This week we (Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, DBA, MAcc, CPA, and myself) are hosting “how-to” webinars to take a deeper dive into specific tools for online teaching.
Tuesday, March 24, 5-5:30pm EST
How to use Poll Everywhere in Your Online Class
Interested in creating student engagement in your online courses? Join us for a “how-to” session on using Poll Everywhere. We will provide you with information on how to sign up for an account, create polls, and embed polls into your PowerPoints. Also, we’ll feature the Poll Everywhere competition feature. This session will provide everything you need to be up to speed using Poll Everywhere.
Join us for a FREE webinar on Tuesday, February 25, 2020, from 3 – 4 pm (Eastern).
We will be talking about data analytics cases that we have developed specifically for the introductory accounting courses. These cases are completely turnkey – the cases include instructor guides, solutions, check figures, instructions for students about how to obtain Excel, Power BI, and/or Tableau, step-by-step tutorial videos specifically for these cases, and more.
After attending this webinar, you will be able to integrate basic data analytics into your introductory accounting courses regardless of your current skill level with Excel, Power BI, and/or Tableau.
All materials shared are free for faculty and students and have been class tested.
In addition to the data analytics case we posted last week for introductory financial accounting, we have also developed a case, using the same KAT Insurance Company data set, for introductory managerial accounting. The three of us who teach introductory accounting (Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, and Tracie Miller-Nobles) developed a KAT Insurance case to introduce data analytics in the introductory managerial accountingcourse. This case uses real-life insurance company data that has been anonymized and simplified. The case itself is a one-page case and is designed to be able to be completed in 30 – 40 minutes with each software tool (Excel, Power BI, and Tableau.)
This case teaches students how to drill-down into a company’s sales data, gaining a deeper understanding of the company’s sales, variable costs, and contribution margin, and how this information can be used for decision-making. Students will use Excel, Power BI, and/or Tableau to analyze the sales transactions for an insurance company. Students will first have to find and correct errors in the data set. Students then will use various techniques to analyze the case. Step-by-step tutorial videos will guide students through the Excel, Power BI, and Tableau portions of the case analysis. This case will introduce the student to data analytics topics including data cleansing, data dictionaries, and data visualizations.
***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***
Several resources have been developed for this case to make it easy to integrate into introductory managerial accounting courses. Read on for the resources that have been developed and for information on how to request the case and related resources.
What’s included
The following resources are available for this case and are included or linked in the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting case:
Case (one-page Word handout)
Student guide (Word)
General learning objectives for the overall case
Specific learning objectives (related to specifically to Excel, Power BI, and Tableau)
Data sets containing 65,000+ records (4 versions: A, B, C, and D)
24-record tutorial data set
Step-by-step tutorial video (close captioned)
Scripted tutorial video slides (pdf)
Editable grading rubric (Word document in Appendix A)
Multiple-choice questions with solutions for each of the four data sets Excel solution files
Optional video assignment instructions
How to obtain case materials
***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***
You will need to fill out a brief form and then we will verify your instructor status prior to sending you the Instructor Guide. We generally send the Instructor Guide within a week after the request; we will contact you if we need additional information to verify your instructor status.
The Instructor Guide contains links to all the resources listed above. We do ask that you not share the Instructor Guide with students. Please do not post the solutions to the case on Blackboard, Canvas, or any other Learning Management System. Also, please do not post the Instructor Guide or the solutions on any web site. (Thank you in advance for helping to maintain the academic useful life of the materials.)
Again, you can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting caseby requesting it at this link.
We hope you and your students find value in this data analytics case for introductory managerial accounting. Please share any feedback with us about your experiences in using the case. Enjoy! Also, remember that we also have KAT Insurance case for introductory financial accounting (see link.)
Sincerely,
Wendy M. Tietz, PhD, CPA, CMA, CSCA
Kent State University College of Business Administration
The demand for business graduates with data analytics skills has exploded, while the tools and techniques are continuing to evolve and change at a rapid pace. Three of us who teach introductory accounting (Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, and Tracie Miller-Nobles) have joined forces to develop a case to introduce data analytics in the introductory financial accounting course. This case uses real-life insurance company data that has been anonymized and simplified. The name of the fictitious company analyzed in the case is “KAT Insurance Company.” The case itself is a one-page case and is designed to be able to be completed in 30 – 40 minutes with each software tool (Excel, Power BI, and Tableau.)
This case teaches students how to drill-down into a company’s sales data, gaining a deeper understanding of the company’s sales and how this information can be used for decision-making. Students will use Excel, Power BI, and/or Tableau to analyze the sales transactions for an insurance company. Students will first have to find and correct errors in the data set. Students then will use various techniques to analyze the case. Step-by-step tutorial videos will guide students through the Excel, Power BI, and Tableau portions of the case analysis. This case will introduce the student to data analytics topics including data cleansing, data dictionaries, and data visualizations.
