Laughing to learn: harnessing student-developed memes in financial accounting classrooms

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the effect of using student-developed memes on students’ learning experience. It sheds light on the perceived usefulness of memes, a non-traditional active learning tool, and their effect on students’ performance in class quizzes. The study employs survey questionnaire and focus group design to collect data from classes of undergraduate introductory financial accounting course at a leading public university in Egypt. Results show that developing memes significantly enhanced students’ perceived engagement in class and interest in the course, which was generally viewed as boring. Students’ scores in class quizzes significantly improved relative to prior scores before developing memes and compared to scores of students who did not develop memes. This paper contributes novel evidence to a growing body of research on the impact of active learning in accounting education and suggests creative learning/teaching tools and areas of improvement for consideration in accounting education practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Active learning
• financial accounting
• student engagement
• humor
• memes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the valuable comments and assistance of Israa Abdelkhalek, Raghdaa Ali, and Sabah Abdelhakam. The author extends credit to former students who designed the selected memes presented in this paper: Abdallah Ali, Manar Ezzat, Mena Ayman, and Omar Hossam. The author would like to thank the Egyptologist Monica Hanna for the valuable information about laughter/satire in Ancient Egypt, the editor, and anonymous reviewers for their valuable remarks.

Disclosure statement

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

Ethical statement

Consent forms and Ethical clearance were obtained.

Notes

1 Digital nativity is defined as an orientation of individuals of millennials, generation Z, and generation alpha to rely heavily on technology in daily life and preferring images/graphics to text (Prensky, 2001).

2 See https://rb.gy/gwo2wj (Arabic article, accessed March 2, 2023).

3 The Ancient Egyptians’ sense of humor can be observed in different material culture output; ranging from literary texts, to tomb decorations and the different illustrations in the papyri and figured ostraca.

4 See https://www.arabnews.com/node/1165171 (Accessed February 20, 2023). The author (a local journalist) specifically concluded the article: “When Egyptians tell a joke, their purpose is not to make you laugh, but to make themselves laugh. Laughter shows a desire to live; Egyptians resort to sarcasm and humor to express their own viewpoint or evade their problems.”

5 See Egypt’s Ancient Comedy History https://www.vulture.com/2011/10/egypts-ancient-comedy-history.html (Accessed April 16, 2024). The author (an international comedy writer), concluded towards the end of the article: “In Egypt, everyone is a comedian”.

6 See https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196803/humor.from.the.tombs.htm (Accessed April 17, 2024). William A. Ward (a professor of ancient history) discussed forms of humor in ancient Egypt represented on walls of tombs that “ … beneath … (great) achievements, the Egyptians were … able to laugh and make others laugh with them”.

7 Murashko (2021) elaborated on the interesting Egyptian culture of laughter -embedded since ancient times- as one where people could joke on anything limitlessly and still remain disciplined in all areas of life.

8 According to a growing body of psychology literature (e.g., Jiang et al., 2019; Kim & Plester, 2019) although humor is a universal language, it has been used and perceived differently in different cultures. For instance, in Western cultures, since ancient Greece, humor was used as a stress relief mechanism and is associated with positive outcomes. While in Eastern cultures, since ancient China, humor did not have a positive connotation, where seriousness was preferred. In ancient Egypt, humor was viewed as a form of creativity, defense mechanism against challenges, and joke on deep concepts that are considered sacred. Drawings and comic graphical representations on the walls of tombs and temples are viewed as early forms of memes in their modern meaning.

9 See https://dictionary.apa.org/meme (Accessed March 20, 2022)

10 A reference point in this paper denotes a well-known event, movie scene, song verse, etc. that people collectively and generally know of due to going viral on the internet or being widespread in the culture.

11 See https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-a-meme/ (Accessed March 30, 2022)

12 See https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/crosswords/what-is-a-meme.html (Accessed January 31, 2022)

13 The setting of this study was during the pre-Covid-19 pandemic. Hence all classes were taught face to face.

14 The average age of sample participants in this study is 18 years. Hence, it reflects the notion of digital nativity explained by Prensky (2001).

15 The use of student-created memes as a bonus assignment is intended to engage all students, especially low-performing students. Students could gain extra marks added up to their assignments total mark.

16 To be considered as a valid contribution to the bonus assignment, memes need to meet the prerequisite of being relevant and meaningful from the course syllabus perspective. Hence, merely submitting funny memes does not qualify as a valid assignment submission. This specification motivates students to better analyze topics learned to create relevant memes.

17 In the Likert scale used, 1 denotes ‘strongly disagree’, ‘not at all effective’, ‘not at all easy’, ‘not at all positive’, or ‘extremely longer than expected, and 5 denotes ‘strongly agree’, ‘highly effective’, ‘very easy’, ‘highly positive’, or ‘extremely shorter than expected’.

18 This percentage represents the collective percentages of respondents whose responses are ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’.

19 See https://www.aacsb.edu/educators/accreditation/business-accreditation/aacsb-business-accreditation-standards#:~:text=The%202020%20Standards%20Fulfill%20The%20Following%20Key%20Objectives

20 See https://www.efmdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023_EQUIS_Standards_and_Criteria.pdf