NOTES & NEWS
2013 Symposium for Accounting Academics and Educators
By David Chiang, CA, CIA, CMC
O
n June 6 and 7, 2013 the CA Education Foundation (CAEF) held an academic
symposium for accounting educators. Over 80 academics, including CAs, CMAs,
CGAs, and other interested participants from across BC attended the event.
In a session on peer instruction, Dr. Eric Mazur, a professor at Harvard University,
encouraged attendees to make use of student interaction during lectures while
focusing students’ attention on underlying concepts and techniques. As Mazur
explained, this method can be considerably more effective in enhancing student learning than
the conventional lecture-style approach.
Katherine Letourneau, CPA, CA, and Jylan Khalil, CPA, CA, of CPA Canada, presented two
sessions on the new CPA program. The first session provided useful information about the
impact of the new CPA certification program on undergraduate programs, the competencies
expected of entry-level CPAs, and the underlying concepts supporting the competency map
(see pages 34 and 35 for a Q&A on the CPA Certification Program). The second session provided examples of various assessment and evaluation questions.
The final session was a hands-on workshop led by Dr. Sunah Cho and Chris Crowley, of the
University of British Columbia, in which they explained how to build an online/mixed/hybrid
course using easy technology. In this workshop, Cho and Crowley integrated learning points
from the previous sessions.
Kudos to the symposium committee, which included Dr. Sandy Hilton, CA (event chair),
Peter Norwood, FCA, FCMA (CAEF chair), and Chris Burnley, CA, (CAEF vice-chair) for
making the 2013 symposium