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This paper describes a pedagogical experiment that used feature films in a senior accounting class to stimulate development of student competencies and raise ethical issues. Rather than being content driven, this active learning technique focuses on skills development, while engaging the students' emotions in the learning process. Encompassing three types of knowledge (conceptual, procedural and meta-cognitive), the exercises explore concepts of internal control, corporate governance and business ethics. They provide opportunities for accounting students to practice the higher level cognitive skills in Bloom's (1956) taxonomy and aim to foster students' emotional commitment to ethical decision-making. Students reacted positively to these activities, finding them most helpful in clarifying the impact of ethical issues. We observed significant differences between the beliefs of groups who participated in these exercises and those who did not, suggesting that this activity can be an effective tool for engaging students and influencing their perceptions about accounting issues.

We examine a flexible assessment system that allows students to determine the weights allocated to each course component and to re-allocate the weights in response to achieved scores. The flexibility is intended to encourage students' participation in the learning process, thereby promoting self-regulated learning skills. We compare this assessment system to a traditional system and to another system, in which the students may choose their own weights but cannot change them later in the term. We examine the impact on students' motivation as measured by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), as well as the impact on grades and students' attitudes. Our results indicate little improvement in motivation, grades or attitudes when students design and commit to their grading plans early in the term. However, the more flexible system, which allows for re-allocation, appears to improve students' grades, self-reported motivation and attitudes.

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.

This paper examines three accounting documents that have been preserved from records kept for a brewery built at Louisbourg, Canada, in 1759. As one of the earliest examples of English accounting in Canada, these documents provide insight into 18th century business practices in the North American colonies. Considering accounting texts of the period and documents preserved from businesses in the thirteen colonies, the study concludes that the statements prepared for the brewery were sophisticated in comparison to the accounting practices of this era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the correlation between the decision of business majors to choose a career as a chartered accountant (CA) and: (1) the importance attached to intrinsic rewards, financial remuneration, and job market factors in career selection; (2) the student's impression of chartered accountancy; and (3) exposure to high school accounting. Employing a survey of 897 business majors, t-tests were used to compare responses of students choosing the CA profession and those opting for nonaccounting careers. Discriminant analysis was used to assess the ability of six factors to distinguish between these two groups. Results indicate that, compared to other business majors, students choosing chartered accountancy: (1) place less importance on intrinsic factors and initial earnings; (2) more heavily emphasize long-term earnings and job market conditions; (3) perceive a higher benefit/cost ratio to being a CA (RATIO); and (4) have had more exposure to high school accounting. The most important variable for differentiating the two groups is RATIO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Winter 1973-74 issue of Academic Therapy, in this column, appeared an article by Sandra Felton, entitled “A Multiplication Process.” Not long ago, we received a letter from Mrs. Roslyn W. Rusinow, who feels that some additional comments are in order. Sandra Felton's response also follows. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]