A Corporate Tax Return Simulation: Utilizing Electronic Work Papers and Resolving Ambiguous Issues

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 61-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen E. Best ◽  
Jennifer Kahle Schafer

ABSTRACT Practitioners routinely note that new staff lack documentation skills, communication skills, and strong Excel skills. Further, new staff report critical-thinking, written and oral communication, teamwork, and project management skills deserve greater emphasis in Master of Accountancy programs. The AICPA's (2014) Model Tax Curriculum suggests that active learning approaches be used to enable students to build communication, critical-thinking, and interpersonal skills. This case uses a realistic corporate tax return preparation experience to address these criticisms by focusing on four main areas: time management, communication, research, and technical skills. The case is divided into two phases. In Phase 1, students review client information, generate requests from the client for missing information, keep a log of hours spent on the project, research ambiguous issues, meet with the project “senior” to obtain guidance, and prepare electronic work papers. In Phase 2, students incorporate feedback from the senior's review of their work papers to make corrections, prepare a corporate tax return, and create a client letter. Student feedback about the project is positive.

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Louise Pretorius ◽  
Agenes Van Dyk ◽  
Louis Small ◽  
Hans Justus Amukugo

This research paper is focuses on describing the paradigmatic perspective used for development of an educational programme to facilitate critical thinking of student nurses. The study of this nature requires a paradigmatic perspective this is a collection of logically linked concepts and propositions that provide a theoretical perspective or orientation that tends to guide the research approach to a specific direction.The study was conducted in four phases, beginning with the needs assessment in phase 1 through which the researcher determine the needs of the students in terms of critical thinking, followed by phase 2 on the development of an educational framework and phase 3 and 4 on implementation and evaluation and this two phases were conducted simultaneously.The positivistic paradigm allows the researcher to be orderly and disciplined in the procedures followed during the study to acquire information. For this study the researcher worked according to a specific and logical plan of action and conducted the research in a series of steps. In this study the paradigm consisted meta-theoretical such as ontological, epistemological, axiological and methodological assumption. The theoretical basis of this study included the principal of adult learning; Model of curriculum development; Nicholas and Nichols; Viedebeck’s model of teaching critical thinking and Theoretical principle of constructivism. These theoretical frameworks were applied in respectively in the phases listed above.


Author(s):  
Vadim N. Korepin ◽  
Evgenij M. Dorozhkin ◽  
Anna V. Mikhaylova ◽  
Nataliia N. Davydova

Among innovative e-learning approaches in the sphere of digital economy and logistics, there is a special focus on artificial intelligence technologies (AI), which, due to their capacity and efficiency in usage, have a significant potential for the development and to some extent are optimal IT tools. The objective of a study is to define an optimum IT software for the organization of massive open online courses (MOOC) in digital economy and digital logistics in the framework of training economics students. Authors have conducted a survey in terms of In-ternet use for education and self-education. The sampling volume makes up 1 600 respondents in at least 80 regions of the Russian Federation. The respondents are divided into four age groups: 18-24 years old, 25-39 years old, 40-54 years old, 55 years old and older. The study uses data from the survey conducted by KMDA.PRO related to digital transformation of 700 representatives from more than 300 Russian companies out of 15 industries and the results of in-depth in-terviews of four categories of employees: top managers, heads of units, mid-level managers and other employees. The study results testify to the need for trans-forming e-learning approaches, taking into account the new labor market re-quirements for training specialists in digital logistics and gaining respective skills such as an active training, coordination, negotiation skills, teaching others, infor-mation literacy, customer focus, oral communication, ability to solve complex is-sues, operational literacy, time management. The use of the research results in practice is possible in case of the organization of online training courses for eco-nomics students in the framework of the higher educational system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Maki K. Habib ◽  
Fusaomi Nagata ◽  
Keigo Watanabe

The development of experiential learning methodologies is gaining attention, due to its contributions to enhancing education quality. It focuses on developing competencies, and build-up added values, such as creative and critical thinking skills, with the aim of improving the quality of learning. The interdisciplinary mechatronics field accommodates a coherent interactive concurrent design process that facilitates innovation and develops the desired skills by adopting experiential learning approaches. This educational learning process is motivated by implementation, assessment, and reflections. This requires synergizing cognition, perception, and behavior with experience sharing and evaluation. Furthermore, it is supported by knowledge accumulation. The learning process with active student’s engagement (participation and investigation) is integrated with experimental systems that are developed to facilitate experiential learning supported by properly designed lectures, laboratory experiments, and integrated with course projects. This paper aims to enhance education, learning quality, and contribute to the learning process, while stimulating creative and critical thinking skills. The paper has adopted a student-centered learning approach and focuses on developing training tools to improve the hands-on experience and integrate it with project-based learning. The developed experimental systems have their learning indicators where students acquire knowledge and learn the target skills through involvement in the process. This is inspired by collaborative knowledge sharing, brainstorming, and interactive discussions. The learning outcomes from lectures and laboratory experiments are synergized with the project-based learning approach to yield the desired promising results and exhibit the value of learning. The effectiveness of the developed experimental systems along with the adopted project-based learning approach is demonstrated and evaluated during laboratory sessions supporting different courses at Sanyo-Onoda City University, Yamaguchi, Japan, and at the American University in Cairo.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Kristina Črnjar ◽  
Vedrana Čikeš ◽  
Kristina Ferenčak

