Misundterstood Activity

A response to the Misunderstood Activity
created by Peter Sheedy (@PeterS)

Number of views: 154

I teach Management account, which is a topic that most students think they don’t have previous experience with formally, but with many concepts, they actually have personal experience (such as budgeting).  However, a concept that students struggle with is understanding and applying the different components of costs.  For example, a cost can be direct or indirect, variable, fixed or mixed.   Understanding the composition of cost is a key component to having a deep understanding of any business.      This is a new concept to most students, and I have had a hard time connecting it to their own personal experiences.

I tried a class exercise where we took Q-cards with various business costs, and they had to put them in the right pile.   I also used large Post-it notes to try to bring a visual representation.  I have had good success using this exercise to learn debits and credits when teaching bookkeeping and financial accounting.   While it seem that they could grasp the concepts, when it came to applying those concepts in an actual problem-solving situation, they were unable to do so.  This leads me to believe that they never internalized the learning.

So the question becomes how I can link this concept to a student’s life so they can experience it themselves.

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