Course Number: ACCY 121: Cost Accounting

Engagement, Interaction, AI Empowerment

Course Description

Importance of the allocation of costs; the cost allocation techniques available to accountants; the techniques used by management to maintain and create enterprise value, e.g., CVP analysis; the accountant's responsibility for the management of inventory; and the ethical consideration in internal reporting.

This course is an upper-division, discussion-based, and required course for undergraduate students who major in accounting. It is offered in Spring and Fall. The typical enrollment in a semester is around 170, divided into three sections.

Overview of the Redesign Project

I expect that my redesign effort will

Transform the course from a technical-focused one into a subject that students find relevant, dynamic, and personally meaningful through business simulations; increase student engagement.
Foster active participation through collaborative problem-solving, scenario analysis, and guided simulations that promote both peer and instructor interaction.
Integrate AI tools to personalize learning, provide adaptive feedback, and strengthen students’ ability to analyze, interpret, and communicate accounting insights using emerging technologies that mirror professional practice.

This course redesign aligns closely with the College of Business's mission to develop engaged, responsible, and inclusive leaders who enrich their communities. By emphasizing engagement, interaction, and AI empowerment, the redesigned Cost Accounting course reflects the college’s commitment to transformative management education that blends rigor with relevance.

Assessment of the Redesign Project

I started my chairship in the Fall of 2025 and have not been able to implement the following redesign changes.
Engagement	Interaction	AI Empowerment
Screenshot of a Team's Performance Dashboard Use a business simulation to: Make Learning authentic: Students “operate” simulated businesses in MonsoonSIM, managing costs, prices, and resources in real time. *Building ownership of learning: Each team chooses business locations and location-specific leasing, pricing, and marketing strategies.* *Create narrative engagement: Students experience business cycles — startup, growth, profitability — and link them to cost behavior.* *Encourage reflection and synthesis: Structured debriefings after each simulation connect in-game decisions to cost topics (e.g., cost behavior, CVP, budgeting, responsibility accounting).* *Incorporate gamification: Team competitions, performance dashboards, and milestone recognition.*	Screenshot of a Team's Retail Sales, Financials, and Trends Use a business simulation to: Foster teamwork and collaboration: Teams of 3–5 students co-manage their juice enterprises and make collective strategic and cost decisions. Enhance peer interactive learning: Cross-team discussions and benchmarking during debriefings. Link theory to action: In-class analysis of cost data from simulation reports. Provide Interactive and Tailored Assessment: Quizzes are built based on live team-specific "operation results."	Custom Built Course-Specific ChatBot Screen Shots (sampled conversations) Use a custom-built course-specific GPT to: Use AI as a 24/7 Learning Companion: The course-specific chatbot answers course-specific questions, explains cost terms, and walks students through step-by-step problem solving (e.g., CVP analysis, job order costing). Guide Reflection After Simulation Rounds: After each simulation, data from the simulation and teams' performance data are fed to the chatbot for "training," which allows students to interact with the chatbot using structured prompts such as: “Ask the AI to help you analyze why your location’s fixed costs increased and how that affected your breakeven point.” Personalize Practice and Feedback: The chatbot generates practice problems or short quizzes tailored to a student’s recent performance. For instance, if a student struggles with overhead allocation, the AI provides additional examples and explanations. Provide Scenario-Based Decision Labs: Students engage in AI-generated “what-if” scenarios tied to their simulation data — e.g., “If you increased your marketing spend by 10%, how might that affect contribution margin?” Enable AI-Facilitated Discussions and Peer Learning: During group debriefs, teams can consult the chatbot to test interpretations of their results or prepare for class presentations (e.g., “Generate a cost variance summary for Team A’s retail juice stores”).

Reflection

This semester, I’ve been working on a full redesign of my Cost Accounting course to make it more engaging, interactive, and relevant for students. The new version uses MonsoonSIM, a business simulation where students run virtual juice stores and make real business decisions—pricing, marketing, inventory, and location choices—and then connect those experiences to cost accounting concepts during class discussions and debriefings. I also designed a course-specific AI assistant to give students extra practice, explanations, and feedback outside of class, helping them learn at their own pace and get more out of the simulation experience.

The biggest challenge has simply been timing—I stepped into the department chair role this semester, which has limited my ability to pilot everything right away. Still, the redesign process has been rewarding. It helped me think more deeply about what students really need to understand cost accounting and how to make the course more hands-on and inclusive. I plan to launch the redesigned course next time I have an opportunity to teach the course (of course, the same redesign work can be applied to any other courses I may need to teach), gather feedback from students, and then fine-tune the materials and activities. I’m also hoping to share what I learn with colleagues who might want to bring more experiential and tech-based learning into their own classes.

Faculty Biography

This table includes my faculty biography.
	I do research in the areas of managerial accounting and behavioral accounting. My work has been published in leading academic journals, including the Accounting, Organization and Society, Journal of Managerial Accounting Research, ABACUS, Managerial Finance, International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation. With a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a Ph.D. in accounting, I worked extensively in various industries, including naval architecture, offshore exploration support, import/export, software testing, electronic equipment design and manufacturing, and fabless. Before coming back to academia, I served as the senior VP and CFO for Routon Electronic Co. (Google translation of the website is needed if you cannot read Chinese) and took the company to its IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2002. I also served as the VP of finance and corporate affairs for Chipnuts Technology Inc. (folded in 2019), a US VC-backed fabless startup based in China. I am also a certified management accountant (CMA).

**Program Sponsors**
	This work was supported by: Sacramento State Academic Affairs - Center for Teaching and Learning