The Impact of Visualization Tools on the Learning Engagement of Accounting Students

Abstract

In the big data era it is necessary for the financial-accounting education environment to redefine itself. Recently, the relevance of visualization in both pedagogical and business environments has increased, as it can support a clearer and more effective representation of information. In this context, the current paper presents a prototype course that introduces tools to visualize financial accounting concepts and was developed jointly by IT and financial teachers. The study starts with the review of specialist literature, based on which a course scenario is proposed, where processes, models and financial-accounting methods are presented with tools of modern visualization techniques developed on real-time data sets. It continues with the statistical study, which analyzes whether students’ engagement increases as compared to a traditional course. The results of the statistical study confirm that visualization tools increase the degree of understanding and engagement of the financial and accounting contents by inducing students the necessary skills to identify the correct accounting decisions. We believe that the results of the paper will bring more insight into the introduction of visualization tools in the process of learning how to take accounting decisions, and we invite more academics to study, test and expand the subject of visualization in financial accounting.