{"id":18601,"date":"2016-05-16T10:53:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T14:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=18601"},"modified":"2026-05-06T13:28:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:28:04","slug":"pros-and-cons-debating-accounting-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2016\/pros-and-cons-debating-accounting-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Pros and cons: Debating accounting in the classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Pros and cons: Debating accounting in the classroom\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
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By Cassandra Hendry, TLS staff writer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you walked into Hilary Becker\u2019s classroom at Carleton on any given day, you might be serenaded by salsa music or become a witness to a passionate debate between students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His course? Why, that would be accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Becker, an associate professor of accounting with the Sprott School of Business, is the master of unorthodox learning methods in his classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019ve always sort of done things differently. I\u2019m always looking for unique and different ways to engage the students,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accounting isn\u2019t the first course that comes to mind when one pictures students preparing debates, but for Becker, it makes perfect sense. Accounting is often fact-based learning without much context or chance to think about the issues and ethics of certain topics. In these classroom debates, students are able to fulfill that side of learning as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStudents have to learn these skills to get by with clients or if they\u2019re consulting with companies about accounting policy choices. I get them to think broadly and picture how these skills are actually going to be used,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start the debate, Becker divides his class into two or three groups and gives them about 15 minutes of preparation time. Similar to a real debate, students need to think about what their opponents will say and prepare counter arguments to rebut. From there, he usually lets the students jump right into it with little structuring on his end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the topics his students have recently covered include debating stock options and role-playing as representatives from local tourist destinations to determine who gets what in bundle pricing, such as dinner and a movie for a set price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Becker says the feedback over the 10 years he has been conducting debates has been \u201cvery, very positive.\u201d One student noted that learning professional judgment and thinking beyond the numbers has really helped, while another, who was on one side of an issue, found the debate opened her eyes to a completely different perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says he rarely receives less favourable feedback, hearing only that sometimes students don\u2019t have the opportunity to state their full arguments when there\u2019s a large class, an inevitable situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides that, it\u2019s not uncommon for students to tell Becker about how it prepared them well for the exam, in addition to how enjoyable it was being able to really relish the chance the show off their knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debates in an accounting course? Not so strange after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cassandra Hendry, TLS staff writer If you walked into Hilary Becker\u2019s classroom at Carleton on any given day, you might be serenaded by salsa music or become a witness to a passionate debate between students. His course? Why, that would be accounting. Becker, an associate professor of accounting with the Sprott School of Business, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43090,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18601\/revisions\/43090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}