1. Assistant Professor, Coe College
Upping the Ante in Upper Level Accounting Courses: Increasing Student Engagement
Cynthia Dittmer, PhD.
Assistant Professor, Coe College

2. Appropriate Courses Advanced Accounting
Governmental & Non-Profit Accounting
Fraud Examination
Advanced Managerial Accounting
Any Advanced Topics Course

3. The order of topics to be covered Assignments: Making it real
Planning the Course
What to include and selecting a textbook, i.e. a comprehensive text or an essentials text
The order of topics to be covered
Assignments: Making it real

4. Advanced Accounting Topics
Comprehensive Advanced Accounting textbooks include:
Intercorporate Investments: All Levels of Ownership (Often 5 or 6 chapters)
Foreign Currency Transactions (1 or 2 chapters)
Governmental Accounting (2 or 3 chapters)
Not-For-Profit Accounting (1 chapter)
Partnership Accounting (1 chapter)
Bankruptcy (1 chapter)
SEC Filing Requirements (1 chapter)
TOO MUCH for ONE SEMESTER!!

5. What Topics to Include More Reasonable Amount To Cover
Comprehensive Advanced Accounting textbooks include:
Intercorporate Investments: All Levels of Ownership (Often 5 or 6 chapters)
Foreign Currency Transactions (1 or 2 chapters)
Governmental Accounting (2 or 3 chapters)
Not-For-Profit Accounting (1 chapter)
Partnership Accounting (1 chapter)
Bankruptcy (1 chapter)
SEC Filing Requirements (1 chapter)
More Reasonable Amount To Cover

6. Order of Topics Present in this Order:
SEC Filing Requirements (1 chapter)
Intercorporate Investments: All Levels of Ownership (5 or 6 chapters)
Foreign Currency Transactions (1 chapters)
Not-For-Profit Accounting (1 chapter)
Governmental Accounting (2 chapters)

7. SEC Filing Requirements
Start with this chapter – cover the history of the SEC and what the current filing requirements are for public companies.
Places the focus on the users of financial statements and the objective of financial reporting, i.e. decision usefulness of the information included in the financial statements.
This gives some context for the rationale behind the different methods of reporting for intercorporate investments based on ownership percentage.

8. Intercorporate Investments – Lesson #1 Before Starting the Chapter
Review Corporate Structure Equity Accounts:
Stock: Common and Preferred and their differences
Additional Paid in Capital (APIC)
Retained Earnings
Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (AOCI)
Treasury Stock
Review Corporate Equity Terminology
Total Equity = Net Assets = Book Value of the Company

9. Intercorporate Investments – Lesson #2 Before Starting the Chapter
Review Criteria for Intercorporate Investment Accounting Methods:
Historical Cost or Fair Value
Equity Method
Consolidation
Use this continuum to illustrate which method to use based on ownership percentage
Cost/Fair Value Equity Method Consolidation
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
0% % % %

10. Assignments – Intercorporate Investments
Use the online homework system from the textbook publisher for all chapters on Intercorporate Investments
Give students unlimited attempts (with a hard due date/time). The students have time to work through these multi-step processes and allows as much time as needed to master the concepts.
For the chapter that presents minority (non-controlling) interests, have the students look up a company on the internet and print the Balance Sheet and Income Statement, highlighting the minority or non-controlling interest lines.

11. Assignments – Foreign Currency Transactions
Have the students look up a company that reports in a foreign currency and print the basic statements, highlighting the reporting currency.
Show several on the overhead to allow students to see different reporting currencies.
Students are often surprised about companies reporting in other currencies.
This can be an assignment or extra credit.

12. Assignments – Not-For-Profit Accounting Most textbooks cover fund accounting before Not-For-Profit
Not-For-Profit accounting uses FASB rules similar to for-profit accounting, so do this before Governmental.
Introduces the idea of no profit motive before the fund accounting and GASB reporting requirements of Governmental.
Guidestar Assignment –Students choose a Not-For-Profit and print the first pages of the 990 that include all of the financial data.
Write a short paper describing whether or not the organization is meeting its mission based on the program costs vs. administrative and fund raising costs.

13. Assignments – Governmental Chapters
Basics of fund accounting - General Fund journal entries.
Present the different types of funds and what they are used for.
External reporting for governmental units required by GASB.
Show several pages of a CAFR on the overhead.
Students choose a local government (State, County, City) and print a few pages from the CAFR that includes something that was interesting or surprising. Write a short (1 page) description of the item that intrigues him/her.

14. Assignments – Fraud Examination
Class Discussions of Case Studies presented in the textbook.
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Videos – ask students for their reaction to actual fraud perpetrators’ first-hand accounts of what they did and why.
Ask students to watch for fraud cases in the news and bring them to class.
Let students choose a specific type of fraud to research and present to the class.

15. Final Exam Question Their answers are interesting and varied:
Please explain to me what YOU THINK is the most important thing that you learned in this course and why.
Their answers are interesting and varied:
Not-For-Profit Accounting – it helped in a job interview; it will help me decide on future contributions; understanding tax exempt status
Governmental Accounting – it allows me to have an educated opinion on government spending
Everything – because it will all be on the CPA exam
Using the homework site to work through difficult problems – it helped to dissect the problem to solve it
The presentations – it reminded me what is necessary to have a good presentation
That I never want to do governmental accounting