Time management is the ability of consciously deciding and controlling the amount of time spent on different activities in order to be more productive and effective. In order to achieve academic success, students should be able to manage a large number of activities, from going to lectures, studying, participating in extra-curricular activities, to making sure they are getting enough rest to stay healthy. The purpose of this research was to determine if there are any significant differences in the effective time management between Chinese and Croatian students. Even though the cultural differences between these two groups are substantial, both groups are becoming a part of the same education and business market. The research was conducted on the sample of 340 Chinese and Croatian students using an online survey. The results have shown that in several time management activities there are statistically significant differences between Chinese and Croatian students. The results also indicate that the Croatian respondents are better at setting goals, determining priorities and performing tasks by priority, while Chinese students delegate tasks and determine and eliminate time wasting activities more often than their Croatian counterparts do. On the other hand, Croatian students waste more time on activities such as conducting tasks of small importance and fun activities of no relevance (e.g. “surfing” the Internet, private telephone conversations, chatting, etc.), while Chinese students are in the forefront with regard to ineffective and supernumerary meetings and overly long and supernumerary phone conversations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-298
Author(s):  
Fábio da Costa Carbogim ◽  
Larissa Bertacchini de Oliveira ◽  
Melina Mafra Toledo ◽  
Flávia Batista Barbosa de Sá Diaz ◽  
Greicy Kelly Gouveia Dias Bittencourt ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective: To present the experience of elaboration and implementation of the Active Teaching Model to Promote Critical Thinking (MEAPC), associated to Problem-Based Learning (PBL), for undergraduate students in Nursing. Method: Case report on the experience of the educational intervention (MEAPC + PBL) with undergraduate students in Nursing, in a 20-hour course on Basic Life Support (BLS). The MEAPC was validated by judges to guide the analysis of clinical cases. Critical Thinking (CT) skills were assessed using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Result: The educational intervention took place in two phases: elaboration and implementation, allowing not only the production of knowledge about BLS, but also the development of CT and exchange of experiences for teaching-learning. Conclusion: The association of the MEAPC to the PBL in the course of BLS organized the learning, gave opportunity to acquire knowledge and to stimulate the skills of the CT.


Author(s):  
Srinivasan Sridhar ◽  
Nazmul Kazi ◽  
Indika Kahanda ◽  
Bernadette McCrory

Background: The demand for psychiatry is increasing each year. Limited research has been performed to improve psychiatrist work experience and reduce daily workload using computational methods. There is currently no validated tool or procedure for the mental health transcript annotation process for generating “gold-standard” data. The purpose of this paper was to determine the annotation process for mental health transcripts and how it can be improved to acquire more reliable results considering human factors elements. Method: Three expert clinicians were recruited in this study to evaluate the transcripts. The clinicians were asked to fully annotate two transcripts. An additional five subjects were recruited randomly (aged between 20-40) for this pilot study, which was divided into two phases, phase 1 (annotation without training) and phase 2 (annotation with training) of five transcripts. Kappa statistics were used to measure the inter-rater reliability and accuracy between subjects. Results: The inter-rater reliability between expert clinicians for two transcripts were 0.26 (CI 0.19 to 0.33) and 0.49 (CI 0.42 to 0.57), respectively. In the pilot testing phases, the mean inter-rater reliability between subjects was higher in phase 2 with training transcript (k= 0.35 (CI 0.052 to 0.625)) than in phase 1 without training transcript (k= 0.29 (CI 0.128 to 0.451)). After training, the accuracy percentage among subjects was significantly higher in transcript A (p=0.04) than transcript B (p=0.10). Conclusion: This study focused on understanding the annotation process for mental health transcripts, which will be applied in training machine learning models. Through this exploratory study, the research found appropriate categorical labels that should be included for transcripts annotation, and the importance of training the subjects. Contributions of this case study will help the psychiatric clinicians and researchers in implementing the recommended data collection process to develop a more accurate artificial intelligence model for fully- or semi-automated transcript annotation.


