Course Number: ACCY 111: Intermediate Accounting

Exam Correction and Analyses, Active Learning-AI, Flexibility

Course Description

ACCY 111, Intermediate Accounting I, provides In-depth knowledge of how financial information provides information about a company's: economic resources, obligations, and owner's equity; income and its components; and cash flows. Topics include the development and application of basic assumptions, principles and constraints underlying financial statements; the use of information derived from financial statements and the limitations of the information; and the use of accounting information to evaluate a company's return on investment, risk, financial, flexibility, liquidity, and operational capability. Students learn how to prepare financial statements.

This course is the first required accounting course for students in the accounting major. This course is the prerequisite for almost all other accounting course. It is a bottleneck course. The course is mostly conducted in lecture. The class sizes are usually ranging from 55-65 students.

Overview of the Redesign Project

The Intermediate Accounting course, ACCY 111, is a challenging course. Most of the students in the course are transfer students taking accounting course at Sac State for the first time. Their knowledge and background in accounting are so different, therefore, the DFW rates are higher compared to other accounting courses. Moreover, the large class sizes make it hard for in class student’s engagement. In addition, the topics that need be covered in the course are very comprehensive. So I would like to redesign the course to improve on the following elements:

In person one to one Exam correction and analyses: I asked students to come meet with me one to one to go over their exams. I offered flexible office hours and also provided the zoom option outside the office hours. During the meeting, I asked to go over every mistake they made at the exam and. In addition, I tried to help them understand their strength and weakness of their student methods and analyze how they could improve for the next exam.
Active Learning-AI: I Utilize AI in the classroom to promote students' active learning skills through a three step process:

Step 1: Students using AI to learn new accounting concepts/terminologies and then use their own words to write down their understanding of the concepts. After 5 minutes self studying, I ask students to present their answers and I then go over and clarify the concepts with students .

Step 2: Apply the new concepts to a in class problem with or without the help of AI n. After about 10 minutes for students to solve the problem, I go over the problem in class and ask if they have any questions or anything that need be clarified. Then I ask students to move on to the third step.

Step 3: Students are then asked to create their own exam questions on this topic with AI or on their own.

Flexibility: I used to have all my exams to in person on paper exams. Since 2022 -2024 I had around 15% students dropping the class, or stopping coming to class, and around 20% failing for the in-person on paper exams. Some students told me that this was their first on paper in person exam.

Therefore , in Fall 2025, I allow students the option to choose either taking their exams on paper or online with Responds LockDown Browser to increase flexibility for this course. Both options were in person at the same time. Students may choose different options for each exam based on their experience. For the first exam, about 60% students chose taking online and 40% students chose on paper. For the second exam, the percentage was changed to 50% to 50%.

Assessment of the Redesign Project

This table shows three ways I assessed my course redesign.
Exam correction and analyses	Active Learning-AI	Flexibility
Utilize in person exam correction and analyses to help students understand their strengths and weaknesses of their study methods. and improve their performance on exams. After adopting this practice, about 30% students out of 55 students (16 students) met with me to go over their first exam. Results show that 75% of those students' scores increased 10% from exam 1 to exam 2 while only 23% of these students who did not meet with me had a increase of scores from exam 1 to exam 2. The average of exam 2 is 8% lower than that of exam 1. The exam 2 is harder than exam 1.	Utilize AI in the classroom to promote students' active learning skills through a three step process. After adopting this practice in class, the averages on the first two exams increased from 66%-72%. The attendance increased from around 60% to 70% for in class sessions. Students are more engaged in discussion compared to that in prior semester.	I allow students the option to choose either taking their exams on paper or online with Responds LockDown Browser to increase flexibility for this course. Both options were in person at the same time. After adopting this change this semester, I only had two student dropping the class and the averages for the first two exams increased from 66-68% to 72-74%. I believe that the students feel less anxious and more in control when they feel they have options in the exam process.

Reflection

After implementing those three practices in my Intermediate Accounting I class. I have seen some positive outcome. First, more students are more engaged in class and ask more questions after I implement the practice to improve active learning with the help of AI. The completion rate on homework increased to almost 100%.The attendance increased from around 60% to 70% for in class sessions.

In addition, i believe the exam correction and analyses and the flexibility of how exams helped improve the performance on the exams. The averages on the first two exams increased from 66-68% in prior semesters to around 72-74%.

The Challenges I faced when implementing the practices including:

Design suitable in-class problems for Active learning with the help of AI.

2 only about 30% of the students met with me for one to one exam correction and analyses.

In the future I will continue those three practices in my classes including exam correction and analyses, Active Learning with AI tools , and flexibility with how the exams are conducted. To refine these practices, I think I would assign points for meeting with me after each exam for exam correction and analyses. In addition, I will find more suitable in class questions for active learning with the help of AI tools.

Faculty Biography

This table includes my faculty biography.
	I love my job as an educator. I enjoy teaching accounting to my students. I am a firm believer of active learning. I not only teach my students the knowledge but also teach them how to learn on their own.

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