Use of Accounting Data and Business Analytics in Teaching

• In Event: Reception with Effective Learning Strategies Displays

Abstract

XBRL based financial accounting data has democratized the data and made it more easily and widely available. We can now make real-life, up to date, financial accounting available to our students and incorporate this data in a variety of courses we teach. We use two products “XBRL Data In Use” free for students to use, and Calcbench with limited time free subscription. Students are informed that in most part they are looking at the CPA audited financial data (emphasizing that other sources of financial data on Internet may not be CPA audited).

Our experience shows students have more appreciation for the accounting field, because the entire focus on textbook materials could get boring without any “action” or live results and demonstration. For example for intro courses most instructors emphasize ratios at the end of each chapter, primarily to help students to put the chapter lesson into a good use. We learned that the use of accounting data and analytics provided by above products/tools motivates students to not only see the impact of the ratio in action, but it also satisfies their appetite for use of technology in accounting.

In graduate courses, for example we search MD&A and Internal Control reports for certain keywords regarding management of the company, or reaction of the management to a new policy or regulation.
In another example, students are asked to find out what industries contribute more tax dollars to the government and why certain companies end up having much variability in amount of taxes they pay year after year. What industries/companies spend more on research and development per dollar revenue?

We have not done an official survey of students on this topic, the anecdotal evidence suggests that accounting could be more fun if students in the classroom can very quickly look up an answer on their own laptop to whether Pepsi or Coke has the best gross margin or ROI in a given year. Sometimes in graduate classes we download the data in Excel and do further statistical analysis. Students also have access to the entire annual report of any company in the U.S. Some instructors would like each student to select his/her company to follow during the semester for different lessons.

We thought it might be useful to share our teaching experiences with other interested accounting faculty regarding accounting data analytics in the classroom.

Authors

• Saeed J Roohani, Bryant University

• Ariel Markelevich, Suffolk University