A Visualization and Patterning Flowchart Strategy for Teaching Accounting Cost Flows and Evidence of Its Effectiveness in Achievement of an AACSB Learning Objective

Abstract

Undergraduate accounting students can have a difficult time conceptualizing manufacturing processes, their physical inventory flows, and the accompanying accounting cost flows. Traditional methods of teaching this material within the management and cost accounting classes stress the transactional and reporting requirements in great detail. This paper presents a simple flowcharting approach that can be used to aid accounting students in developing an innate understanding of inventory and cost flows across multiple cost accounting topics. We theorize that once this simple visual organizational flowchart is internalized, students are better able to organize and analyze complex situations by breaking the data down into their individual process components. In addition, this framework aids students in grasping the inter-relatedness of topics that they may have previously viewed as “unrelated and disjoint. This paper first discusses the flowchart pedagogy and related literature. Specific examples of the application of the flowchart approach are presented for three different topics in cost accounting. We then discuss the learning objectives and assessment procedures involved in measuring student achievement. The final section of the paper contains the statistical analysis of student achievement of those learning objectives and the related discussion. Within the cost accounting course, final exam data for 356 students over 6 semesters was collected and analyzed. Statistical evidence is presented (both numerically and graphically) indicating a significant improvement in student achievement in product costing when this pedagogy is utilized. Specifically, the paper observes that the use of the flowchart methodology in the student treatment group is associated with a mean increase in student performance of 4.2 percent, as well as an overall positive shift of the distribution of the performance of the students, in the product costing learning objective.