From: AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia
[mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jensen, Robert
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 11:51 AM
To: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU
Subject: Relationship between teaching and research
Teaching versus Research versus Education
October 24, 2007 message from XXXXX
Bob,
I'm writing this to get your personal view of the relationship between teaching and
research? I think there's lots of ways to potentially answer this question, but I'm
curious as to your thoughts.
XXXXX
October 27, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi XXXXX,
Wow! This is a tough question!.
Since I know you're an award-winning teacher, I hope you will identify yourself on the
AECM and improve upon my comments below.
Your question initially is to comment on the relation between teaching and research. In
most instances research at some point in time led to virtually everything we teach. In the
long-run research thus becomes the foundation of teaching. In the case of accounting
education this research is based heavily on normative and case method research. Many,
probably most, accountics researchers are not outstanding teachers of undergraduate
accounting unless they truly take the time for both preparation and student interactions.
New education technologies may especially help these researchers teach better. For
example, adding video such as the BYU variable speed video described below may
replace bad lecturing in live classes with great video learning modules.
Similarly, master teachers and master educators are sometimes reputed researchers, but
this is probably the exception rather than the rule. Researchers have trouble finding the
time for great class preparation and open-door access.
********************
Firstly your question can be answered at the university-wide level where experts think
that students, especially undergraduate students, get short changed by research
professors. Top research professors sometimes only teach doctoral students or advanced
masters students who are already deemed experts. Research professors often prefer this
arrangement so that they can focus upon there research even when "teaching" a tortured
esoteric course. Undergraduate students in these universities are often taught by graduate
student instructors who have many demands on their time that impedes careful
preparation for teaching each class and for giving students a lot of time outside of class.
Often the highest ranked universities are among the worst universities in terms of
teaching. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DoNotExcel
When top researchers are assigned undergraduate sections, their sections are often the
least popular. A management science professor years ago (a top Carnegie-Mellon
graduate) on the faculty at Michigan State University had no students signing up for his
elective courses. When assigned sections of required courses, he only got students if
students had no choice regarding which section of a course they were forced into by the
department head. This professor who was avoided by students at almost all costs was one
of the most intelligent human beings I ever met in my entire life.
One of the huge problems is that research professors give more attention to research
activities than day-to-day class preparation. Bad preparation, in turn, short changes
students expecting more from teachers. I've certainly experienced this as a student and as
a faculty member where I've sometimes been guilty of this as I look back in retrospect. A
highly regarded mathematics researcher at Stanford years ago had a reputation of being
always unprepared for class. He often could not solve his own illustrations in class,
flubbed up answering student questions, and confused himself while lecturing in a very
disjointed and unprepared manner. This is forgivable now an then, but not repeatedly to a
point where his campus reputation for bad teaching is known by all. Yet if there was a
Nobel Prize for mathematics, he would have won such a prize. John Nash (the "Beautiful
Mind" at Princeton University who did win a Nobel Prize in economics) had a similar
teaching reputation, although his problems were confounded by mental illness.
Then again, sometimes top researchers, I mean very top award-winning researchers, are
also the master teachers. For example, Bill Beaver, Mary Barth, and some other top
accounting research professors repeatedly won outstanding teaching awards when
teaching Stanford's MBA students and doctoral students. I think in these instances, their
research makes them better teachers because they had so much leading edge material to
share with students. Some of our peers are just good at anything they seriously undertake.
But when it gets down to it, there's no single mold for a top teacher and a top educator.
And top educators are often not award-sinning teachers. Extremely popular teachers are
not necessarily top educators --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching
In fact, some top educators may be unpopular teachers who get relatively low student
evaluations. In a somewhat analogous manner, the best physicians may get low ratings
from patients due to abrupt, impersonal, and otherwise lousy bedside manners. Patients
generally want the best physicians even when bedside manners are lousy. This is not
always the case with students. For example, an educator who realizes that student learn
better when they're not spoon fed and have to work like the little red hen (plant the seed,
weed the field, fend off the pests, harvest the grain, mill the grain, and bake their own
meals) prefer their fast-food instructors, especially the easy grading fast food instructors.
********************
Secondly your question can be answered at an individual level regarding what constitutes
a master educator or a master teacher. There are no molds for such outstanding educators.
Some are great researchers as well as being exceptional teachers and/or educators. Many
are not researchers, although some of the non-researchers may be scholarly writers.
Some pay a price for devoting their lives to education administration and teaching rather
than research. For example, some who win all-campus teaching awards and are selected
by students and alumni as being the top educators on campus are stuck as low paying
associate professorship levels because they did not do the requisite research for higher
level promotions and pay.
Master Educators Who Deliver Exceptional Courses or Entire Programs
But Have Little Contact With Individual Students
Before reading this section, you should be familiar with the document at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching
Master educators can also be outstanding researchers, although research is
certainly not a requisite to being a master educator. Many master educators are
administrators of exceptional accounting education programs. They're
administrative duties typically leave little time for research, although they may
write about education and learning. Some master educators are not even tenure
track faculty.
What I've noticed in recent years is how technology can make a huge difference.
Nearly every college these days has some courses in selected disciplines because
they are utilizing some type exciting technology. Today I returned from a trip to
Jackson, Mississippi where I conduced a day-long CPE session on education
technology for accounting educators in Mississippi (what great southern
hospitality by the way). So the audience would not have to listen to me the entire
day, I invited Cameron Earl from Brigham Young University to make a
presentation that ran for about 90 minutes. I learned some things about top
educators at BYU, which by the way is one of the most respected universities in
the world. If you factor out a required religion course on the Book of Mormon,
the most popular courses on the BYU campus are the two basic accounting
courses. By popular I mean in terms of thousands of students who elect to take
these courses even if they have no intention of majoring in business or economics
where these two courses are required. Nearly all humanities and science students
on campus try to sign up for these two accounting courses.
After students take these two courses, capacity constraints restrict the numbers of
successful students in these courses who are then allowed to become accounting
majors at BYU. I mean I'm talking about a very, very small percentage who are
allowed to become accounting students. Students admitted to the accounting
program generally have over 3.7 minimum campus-wide grade averages.
This begs the question of what makes the two basic accounting courses so
exceptionally popular in such a large and prestigious university?

