Teaching Tips for Accounting Cases

TEACHING TIPS FOR ACCOUNTING CASES

Preface Dear Colleagues, After more than 27 years of experience both in university teaching and in the marking of professional exams, it is with complete confidence that I am able to make the present book available to you. My objective in doing so is simply to share my lifetime knowledge and experience with a view to contributing to the betterment of training in accounting. I am very much aware that case teaching is a real challenge for a teacher dealing with student apprenticeship, a lengthy activity marked by periods of soul-searching and insecurity. As the students look ahead to the moment when they will have to write a professional accounting exam, we must find the best ways of assisting them. To resolve cases, one needs a wide range of knowledge, together with an ability to adapt to constantly changing situations. Since each case is unique to itself, each case provides its own challenges. This means that the teaching of case resolution requires the acquisition of an ongoing ability: not to overdo things, but to go just as far as necessary. This demands constant readjustment in order to achieve the right balance. Through the use of two cases, one short, one long, which will be found in the Appendix to this volume, I wish to follow up on the ideas presented in my book Accounting for Success The Guide to Case Resolution, and at the same time provide a series of Teaching Tips for Accounting Cases. I am happy to share with you the working strategies I have developed and hope they will contribute to the success of your own work.

Dr. Sylvie Deslauriers