A modified model of peer support in asynchronous online introductory accounting: is it effective?

ABSTRACT

Low passing rates are common in asynchronous introductory accounting courses due to the challenging material and the online setting. While peer support involving knowledgeable peer assistants has been shown to improve face-to-face students’ performance, it is unknown whether it will be effective when used online. Another issue of traditional peer support is the low participation rate. This study implemented a modified peer support model that involved a direct peer assistant (DPA) actively engaging online introductory accounting students. We found that students with a DPA participated in substantially more peer-supported activities (PSAs), especially when their current exam performance was low. Further, PSA participants had more positive subsequent grade changes and visited learning and homework systems more frequently than non-participants. Overall, the study suggests that in asynchronous introductory accounting, peer support carefully designed to provide extra student engagement will achieve desired participation rates and increase student grades and effort.

KEYWORDS:

• Introductory accounting
• online learning
• asynchronous modality
• peer support
• peer-supported activities

Acknowledgements

This study was completed with support from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University. We obtained approval for using human subjects in this study from the Institutional Review Board at Kennesaw State University (approval # IRB-FY22-6). We appreciate the research assistance from Sarah Fandrey and Jocelynn Galvan.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Following previous studies (Duah et al., 2014; Etter et al., 2000; Goldstein et al., 2014), we define and measure student’s participation of PSAs as their attendance of these activities. Other dimensions of participation such as the extent of engagement during the activities, while important, are more difficult to quantify.

2 Except for the streamlining of course content, the support methods described all leverage the aid of ‘peer’ support in the activity even if the course does not have a dedicated peer assistant assigned to the course. Although only some offerings of introductory accounting courses had peer assistants attending the course each semester, their review sessions were available to all offerings of the courses, regardless of course modality.

3 Both courses were highly coordinated. In the semester this study was conducted, Introductory Financial Accounting had 21 offerings, with 1,415 total enrolled students and Introductory Managerial Accounting had 16 offerings and 802 total enrolled students.

4 Because students often cannot differentiate between an SI and a DPA, we did not separately measure students’ participation of peer support activities offered by each of these two types of peer assistants.

5 In an untabulated analysis, we separated students into high versus low Eff_Reg groups based on whether a student’s Eff_Reg is above the sample median. We found that the average exam 1 grade for students with higher Eff_Reg is 82.7% while that for students with lower Eff_Reg is 74.5%. Exam 2 grades for these two groups are 74.0% and 72.2%, respectively. And final exam grades for the two groups were 77.6% and 72.6%. We found similar results when we separated students into high versus low SELP groups.

6 Note that both regressions have a relatively low R-squared. The independent variables can explain 5.9% and 3.6% variation of the grade change from exam 1 to exam 2, and from exam 1 to the final exam, respectively. The relatively low power of the regression model could be due to the difficulty to fully capture reasons of a student’s change in performance within the same course. Factors such as individual-specific circumstances that might cause the performance change are hard to observe and measure.

7 The regression that examines OHM logins has a relatively low R-squared of 0.052. There might be other factors that determine students’ effort on OHM that our regression model does not incorporate.