Christopher T. Edmonds

An examination of the links between SRS technology and an active learning environment in a managerial accounting course

Over the past two decades there has been a concerted effort to move accounting education from a knowledge-oriented system to a process-oriented approach. Active learning is an internationally recognized cornerstone of this strategy. A new technology offers opportunities for professors to promote active learning in their classrooms. That technology frequently called student response systems (SRSs) enable students to answer questions posed by an instructor via a remote control device. This study examines the impact that a new technology, SRS, had on students’ perceptions of key active learning characteristics. The results suggest that students receiving an SRS treatment registered significantly stronger agreement with statements describing an active learning environment than their peers in a control group. The results led to the conclusion that SRSs can be used to facilitate active learning in accounting classrooms. The survey also examined the impact of the SRS treatment on student perceptions regarding classroom efficiency. Students receiving the SRS treatment registered stronger agreement with statements suggesting that the learning environment was efficient. In summary, the survey results suggest that SRS technology is a promising teaching tool that deserves further scrutiny by accounting educators.

IFRS, U.S. GAAP, and XBRL Financial Statements: An Introduction and Case Study

ABSTRACT Given (a) the mandate to fully comply with “Interactive Data to Improve Financial Reporting,” (Rule 33-2009; SEC 2009b) which requires all SEC registered companies to include financial statements in XBRL format as exhibits with their quarterly or annual reports on a phased-in schedule, and (b) initiations to converge U.S. GAAP and IFRS, it is crucial for students to understand the methodological differences between XBRL financial reporting for these two standards. Therefore, the goal of this case is to expose students to the IFRS and U.S. GAAP XBRL taxonomies. We use the case of a hypothetical company to first illustrate some of the differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP reporting at the financial statement level, then map its Income Statement line items into respective XBRL taxonomies, and finally create an XBRL instance document. The case provides two exercises to explain the steps in creating an XBRL instance document for different taxonomies, i.e., accessing and then mapping line items into t...

Evidence Regarding Elimination of IFRS-U.S. GAAP Reconciliation

The main purpose of this paper is to provide initial evidence regarding the effects of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)s decision to eliminate the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)-U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) reconciliation by examining short-window trading volume reactions for the year of the elimination and the year prior to the elimination. This provides an important partial snapshot regarding the effects of eliminating U.S. GAAP on the U.S. capital markets. Our results indicate that trading volume decreased the year the reconciliation was eliminated which is consistent with a significant decrease in value relevant information available to equity investors related to those firms that eliminated the U.S. GAAP reconciliation. To further validate our findings, we also compare changes in trading volume for our sample firms with a control group of foreign private issuers unaffected by the SECs rule to eliminate the reconciliation. We find the decrease in announcement period volume to be significantly greater for foreign private issuers that eliminate the reconciliation. These results are consistent with the interpretation that value relevant information has been lost to the capital markets for those firms no longer required to reconcile back to U.S. GAAP.