Teaching Techniques

Given the broad spectrum of activities at the Professorship of Empirical Accounting, a wide set of teaching techniques is needed to best-possibly meet the claims and targets of each course. Important examples for blended e-learning approaches of digital enhanced learning include - but are not limited to - business games, learning platforms, and web-based simulations.

We believe that the greatest opportunity for teaching in the field of the Professorship of Empirical Accounting is a flipped classroom format. Thereby, students profit from a broad set of virtual learning offers prior to the classes which enables them to flexibly access the theoretical basics and fundaments of a teaching item (e.g., by joining video-recorded lectures and introductory case studies). Subsequently, in the class, the key lessons are recapitulated and critically reflected. Real-life games of virtual firms, practitioner-oriented cases, and exercises support an individual internalization of the approaches and conclusions without requiring pre-prepared answering. Prior to the official start of each course, the students receive reliable guidance on how the course is arranged and whether an enduring attendance is needed or not.

Further, we offer life-long learning formats that are essential for the student generations who are already engaged in leading positions in business and society. To address their needs, executive overviews on the principles of finance and accounting in introductory lectures are accompanied by discussion forums which primarily address contemporary challenges of managers such as digitalization (e.g., opportunities and risks of applying big data-based technologies) and changing regulatory and social environments (e.g., important ongoing reforms of lease accounting standards which can considerably impact the business model of entire industries).

To improve our own teaching techniques, we continuously participate in professional qualification and teaching quality improvement programs (e.g., of the Deutscher Hochschulverband) and by internal didactic programs of the University of Cologne to systematically internalize interactive teaching approaches and to self-critically meet and apply new developments in teaching formats.

 

Teaching Goals

The Professorship of Empirical Accounting strongly commits to interdisciplinary, open-minded, and practitioner-oriented teaching on all levels. Our key goals of teaching are to rigorously and individually train students for a career in practice and facilitate them to become responsible and thoughtful leaders.

All courses are designed to provide skills to successfully solve complex and interconnected challenges in the fields of financial and sustainable accounting and corporate governance, incl., financial audits and sustainability assurance. Our teaching is straightly directed to meet the needs and specific challenges of the "Generation Z" (i.e., those students who are "digital natives" and generally focus on clear career targets at an early stage of their lives). Thereby, further digitalization of education offers a so-far unknown variety of possibilities of new teaching formats which create great challenges and chances for top-level business schools. Thus, we commit to implement a teaching and learning environment which relies on digital enhanced learning whenever favorably suitable. Such formats seem to be most appropriate to enable students to gain a solid understanding of fundamental economic principles and of a sound set of normative competences in the fields of accounting, finance, and taxation (e.g., how to judge specific accounting cases based on overall reporting principles).

Our teaching at the Professorship of Empirical Accounting striktly follows the guidance of the accredited study programs of the Faculty of Management, Economics, and Social Sciences.