Teaching financial accounting to MBA students: creating a more exciting learning experience

Abstract

Financial Accounting is a very relevant and useful course in the MBA curriculum.In any future role,as a manager,competitor,leader or financial analyst,an MBA student is required to be comfortable with analysing and interpreting financial statements.S Sundararajan feels that the course,as it is currently offered in most business schools,stops short of imparting a sound understanding of,and skills in,the issues confronted in the real world of business.The traditional practice of starting with book keeping mechanism and the concomitant debit credit rules appears to be a major cause of discomfort among students.Book keeping mechanism is rule bound, monotonous and time consuming and does not fit into an MBA setting.

S Sundararajan describes an alternate and more effective method of teaching the course.The 33 hour course is organised in four modules.In the first module,the strategy is to draw attention to the core objective at the very beginning and familiarise the students with the how,what and why of financial statements.The second module is divided into two parts.First,the Debit/Credit application is demystified using a and B, concepts that students are more comfortable with.Next,the walk through the accounting cycle is turned into a fun-filled learning experience by using the popular game Monopoly to teach skills in the preparation of financial statements including various books of account,trial balance, balance sheet,profit and loss account,cash flow statement,and notes to accounts.The third module aims at motivating students to get behind the numbers by exposing them to accounting theory through case analysis.The objective of the last module is to imparting realism to Financial Statement Analysis. Assignments on FSA using various publicly available resources like published annual reports,company websites and databases giving company,industry and economy information,make learning accounting an exciting and rewarding experience.