Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

1-2020

Abstract

The accounting cycle is an important yet difficult topic for introductory financial accounting students to learn. These students often lack the business context to understand the accounting cycle and find the traditional teaching approach dry. This problem motivates the authors to examine whether a blended learning approach via online tutorials can improve students’ perceived knowledge of the accounting cycle for the undergraduate introductory financial accounting course. The authors developed four innovative online tutorials with a coherent storyline to enable students to learn the accounting cycle and to supplement in-class learning. To test the effectiveness of online tutorials, an independent survey was conducted by the Centre of Teaching Excellence at the authors’ University. The survey results suggest that the accounting cycle online tutorials substantially improve students’ perceived knowledge of the topic (an increase of 59.8% in the perceived knowledge) and the improvement is statistically significant. Meanwhile, the results indicate that the online tutorials are valued by students for the enjoyable learning experience. Students credited the online tutorials for increasing their interest in the course and providing the business context to understand the accounting cycle, which enhanced their learning. Given the positive impact reported by students, the paper recommends instructors for introductory financial accounting course to use these accounting cycle online tutorials to supplement in-class learning as there is only minimum cost of implementation. One caveat of the paper is that students’ perceived knowledge may not reflect the actual knowledge of the accounting cycle.

Keywords

Accounting cycle, Introductory financial accounting, Online tutorial, E-learning, Blended learning

Discipline

Accounting | Asian Studies | Higher Education

Research Areas

Corporate Reporting and Disclosure

Publication

Accounting Education

Volume

95

Issue

4

First Page

263

Last Page

274

ISSN

0963-9284

Identifier

10.1080/08832323.2019.1636755

Publisher

Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2019.1636755

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