Using Excel in Accounting Courses

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Abstract

Future CPA’s need to manage, manipulate and communicate data. Excel has been and will continue to be a tool to help with managing, manipulating and communicating financial data. It is critical for accounting educators to teach skills that our students need to be successful in the accounting profession. Regulators have been advocating through the Accounting Exchange Commission (1989) and then through the Pathways Commission (2012) to emphasize problem-solving skills using Excel (AICPA, 2014). Willis, 2016 explained “In attempts to close the expectation gap, accounting instructors developed cases and projects to teach Excel to students. However, instructors still continue to struggle with what parts of Excel to cover and how to best teach Excel”.
During the Fall 2018 semester, Stockton’s School of Business (AACSB) assessed Excel skills in our Managerial Accounting courses. The results showed our students knew basic Excel skills but had deficiencies in more advances Excel skills (We plan to show our assessment results). To close the loop on our assessment we are considering several strategies:
• Use a traditional course in Excel
• Use a laddering strategy, whereas each accounting course will introduce certain skills with the intention of developing a deep leaning of Excel
• Use independent third-party software where the student preforms self-learning
• Use boot camps throughout the academic year to teach Excel.

What are the best practices in teaching Excel skills and functions in a university accounting program?

References
AICPA, (2014). Mapping of the AICPA core competency framework to the skills tested on the CPA exam. Retrieved August 20, 2018. Retrieved from June 17, 2019. http://www.aicpa.org/interestareas/accountingeducation/resources/downloadabledocuments/mapping_of_ccf_to_cpa_exam_skills_foraec.pdf.
Google Scholar
Porter, J. (2019). Beyond debits and credits: Using integrated projects to improve students’ understanding of financial accounting. Journal of Accounting Education, Vol. 46. Pp. 53-71
Williams, D. Z. (1993). Reforming accounting education. Journal of Accountancy, 176(2), 76– 81
Willis F, V. (2019). A model for teaching technology: Using Excel in an accounting information systems course. Journal of Accounting Education, Vol.36. PP 87-99

Authors

• Barry R. Palatnik, Stockton University

• Jean Abbott, Stockton University

• Warren Kleinsmith, Stockton University