Is the learning community of economics and accounting effective? Empirical assessment of class achievements

ABSTRACT

Learning communities are increasingly used at colleges and universities, as one of the goals of a learning community is to increase interaction among students and teach them how to apply knowledge. The goal of this research is to assess the learning community of the economics and accounting students in their class performance measured by class grades. By controlling individual characteristics (e.g., gender, high school performance, First Year Experience program) and class-related characteristics (e.g., instructor and major), the authors found that the learning community of economics and accounting, which is organized into both economics and accounting classes on a back-to-back basis, is no more effective for class grades than for non–learning community students.

KEYWORDS:

• Class achievement
• empirical assessment
• learning assessment
• learning community
• undergraduate education

Notes

1. Those few that do tend to use terms such as improved problem solving and increased success (Dodge & Kendall, 2004).

2. One notable exception is the Beachboard et al. (2011) study, which used data from the National Survey of Student Engagement.