SABCO—An experiential learning project for introductory managerial accounting

This teaching brief presents a capstone project designed to provide students with a contextual understanding of introductory management accounting theories through hands-on, experiential learning. It also exposes them to cross-disciplinary roles from operations management. Using this capstone approach, students quickly learn to prepare financial projections, either manually or in Microsoft Excel, to secure financing for their start-up business (Sand Art Brownie Company or SABCO) to produce and sell brownie mix during the holiday season. Students then assemble ingredients and create jars of brownie mix to gather the necessary data to evaluate initial projections and problem-solve for future production. This role play contextualizes the elements of direct and indirect labor, fixed and variable costs, and their impact on profit and borrowing. Postproduction reflection on the manufacturing activities and discussion of actual results of operations emphasizes the improvement and decision-making responsibilities in the management process. Feedback demonstrates that students find the exercise challenging and valuable and that it deepens their understanding of managerial accounting and its purpose in a company's management process.     

How are feelings of difficulty and familiarity linked to learning behaviors and gains in a complex science learning task?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The feelings of difficulty and familiarity (FOD and FOF) are two types of metacognitive experiences. Both may influence student engagement and the...     

An Examination of the Effects of Situational Constraints on Appraised Performance

Most workers are subject to factors in the work place that are beyond their power to control and that act to restrict their performances. Despite the uncontrollable nature of these ‘“situational constraints,” there is evidence that appraisals of work performance tend lo unfairly blame the worker for the shortfalls in performance that these constraints cause. The magnitude of this tendency may be unclear due to the ways in which constraints have been assessed in previous research. A lab study was conducted to obtain a better estimate of the magnitude of situational constraint “bias” using a relativistic rating method that factors out the influence of constraints from performance appraisals. The results indicated that this bias is considerably stronger than previous reports had indicated and may be the dominant source of unfairness in performance appraisals.