Friday January 17, 2014
Whew, the first week of class is over. Let's avoid procrastination and get off to a fast start.
Why Do Students Have a Tough Time with Intermediate Accounting
We are a non traditional campus with an average student age of 32. Many of our students are already working in an accounting or financial job. And I suspect most of you are good at that job evidenced by continued employment. So why would intermediate accounting which surely incorporates some of what you do every day anyway, be of any difficulty?
Andy Rooney once observed that it takes about six months to learn a job. And let's face it, most jobs are repetitive. One does the same thing over and over. And so after weeks and months one attains a desired level of proficiency.
This is purely my subjective observation but I think there are two potential stumbling blocks.
The first is the failure to master content before graduating to the next more difficult level of engagement.Simply put, theory holds that one must attain content mastery. One must, for example, learn addition and subtraction before moving to multiplication and division. I find that far too often for trhe convenience of schedule, for example, the intro accounting class has been installed on the school computer lab. That way students can drop by any time the lab is open and take the class. Sounds great but, far too often this results in the sheer luck model of education. The computer poses a question, you hit a key, no, hit another key, no, hit the third choice and bingo, you got the answer. Now you have no idea why that is the right answer but you got it. A similar situation exists between using time value tables versus a calculator. One can hit calculator buttons and never have any idea of what the answer should be or why. A totally different experience comes with the tables. One learns why the formula results in the table of factors.
In other situations, there may be a face to face class, but to attain mandatory completion requirements students are graduated with marginal to low skill sets.
The second hurdle is that while one does the same thing every week on the job, in class we are tackling a different topic every two weeks. A student perfomring accounts payable or receivable work is not likely to be famioliar with the bond market, much less the options market. And so the class becomes a dizzying array of high hurdles in a one semester long track meet.
For these reasons I assembled a laundry list of accounting resources. These are located both in your syllabus and under TAMUSA Accounting Resources on Blackboard.
Use the four day break to do the following and familiarize yourself with these resources.
Use the student resource tab to link to the pull down tab, go to the appropriate tab to access
power point
quiz
flashcards
Locate the link to the Baruch College power point in the syllabus, review their lecture on financial statements
Log on to connect and complete Learn Smart for yuour first chapter
Investigate Helpful Websites under Course Content on Blackboard
Oh and read the chapter, outline the learning objectives in your own words, review the summary of the learning objectives at the end of the chapter
Review the Questions and Answers, remember I posted the Answers to the questions under Counrse Content on Blackboard?
If your budget permits, order Schaums Intermediate I and II from Amazon, just $13 each 
Praciticing accounitng is like eating raw broccoli,
It's Good for You!
Real professionals in athletics and music attain proficiency by practicing every single day, professional accounting is the same dynamic, repetition and practice leads to proficiency
Professor Elam 
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