized model to determine students' optimal responses. Our analytical model predicts different optimal strategies for students with varying academic abilities: a frontloading strategy for those with high academic ability and a gambling strategy for others. We test the model using data gathered from several sections of an Intermediate Accounting course offered by a Canadian university. We find that most students did make decisions that were consistent with our analytical model. Our results suggest that the flexible evaluation system does not uniformly motivate students of differing abilities and does not encourage most students to maintain effort uniformly throughout the semester.

The Accounting Education Change Commission states that accounting graduates should have the ability to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar settings as an intellectual skill. According to cognitive theory, people with relatively high levels of cognitive complexity are significantly better at solving problems in unstructured situations than people with low levels of cognitive complexity, but are not significantly better in structured situations. This study replicates the findings of previous studies in the accounting area that tested this theory. Two extensions are made in the current study: first, cognitive complexity is measured by an instrument designed specifically for accountants; second, the examination considered is intended to assess both candidates' accounting knowledge and their ability to solve unstructured questions. In Canada, the Uniform Final Examination (UFE), the final examination that must be passed for candidates to become Chartered Accountants (CA), includes both structured and unstructured questions. Findings are consistent with those of the previous studies: marks received on unstructured questions are related to candidates' level of cognitive complexity as measured by the ACCT instrument but marks received on structured questions are not significantly related to candidates' level of cognitive complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is interested in the assessment of professional readiness, specifically the use of the Uniform Final Examination (UFE), which is the final hurdle that must be passed before admission as chartered accountants (CAs) in Canada. Examinations such as the UFE are generally intended to measure candidates' level of technical knowledge, but factors other than the amount of candidates' knowledge may affect performance as well. This study considers whether the Canadian UFE does provide a measure of candidates' level of technical knowledge. It also considers the effect of motivation as a potential mediating factor on performance. A motivation questionnaire was developed using expectancy theory and was administered to 167 candidates shortly before they wrote the examination. The results indicate that level of technical accounting, auditing and tax knowledge, as reflected in past performance in other courses, is the best predictor of performance in the UFE. This indicates that the UFE is indeed measuring candidates' levels of technical knowledge. The level of overall motivation, by itself, did not have a significant effect on performance. However, the different aspects of motivation included in expectancy theory did interact with the level of technical knowledge in a fairly complex manner to affect the overall performance, indicating that motivation does play a mediating role in the assessment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]