Using the Significant Learning Taxonomy and Active Learning to Improve Accounting Education.

Like other members of the academy, accounting professors are challenged to improve student learning. We must help students move beyond the bean counter role and develop higher-level skills such as analysis, synthesis, and problem-solving. The Significant Learning Taxonomy was used as a template to improve in an introductory accounting course. Learning objectives, assessment methods, and student activities were redesigned along the six dimensions. Various indicators point toward success of the redesign effort. While this paper describes an intervention in accounting, the concepts and procedures can be used to improve in other disciplines. Like other faculty, accounting professors are challenged to improve the quality and depth of student learning. Students need better retention of basic concepts and procedures from introductory courses so they can carry that knowledge with them to upper division work. Another challenge is helping students move beyond rules and procedures to higher-level skills. In fact, Albrecht and Sack (2000) warn that accounting may not survive as an academic discipline if our students do not transcend contentbased knowledge and learn the skills valued in business, such as analysis, problem-solving, integration, and adaptiveness. Active is viewed as a method to achieve these outcomes. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) encourages active to help students develop core business competencies. Rama (1998) reports that curriculum reform in accounting often endorses active (p. 1). Lavoie and Rosman (2007) urge accounting faculty to see themselves as facilitators and share responsibility for active learning with students (p. 106). As accounting educators, we understand the need for active, student-centered and desired this improvement for our courses. But the problem remains, how does one get there? Encouraged by the experience of Dennis and Huber (2007), we decided to use Fink's (2003) Significant Learning Taxonomy (SLT) as a template to redesign our course. The SLT helped us incorporate higher-level skills and achieve a more active, engaged classroom. The remainder of this paper summarizes the SLT, how we applied it to redesign our course, and the results achieved and lessons learned. Summary of the Significant Learning Taxonomy Significant involves both and outcome (Fink 2003, pp. 6-7). It includes what students experience during the course and whether those experiences provide lasting benefits to their personal, community, or work lives. Pointedly, it is not called teaching. The instructor's role is to design, support and assess experiences, but it is what students do that counts. The SLT features six dimensions: foundational knowledge; application; integration; human dimension; caring; and to learn. The characteristics of each dimension and related key terms are shown in Chart 1. The key terms signify what students do when engaged in a dimension; they provide useful prompts in designing objectives and assessment methods.1 The relationship among the dimensions is synergistic, not hierarchical (Fink, 2003, pp. 32-33). Learning in one dimension (e.g., foundational knowledge) promotes in another (such as application). Significant is a broadening circle, not a linear path; students revisit prior knowledge from the perspective of a new dimension, thus deepening their understanding. Since significant is interactive and synergistic, it is not a zerosum game in which time devoted to one dimension detracts from another.2 The synergy among different forms of is also confirmed by Marton, Wen, & Wong (2005) who view understanding and memorization as two aspects of the very same process (p. 315). We discern parallels between the SLT and incidental learning. …