Do accounting students always perform better online? The COVID-19 experience

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 180 countries had to close their educational institutions as a precautionary measure [Azevedo, J. P., Hasan, A., Goldemberg, D., Geven, K., & Iqbal, S. A. (2021). Simulating the potential impacts of COVID-19 school closures on schooling and learning outcomes: A set of global estimates. The World Bank Research Observer, 36(1), 1–40]. Online educational provision thus became the only option for universities to continue with their degree programmes. Thus, the aim of this research is to examine student performance in introductory and advanced accounting courses following the shift to online provision due to the COVID-19 lockdown in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Based on 1946 exam score observations, the results reveal that student scores improved after shifting to online provision in both qualitative or less quantitative courses. However, in the quantitative courses, student scores fell after shifting to online provision. In addition, the results show that female students outperform male students not only in the online mode but also in the traditional mode of education. The findings of this study highlight the importance of the nature of accounting courses, in terms of being quantitative or not, in assessing the effectiveness of online accounting education provision.

KEYWORDS:

• Online accounting education
• Student performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s ).

Notes

1 A lockdown can be defined as a restriction policy for people, community or a country to stay where they are, usually due to specific risks that could possibly harm the people if they move and interact freely.

2 There are other factors which can impact exam performance in a higher education setting include past student performance, the degree of student engagement, and student demographic factors (Kahu, 2013; Tomasevic et al., 2020).

3 The Gagne and Shepherd (2001) study is based on introductory accounting courses, while the Chiu et al. (2014) study is based on introductory courses for financial accounting and managerial accounting.

4 The study by McCarthy et al. (2019) is based on intermediate accounting and auditing courses, while the Chen et al. (2010) study is based on an intermediate level cost accounting course.

5 It is important to note that neither of the Chen et al. (2010, p. 2013) studies examine students’ actual grades. On the contrary, they ask students about their expected grades in the final week of their course as anonymity requirements prevented their study from using actual grades.

6 Most of the Universities in KSA moved to a three semester academic year from 2022 to 2023.

7 It is important to note that while the first mid-term test covers the first part of the course, the second mid-term test covers the second part of the course that was delivered online.