***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***
Several resources have been developed for this case to make it easy to integrate into introductory financial accounting courses. Read on for the resources that have been developed and for information on how to request the case and related resources.
What’s included
The following resources are available for this case and are included or linked in the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case:
Case (one-page Word handout)
Student guide (Word)
General learning objectives for the overall case
Specific learning objectives (related to specifically to Excel, Power BI, and Tableau)
Data sets containing 65,000+ records (4 versions: A, B, C, and D)
24-record tutorial data set
Step-by-step tutorial video (close captioned)
Scripted tutorial video slides (pdf)
Editable grading rubric (Word document in Appendix A)
Multiple-choice questions with solutions for each of the four data sets Excel solution files
Optional video assignment instructions
How to obtain case materials
***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***
You will need to fill out a brief form and then we will verify your instructor status prior to sending you the Instructor Guide. We generally send the Instructor Guide within a week after the request; we will contact you if we need additional information to verify your instructor status.
The Instructor Guide contains links to all the resources listed above. We do ask that you not share the Instructor Guide with students. Please do not post the solutions to the case on Blackboard, Canvas, or any other Learning Management System. Also, please do not post the Instructor Guide or the solutions on any web site. (Thank you in advance for helping to maintain the academic useful life of the materials.)
We hope you find value in this data analytics case for introductory financial accounting. Please share any feedback with us about your experiences in using the case. Enjoy! Also, watch for our upcoming KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting case….
Again, you can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.
Sincerely,
Wendy M. Tietz, PhD, CPA, CMA, CSCA
Kent State University College of Business Administration
Wendy Tietz (accountingintheheadlines.com) and I are presenting a poster at the American Accounting Association Annual meeting in Washington DC this upcoming week. Our presentation centers around using data analytics in introductory accounting.
Data analyticsis the process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making.
In introductory accounting, we can begin to discuss with our students how data analytics is used to solve accounting questions. For example:
Walmart – In 2015, Walmart announce it was in the process of creating the world’s largest private data cloud which would be able to process 2.5 petabytes of information every hour. The company uses this data to analyze sales across different stores in different geographical areas in real time.
Airbnb – Since 2008, Airbnb has collected around 1.5 petabytes on vacation habits and lodging preferences. The company developed an algorithm that helped landlords develop the right price of their rentals, identify areas where the company did not have enough listings to recruit potential rental property.
Dickey’s Barbecue Pit – Dickey’s has its own point-of sale (POS) system called “Smoke Stack” that provides real-time feedback on sales and key performance indicators (KPIs). Data is examined every 20 minutes to enable immediate decisions. If lower-than-expected sales occur, the company can send text invitations to their loyal customers with a coupon to increase sales.
Source: Marr, B. (2016). Big data in practice. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
We can also begin to teach more advanced excel and data analytics skills in our courses so students are more prepared for advanced data analytics in later business courses. The goal of our projects is to build students Excel skills using larger data sets while still learning accounting. Below you’ll find a summary of the projects we have developed so far:
Do you remember what it is like to learn? I’m headed to Orlando, FL this week to an intensive data analytics conference hosted by the American Accounting Association. I’m going to be learning a lot of great data analytics tools including advanced Excel, Power BI, Tableau, and maybe, if I get brave, even Python or R.
I’m excited, nervous, and terrified. A jumble of feelings as I enter the learning experience. As a teacher, I’m reminded that this is how my students feel when they step into my class at the beginning of each semester. I can help them overcome their anxiety by doing a couple of things:
Create a warm and welcoming environment.
Be positive and happy!
Explain what the course covers and all of the requirements.
Share a little bit about me and have them share a little bit about them.
Make sure that the students know that I’m here to help them succeed.
Instill confidence by sharing stories of other students who have succeeded.
I can’t wait to head to Orlando and be a student again. I know I’m going to learn a lot and I’ll have great instructors who will help me succeed. When’s the last time you’ve learned something new? What were your takeaways? How did being a student help you become a better professor?
This journey into creating a blog with my teaching ideas and projects began because I have great colleagues! My colleague and friend, Wendy Tietz, suggested that I build a website to host my projects and teaching ideas on. She and I are working on a project to incorporate Big Data Analytics into the Intro Accounting courses. and I have just developed my first big data project (Hula Hut Burgers – watch for it to be published soon!).
I don’t know much about this blogging thing, though, and so I plan on relying on Wendy for lots of help. That’s the great thing about surrounding yourself with great colleagues – I am a better educator because of them! So, stay posted! I’ll be updating this site as I go along.
iTeachAccounting.com 