Implementing team-based learning (TBL) in accounting courses

ABSTRACT

Accounting education has been criticised for ill-equipping graduates for professional employment, with calls for accounting students to acquire a broader range of skills. Working in teams is an important employability skill, yet students generally have negative perceptions of group work. This paper describes a different approach to group work, team-based learning (TBL). Students of introductory accounting courses were organised into permanent strategic teams and worked on multiple team activities. We examined their perceptions of TBL as a key pedagogical component of their learning activities. Compared to a control sample, our findings suggest that the TBL experience improved some attitudes, particularly among quantitatively inclined students. After experiencing TBL, students believed their teamwork abilities had improved, particularly those related to cultural diversity. Students generally believed that their ability in performing the roles of task leader, socio-emotional leader, and information provider improved significantly, as did their preferences for performing the two leadership roles.

KEYWORDS:

• Team-based learning
• work-ready graduates
• diversity
• online peer evaluation software
• CATME

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Marilyn Mitchell for her inspirational seminar and ongoing support and guidance in the implementation of team-based learning; Ben Shaw and Ken Parry for their generosity, expertise and time in the development of the survey instrument. Ken sadly passed away in February 2018. Our sincere thanks are extended to the three anonymous reviewers for their generous and insightful contributions to this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 CATME SMARTER Teamwork is a system of secure, web-based tools that enable instructors to implement best practices in managing student teams. The tools and training are supported by the literature on teamwork and training, along with independent empirical research. A licence fee, payable in arrears, was instituted from 1st July 2017 (http://info.catme.org/about/).

2 RATs may be administered in either paper-based or digital formats. Mobile technology (e.g. Socrative, Kahoot, Pingo, and Poll Everywhere) can be used to automatically mark the answers submitted online, alleviating the need for manually marking the quizzes and reducing the instructor's workload. In a digital format, the textbook's test bank multiple choice questions are uploaded to an online learning platform and released at the time of the RAT. Images can be uploaded to accompany the questions to make the quiz more engaging. The online platform also facilities distance education. For example, if a student is off campus, they are able to go online at an assigned time and complete the quiz to satisfy the individual assessment component. These authors have more recently used Socrative for the development and delivery of the RAT quizzes.