Effect of Example Context on Performance of Novice Accounting Learners

• In Event: Research on Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Accounting educators and trainers often use accounting problems to illustrate issues and teach solutions to novices in classroom settings. Typically, a problem situation is presented and the instructor demonstrates how to work through to a numerical solution. Context-specific examples demonstrating the concepts often are thought to be more interesting and easily understood, and therefore more readily applied, than abstract explanations. However, it is not clear whether materials that include company and industry information will help or hinder performance on subsequent problems.

The effects on performance of two common contextual features in accounting-problem settings are studied in this research. First, in the presented examples, company context was manipulated by varying the information detail levels about the company to study the effects of extraneous cognitive load. Second, industry setting (e.g., manufacturing, retail, or service) in the presented examples was manipulated to investigate how variability of industry setting affects performance. Using an experimental design, the effect of example contextual features on learner performance on a novel, but structurally similar, accounting problem was investigated.

Overall, performance was poor and the primary hypotheses were not supported. However, additional analyses revealed that the order of the study-phase examples had an unintended influence on performance and effort. Further, participants appeared to have an illusion of understanding which was not reflected in their actual performance.

Author

• Cassandra Walsh Rohland, UMass Lowell