The Three R’sCarol Johnson, OSU School of Accounting

CHALLENGES IN EDUCATION

• Could they pass that test you gave 10 years ago?

• Changes in cost• Emphasis on extracurricular activities• Less time available for study• First thing to go: Reading the book• Reduced attention spans• Little tolerance for lectures

IF I WORK HARDER, WILL THEY GET SMARTER?• Foray into Power Points

CALCULATING COST OF GOODS SOLD

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Beginning Inventory

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Purchases

CALCULATING COST OF GOODS SOLD

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Goods Available for Sale

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Goods Available for Sale

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Ending Inventory

IF I WORK HARDER, WILL THEY GET SMARTER?• Foray into Power Points• Seemed to work well at first• Test scores started to fall:

– Discovery channel—TV watching– Problem with going faster than they can

absorb it

THREE R’s• Rigor• Relevance• Relationships

BASIC APPROACH IS TBL

• Make them responsible for reading– They won’t read what we’ll

regurgitate• Quiz them individually • Quiz them as a team• Allow appeals

DIFFICULTIES

• You have to give significant weight to team grades to get them to take team processes seriously

• Creates risk of grade inflation

MY PREFERRED APPROACH

• Make voiced Power Points or videos of lectures• Post them on D2L and say, “If you want a lecture,

here it is.”• Provide significant D2L question banks—and tell

them a significant portion of those questions will show up on the RATs

• In class, utilize TBL processes• Use clickers for RATs—if we did it across campus,

the paper savings would be significant– Academic integrity challenges– Make up for that with exams

• Use remaining class time for projects that apply the facts they should have learned--generally in teams

ISSUES

• Concern about enough individual responsibility• Concern about grade inflation• Difficulty with appropriate peer evaluations

(whatever you do here, make sure you document the process thoroughly in your syllabus)

• Concern about whether we give them adequate feedback on their team performance

• Mid-term peer evaluations would be good, but they’re fraught with problems

BENEFITS

• In my profession, our students will be working on teams all the time in the real world

• They typically become pretty bonded with their team, which helps to keep them engaged

THREE R’s

• Rigor—by having them prepare instead of me spoon-feeding them and keeping the bar up on what they need to know

• Relevance—by spending class time on application

• Relationships—in team processes

THREE R’s

• Bottom Line:– Classroom needs to be

for F2F interactions and other unique experiences.

– If you can do it as well on the Internet, it probably doesn’t belong in the classroom.