These two basic accounting courses are not sought out for easy grades. In fact
they are among the hardest courses for high grades at BYU. I think that this is
probably true in most business schools in the nation.

These two BYU courses are not sought out for face-to-face contact with the
instructor. The courses have thousands of students each term such that most
students do not see the instructor outside of class even though he's available
over ten hours per week for those who seek him out. Each course only meets
in live classes eight times per semester. Most of the speakers in those eight
classes are outstanding visiting speakers who add a great deal to the popularity
of the course. This is often one difference between a course run by a master
educator versus a master teacher. A master educator often brings in top talent
to inspire and educate students.

The courses undoubtedly benefit from the the shortage of accounting
graduates in colleges nationwide and the exceptional career opportunities for
students who want careers in accounting, taxation, law, business management,
government, criminal justice, and other organizations. But these accountancy
advantages exist for every college that has an accounting education program.
Most all colleges do not have two basic accounting courses that are sought out
by every student in the entire university. That makes BYU's two basic
accounting courses truly exceptional.

Some courses in every college are popular these days because they are doing
something exceptional with technology. These two BYU courses increased in
popularity when a self-made young man became a multimillionaire and
decided to devote his life to being a master educator in these two accountancy
courses at BYU. His name is Norman Nemrow. He runs these courses full
time without salary at BYU and is neither a tenure track faculty member or a
noted researcher at BYU. I think he qualifies, however, as an education
researcher even if he does not publish his findings in academic journals. The
video disks are available to anyone in the world for a relatively small fee that
goes to BYU, but BYU is not doing this for purposes of making great profits.
You can read more about how to get the course disks at the following links:
Basic accounting students At BYU have great
success learning accounting from special videos --http://www.accountingcds.com/index.html
Contact Information: Cameron Earl 801-836-5649
cameronearl@byu.edu
Norm Nemrow 801-422-3029 nemrow@byu.edu
Also see David Cottrell's approach at BYU --http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAACPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf


