Using in-class group assignments to improve low-achieving students’ performance in an introductory accounting course

ABSTRACT

In the United States, a high portion of students do not pass their introductory accounting courses. In this study, In-class Group Assignments (IGAs) that require students to work in small groups are used to supplement traditional lectures in Introductory Managerial Accounting. In two groups of students attending this course, four experimental IGAs are given to one group (treatment group) but not the other (control group) to assess the pedagogy’s effectiveness, especially for low-achieving students at greater risk of failure. Results on student performance for exam questions related to topics of these IGAs are consistent with improved performance among low-achieving students. Additional evidence suggests that students view IGAs favorably and use them to study for exams. IGAs could be a solution for improving performance among low-achieving, less motivated students who enroll in introductory accounting across countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Introductory accounting
• risk of failure
• active learning
• in-class activity

Acknowledgements

This study was completed with support from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University. I appreciate the assistance from Dr. Yangyang Fan at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in the revision of this paper. I also thank the editor, Dr. Greg Stoner, and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Approval for using human subjects in this study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at Kennesaw State University (study# 19-457). All participants included in this study’s data analysis have provided consent for collecting and using their data.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 In the Managerial Accounting course used in this study, exams account for 60 percent of total course points. Most exam questions are multiple-choice questions (80%), and the rest are T/F (10%) or problems (10%). Apart from exams, students are also assessed through reading and homework assignments (14%), chapter quizzes and reflective activities (11%), attendance and participation in IGAs (5%), and projects (10%).

2 Because students do not have permanent seats, group composition may vary over the semester. It is unknown how much diversity exists within a group.

3 Because attendance is taken only in class sessions with an IGA, the dates when IGAs will be held are not pre-announced. Otherwise, some students might only attend these classes and skip other classes.

4 The Carnegie classifications are classifications for U.S. colleges and universities based on degrees offered and research activities. “R2” universities are defined as “Doctoral universities – high research activity” (https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/classification_descriptions/basic.php, accessed August 15, 2022)

5 Before conducting this study, the instructor used IGAs in a previous semester in the course and received favorable feedback from students. It appears unethical to deprive any one group of their potential benefits.

6 Note that when the treatment group is given an IGA, the instructor lectures more slowly for the control group to spend the same class time. At the end of class, the instructor announces to the control group that a planned IGA cannot be completed in class due to time constraints, and it becomes an optional, ungraded, after-class exercise.

7 This approach has the inherent limitation of potential misclassification because poor performance could be attributed to other factors such as late enrolment, illness, and other personal reasons. However, the limitation can be mitigated by using multivariate regression in equation (1)(1) $\mathrm{Grade}\mathrm{\_Experiment}={\beta }_0+{\beta }_1\mathrm{Treat}+{\beta }_2\mathrm{Exam}1\mathrm{\_grade}+{\beta }_3\mathrm{FinAcct}\mathrm{\_grade}+{\beta }_4\mathrm{Attendance}+{\beta }_5\mathrm{Gender}+{\beta }_6\mathrm{Hours}+{\beta }_7\mathrm{Age}+e$(1) that includes other factors that may influence performance.

8 Out of the 9 questions related to the four experimental IGAs, 4 are given in exam 2 and 5 are given in the final exam. Further analysis suggests that the difference in low-achieving students’ average score on these questions between the treatment group and the control group is statistically significant in exam 2 (45.6% for treatment group versus 27.1% for control group, p = 0.002) but insignificant in the final exam (64.4% for treatment group versus 63.9% for control group, p = 0.925). A Chow test suggests that the difference is greater in exam 2 than in the final exam (p = 0.026). Because all IGAs are subsequently posted online even if not given in class, the smaller effect in the final exam could be due to low-achieving students in both groups realizing the importance of IGAs by the end of the course and studying them for the final exam.