Student Success Through Intermediate Accounting Intervention

Each semester, accounting educators ask how we can help Intermediate Accounting I (Intermediate) students succeed. After reviewing statistics on the number of students withdrawing or failing Intermediate, we set out to find out WHY students are not succeeding and WHAT we can do to improve their performance. This past Fall, we embarked on the following investigation. We explored issues our students experience and tried remedial approaches to enhance their performance and change this outcome. We view this strategy as imperative not just to ensure student success, but for the viability of our accounting program, and key to our assessment of learning. Our investigation included: Administering a pre-test to help identify Intermediate students in need of remediation; examining contributing success factors (grades from Introduction to Accounting (Intro), time lapse between Intro and Intermediate, where Intro was taken, increased workload and difficulty, etc.); and developed several interventions for students entering Intermediate including in-person workshops, online tutorials, and video lectures with the purpose to “intervene” to help them be better prepared and succeed.