The students in these two courses learn the technical aspects of from variablespeed video disks that were produced by Norman and a team of video and
learning experts. Cameron Earl is a recent graduate of BYU who is part of the
technical team that delivers these two courses on video. Formal studies of
Nemrow's video courses indicate that students generally prefer to learn from
the video relative to live lectures. The course has computer labs run by
teaching assistants who can give live tutorials to individual students, but most
students who have the video disks for their own computers do not seek out the
labs.
Trivia Question
At BYU most students on campus elect to take Norman Nemrow's two basic accounting
courses. In the distant past, what exceptional accounting professor managed to get his
basic accounting courses required at a renowned university while he was teaching these
courses?
Trivia Answer
Bill Paton is one of the all-time great accounting professors in history. His home campus
was the University of Michigan, and for a period of time virtually all students at his
university had to take basic accounting (or at least so I was told by several of Paton's
former doctoral students). Bill Paton was one of the first to be inducted into the
Accounting Hall of Fame.
As an aside, I might mention that I favor requiring
two basic accounting courses for every student
admitted to a college or university, including
colleges who do not even have business education
programs.
But the "required accounting courses" would not, in
my viewpoint, be a traditional basic accounting
courses. About two thirds or more of these courses
should be devoted to personal finance, investing,
business law, tax planning. The remainder of the
courses should touch on accounting basics for
keeping score of business firms and budgeting for
every organization in society.
At the moment, the majority of college graduates do
not have a clue about the time value of money and
the basics of finance and accounting that they will
face the rest of their lives.
There are other ways of being "mastery educators" without being master teachers in a
traditional sense. Three professors of accounting at the University of Virginia developed
and taught a year-long intermediate accounting case where students virtually had to teach
themselves in a manner that they found painful and frustrating. But there are
metacognitive reasons where the end result made this year-long active learning task one
of the most meaningful and memorable experiences in their entire education --http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
They often painfully grumbled with such comments as "everything I'm learned in this
course I'm having to learn by myself."
You can read about mastery learning and all its frustrations at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching
Master Teachers Who Deliver Exceptional Courses
But Have Little Contact With Individual Students
Before reading this section, you should be familiar with the document at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching
Master teachers can also be outstanding researchers, although research is certainly
not a requisite to being a master teacher. Some, not many, master teachers also
win awards for leading empirical and analytical research. I've already mentioned
Bill Beaver and Mary Barth at Stanford University. One common characteristic is
exceptional preparation for each class coupled with life experiences to draw upon
when fielding student questions. These life experiences often come from the real
world of business apart from the more narrow worlds of mathematical modeling
where these professors are also renowned researchers.
Frequently master teachers teach via cases and are also known as exceptional
case-method researchers and writers of cases. The Harvard Business School every
year has some leading professors who are widely known as master teachers and
master researchers. Michael Porter may become one of Harvard's all time legends.
Some of the current leading master teachers at Harvard and elsewhere who
consistently stand head and shoulders above their colleagues are listed at
http://rakeshkhurana.typepad.com/rakesh_khuranas_weblog/2005/12/index.html
Some of the all-time great case teachers were not noted researchers or gifted case
writers. Master case teachers are generally gifted actors/actresses with carefully
prepared scripts and even case choreographies in terms of how and were to stand
in front of and among the class. The scripts are highly adaptable to most any
conceivable question or answer given by a student at any point in the case
analysis.
Most master case teachers get psyched up for each class. One of Harvard's all
time great case teachers, C. Roland (Chris) Christensen, admitted after years of
teaching to still throwing up in the men's room before entering the classroom.
In some of these top case-method schools like the Harvard Business School and
Darden (University of Virginia) have very large classes. Master teachers in those
instances cannot become really close with each and every student they educate
and inspire.
Some widely noted case researchers and writers are not especially good in the
classroom. In fact I've known several who are considered poor teachers that
students avoided whenever possible even thought their cases are popular
worldwide.
Master Teachers Who Have Exceptional One-On-One Relations With
Students
Not all master teachers are particularly outstanding in the classroom. Two women
colleagues in my lifetime stand out as master teachers who were prepared in class
and good teachers but were/are not necessarily exceptional in classroom
performances. What made them masters teachers is exceptional one-on-one
relations with students outside the classroom. These master teachers were
exceptional teachers in their offices and virtually had open door policies each and
every day. Both Alice Nichols at Florida State University and Petrea Sandlin at
Trinity University got to know each student and even some students' parents very
closely. Many open-door master teachers' former students rank them at the very
top of all the teachers they ever had in college. Many students elected to major in
accounting because these two women became such important parts of their lives
in college.
But not all these open-door master teachers are promoted and well-paid by their
universities. They often have neither the time nor aptitude for research and
publishing in top academic journals. Sometimes the university bends over
backwards to grant them tenure but then locks them in at low-paying associate
ranks with lots of back patting and departmental or campus-wide teaching awards.
Some open-door master teachers never attain the rank and prestige of full
professor because they did not do enough research and writing to pass the
promotion hurdles. Most master teachers find their rewards in relations with their
students rather than relations with their colleges.
Sometimes master teachers teach content extremely well without necessarily
being noted for the extent of coverage. On occasion they may skip very lightly
over some of the most difficult parts of the textbooks such as the parts dealing
with FAS 133, IAS 39, and FIN 46. Sometimes the most difficult topics to learn
make students frustrated with the course and the instructor who nevertheless
makes them learn those most difficult topics even when the textbook coverage is
superficial and outside technical learning material has to be brought into the
course. Less popular teachers are sometimes despised taskmasters.
***********************
Your question initially was to comment on the relation between teaching and research. In
most instances research at some point in time led to virtually everything we teach. In the
long-run research thus becomes the foundation of teaching. In the case of accounting
education this research is based heavily on normative and case method research. Many,
probably most, accountics researchers are not outstanding teachers of undergraduate
accounting unless they truly take the time for both preparation and student interactions.
New education technologies may especially help these researchers teach better. For
example, adding video such as the BYU variable speed video described above may
replace bad lecturing in live classes with great video learning modules.
Similarly, master teachers and master educators are sometimes reputed researchers, but
this is probably the exception rather than the rule. Researchers have trouble finding the
time for great class preparation and open-door access.
And lastly, accountics researchers research in accounting has not been especially
noteworthy, apart from case-method research, in providing great teaching material for our
undergraduate and masters-level courses. If it was noteworthy it would have at least been
replicated --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Replication
If it was noteworthy for textbooks and teaching, practitioners would be at least interested
in some of it as well --http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession
Robert (Bob) Jensen
Emeritus Accounting Professor From Trinity University
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill,
NH 03586
603-823-8482
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
-----Original Message----From: David Albrecht [mailto:albrecht@profalbrecht.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:32 PM
To: Jensen, Robert
Subject: Relationship between teaching and research
Bob,
I'm writing this to get your personal view of the relationship
between teaching and research?
I think there's lots of ways to
potentially answer this question, but I'm curious as to your thoughts.
David Albrecht