SDSU Accounting Professor Embraces Technology to Ensure Student Success
When the faculty at San Diego State University had to pivot to online teaching due to the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, SDSU accounting professor, Yan Luo, committed to do some creative teaching to help her 125 students successfully complete their Auditing (ACCTG 431) course.
Luo, who joined the Fowler College of Business in 2014 is the Goddard Faculty Fellow at the Charles W. Lamden School of Accountancy. She said she wanted to creatively engage students during the COVID-19 shutdown to “provide them with different capabilities and equal opportunity to adapt to online learning at their own pace and schedule.”
She started the process by posting a clear schedule for the remaining course lessons so that students could better manage their workload. She then broke each remaining chapter of the book into small sections and recorded a short video (10 – 12 minutes) for each topic and provided teaching notes for each slide used during her Zoom lectures. She also gave students access to Gleim CPA Review that provided them the answers and detailed explanations to over 1,500 questions to help with their course work and their upcoming CPA exam preparation.
Since many of the students were using audit analytics programs (ACL, Tableau and Excel) that were new and unfamiliar to them, she provided step-by-step demonstration videos. However, it was ensuring students had the right hardware that proved to be a challenge for Luo. “Since the accounting lab and the library were closed, some of the students faced issues in getting access to computers that were compatible with the software,” said Luo. “Some had older laptops that wouldn’t run the latest versions of the software and others used Apple technology that isn’t compatible with one of the necessary applications.” To overcome this challenge, Luo encouraged and taught students to collaborate over virtual platforms (such as Zoom) so that students needing technical resources could partner with another student who had the necessary equipment allowing both to complete their projects.
As with many SDSU faculty members, it was Luo’s first time teaching in a virtual environment, but she was able to adjust and improvise so that all of her students had the necessary information and resources to be successful. She also offered some advice to others who are teaching in the virtual world for the first time. “Don’t focus on the difficulties of virtual teaching; take the challenges of virtual teaching and create opportunities for students to learn the subject matter differently,” she said. “In fact, virtual teaching provides many unique opportunities that can enhance teaching effectiveness and improve learning outcomes.”
Luo pointed out that seeing students succeed was the best part of her job. She said: “It’s rewarding to make a real impact on students’ lives and career paths through my courses, academic advising and mentoring our undergraduate research projects.”
