This module is one of 18 tutorials available in financial and managerial accounting offered with a membership to Simple Studies. This module involves an introduction to double-entry accounting, focusing on the rules of debits and credits, transaction analysis, journalizing, posting to accounts, adjusting and closing entries, and trial balances. The material is text based and relies on the user reading content.
Type of Material:
Tutorial
Recommended Uses:
Best used for individual learning or review.
Technical Requirements:
Membership required to view all tutorials and to have access to notes and other learning materials.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
To learn the rules of debit and credits and most of the steps in the accounting cycle.
Target Student Population:
Introductory financial accounting at the high school or college sophomore level.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic understanding of the types of accounts (asset, liability, equity, revenue, expense) including contra and temporary accounts.
Basic understanding of the types of cash flows: operating, investing and financing.
Basic understanding of adjusting entries including accrual accounting and amortization.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The text presented is clear, concise, current and relevant. The reading material provides a suitable demonstration of each concept covered. Most of the content is accurate. An adequate amount of content has been included to make the material essentially self-contained as a supplmenet for in-class instruction. For the most part, concepts are integrategrated and well summarized. A considerable variety in the types of financial events used has been included.
Concerns:
Another sentence or two should have been added about the type of business illustrated.
The horizontal model used didn’t provide any reference as to how revenue, expense and distribution accounts relate to equity.
Decreases in all account types are shown in brackets, and yet increases in expense accounts are also shown in brackets which would confuse the user.
Individual expense accounts are not provided for transaction 4.4 but are provided for all other expense account transactions (4.13, 4.15, 4.16, 4.19 and 4.20)
Transaction 4.14 is referred to as distribution to the owner which really should be a dividend as the entity used in this learning object is a company.
Some coverage of the relationship between the use of T-accounts and the preparation of the general ledger should also have been included.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Learning objectives are identified.
Concepts are reinforced progressively and build on prior concepts with relationships between concepts effectively demonstrated.
A very nice tie-in has been included about posting from journals to ledgers.
The module is very efficient for use in lieu of a textbook.
Developing assignments to correspond to the content would be relatively easy to do.
Concerns:
Embedded links to unrelated content throughout could confuse the user. Some appear as if they are links to relevant concepts.
Instructors will need to ensure that certain topics have been covered before assigning this learning object. The topics to include would be: types of accounting events, adjusting entries, and closing entries.
Cash flow types as part of the horizontal model complicate the learning object.
No context has been provided about operating, financing and investing activities, including why cash flows are organized this way. In addition, no reference is made as to how financing, investing and operating cash flows are used. This categorization is all about financial statement presentation of cash flows which is not the focus of this learning object.
Recording process steps 6.1 and 6.2 would be better placed at the beginning of the learning object.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The module is easy to use at it basically replaces a textbook.
Navigation between screens is good. A right-frame table of contents has been included to allow users to move forward and backward through the text without becoming lost.
Given the material is text based, aside from the advertisements, each screen has a very professional appearance. Graphics included are very nice.
Concerns:
Advertisements embedded within the module are very distracting and impact the ease of use. Some of the ads appear to be links to related content which detracts from the visual appeal.
The module is limited in engagement and interactivity.
Access to all content is not free. A tease exists in the way in which the two test questions are delivered. Users may become annoyed when they discover money must be spent to access further testing.
Other Issues and Comments:
To gain access to the learner materials requires a monthly or annual fee per user.
Creative Commons:
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