Author(s):  
T. Hailikari ◽  
N. Katajavuori ◽  
H. Asikainen

AbstractProcrastination is consistently viewed as problematic to academic success and students’ general well-being. There are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt. The aim of the present study was to combine different ways to explain procrastination and explore how students’ time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy are connected to procrastination as they have been commonly addressed separately in previous studies. The data were collected from 135 students who participated in a voluntary time management and well-being course in autumn 2019. The results showed that students’ ability to organize their time and effort has the strongest association with procrastination out of the variables included in the study. Psychological flexibility also has a strong individual role in explaining procrastination along with time and effort management skills. Surprisingly, academic self-efficacy did not have a direct association with procrastination. Interestingly, our findings further suggest that time and effort management and psychological flexibility are closely related and appear to go hand in hand and, thus, both need to be considered when the aim is to reduce procrastination. The implications of the findings are further discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 583-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Zide ◽  
Ben Elman ◽  
Comila Shahani-Denning

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the elements of a LinkedIn profile that hiring professionals focus on most, and then examine LinkedIn profiles in terms of these identified elements across different industries. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology was comprised of two phases. In the first phase, researchers interviewed hiring professionals to determine their usage of LinkedIn. In the second phase, LinkedIn group member profiles from three industries – HR, sales/marketing and industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology – were compared on the 21 variables identified in Phase 1 (n=288). Findings – χ2 and ANOVA tests showed significant differences with respect to ten of the LinkedIn variables in how people presented themselves across the three groups. There were also several gender differences found. Research limitations/implications – A general limitation was the use of a qualitative research approach. A limitation of Phase 1 was that only a small sample of New York City-based hiring professionals was interviewed. Perhaps a wider, more diverse sample would have yielded different variables. In terms of Phase 2, it is possible that just utilizing the second connections of the researchers limited the generalizability of findings. Practical implications – User unwillingness to fully complete the LinkedIn profile suggests that it may not have replaced the traditional resume yet. Sales/marketing professionals were more likely than HR and I/O psychology professionals to complete multiple aspects of a LinkedIn profile. Women were also less likely than men to provide personal information on their profiles. Originality/value – Most of the empirical research on social networking sites has focussed on Facebook, a non-professional site. This is, from the knowledge, the first study that systematically examined the manner in which people present themselves on LinkedIn – the most popular professional site used by applicants and recruiters worldwide.


Author(s):  
Moeini Babak ◽  
Barati Majid ◽  
Heidarimoghadam Rashid ◽  
Tapak Leili ◽  
Parsamajd Shahryar

Inadequate health literacy decreases physical activity. This study aimed to develop and examine psychometrics of physical activity health literacy in Iranian older adults. This methodological work was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 consisted of extensive studies review and qualitative study to extract and design the items. The psychometrics were measured in Phase 2 included content, faceconstruct validities, reliability, and stability. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS (version 25.0) and AMOS (version 24.0). The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed four factors— information evaluation, reading skill, perception, and decision making—and used information that explained 70.08% of the variance. The model’s fitness was supported by confirmatory factor analysis. Internal consistency based on Cronbach’s alpha was .89 with composite reliability >0.85. Stability was confirmed through the test–retest method and intraclass correlation coefficient (.89–1). Psychometrics of physical activity health literacy in Iranian older adults supported validity and reliability of the tool.


2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232
Author(s):  
Craig Hochbein ◽  
Abby Mahone ◽  
Sara Vanderbeck

PurposeTo advance the study of principal time use (PTU), the purpose of this study is to report findings from a systematic review of PTU research. In addition to identifying common findings, this study also examined the supporting evidence and methodologies of PTU studies. From this dual approach, this study specified the evidence that supports claims about PTU, as well as identified areas requiring future examination.Design/methodology/approachA systematic reference review process considered 5,746 potential PTU manuscripts. The inclusion criteria identified 55 studies published between 1920 and 2015. This review synthesized data pertaining to the methodologies and findings of PTU research.FindingsFindings from studies conducted across decades indicated that principals worked extensive hours. Moreover, the workdays of principals consisted of brief and unrelated activities, most often focused on noninstructional tasks. Contrary to common hypotheses, studies indicated that PTU dedicated to administrative tasks exhibited positive correlations with educational outcomes. However, claims about PTU have been derived from samples overrepresented by large urban school districts and limited periods of observation.Practical implicationsFuture studies should implement diversified sampling strategies and extended observation periods. For principal preparation programs, the results indicated an opportunity for increased instruction on time management skills.Originality/valueThis systematic review identifies the overlooked history of the research and specifies the evidence that supports common claims about PTU, which provides empirically derived guidance for future PTU studies.


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