Accounting in action – The use of podcasts in principles-level accounting courses

ABSTRACT

This study examines podcasts as a pedagogical approach to improve principles-level accounting students’ perceptions of course engagement and the relevance of accounting. In each podcast, the course instructor interviews a business professional who describes how he/she uses accounting information in the workplace. Students listen to podcasts periodically throughout the course. Survey results indicate that approximately one-half of study participants perceived the podcasts increased their engagement in the course and two-thirds perceived the podcasts helped them better understand the relevance of accounting for business professionals. Results are significantly stronger for accounting majors and participants expecting to earn higher course grades. Results for non-accounting majors and participants with lower grade expectations remain positive. These findings suggest that podcasts may be used to positively influence perceptions of course engagement and the relevance of accounting, particularly among accounting majors and high performing students.

KEYWORDS:

• Principles courses
• podcasts
• student engagement
• accounting perceptions
• business professionals

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the interviewees who participated in the podcasts enthusiastically. We also thank our students who agreed to participate in the study and Andrew Kulcak for transcribing the podcasts. We acknowledge helpful feedback and suggestions from the editor, assistant editor, and anonymous reviewers that improved the paper. Approval for this study was obtained from the University of Texas at Arlington’s Institutional Review Board, Protocol No. 2019-0082.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 This large decline of 30,020 CPA candidates is not driven solely by the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of unique CPA candidates per year declined by 19,278 during 2017–2019 and then declined by an additional 10,742 candidates during 2020–2021.

2 Our College of Business goes so far as to hold an event each year called ‘Business Week’ when instructors are strongly encouraged to host guest lecturers in their classes.

3 Collectively, we consider the set of interviewees to be diverse with respect to age, education, and work experiences. We also consider the interviewees to be relatively diverse with respect to gender; two out of seven financial accounting interviewees and five out of eight managerial accounting interviewees were female. However, our interviewees were not ethnically diverse. We strive to seek out more ethnically diverse interviewees for future podcasts.

4 The instructors involved in this study recommend using a microphone with a bidirectional setting so that audio can be recorded from both the front and rear of the microphone (i.e., the interviewer and interviewee can sit across from each other) when the interview is conducted face-to-face.

5 Microsoft Teams is the virtual meeting software approved and supported by the instructor’s university. Zoom is another virtual meeting software option discussed in Appendix A.

6 Camtasia will retain both the audio and video tracks if desired.

7 The instructors make podcasts available through the LMS and not a podcast channel so that they can track whether each student accessed each podcast or transcript by the assigned due date.

8 For example, each podcast assignment in the principles of managerial accounting course was worth 5 points, and total points from all podcast assignments (30 points) represented 2.3 percent of the 1,320 points available in the course. It is possible that the low-stakes nature of the podcast assignments may have disincentivized certain students (e.g., non-accounting majors, students with low grade expectations) from listening to the podcasts.

9 Although the podcasts described in this study were utilized at only one university, we believe that the procedures used to record podcasts and incorporate them into principles-level accounting courses will be relatively easy for instructors at other institutions to implement.

10 Additional sections of the principles-level accounting courses were taught by other instructors in the January 2019 and August 2020 semesters. Because those instructors were not listed as investigators in the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval from our university, surveys were not incorporated into their course sections.

11 The June 2019 and June 2020 semesters were not considered as implementation periods since enrollment in those semesters is quite low and the instructors involved in this research study do not teach during that time of the year.

12 Course enrollment across all principles-level accounting sections that were surveyed totaled 415 students. In order to maximize the sample size, we do not require a response to the midsemester survey. Table 2 provides results separately for the midsemester and end of semester surveys.

13 We describe responses of 3 (somewhat disagree), 4 (neither agree nor disagree), or 5 (somewhat agree) as indifferent in our subsequent discussion of results.

14 The mean response to Question 2 is significantly different (6.05 at midsemester versus 5.85 at the end of the semester), suggesting that students had slightly lower agreement at the end of the semester about the impact of podcasts on their understanding of business professionals’ use of accounting. However, the decline is small (0.20) and the percent of students who agree does not differ significantly between the two groups.

15 The average course GPA (ranging from a high of 4 to a low of 0) of financial accounting participants was 2.73 while the average course GPA of non-participants enrolled in the course sections was 1.96. The average course GPA of managerial accounting participants was 2.60 while the average course GPA non-participants enrolled in the course sections was 1.85.