A. Faye Borthick

• DBA
• Professor at Georgia State University

This case offers learning experiences for (1) following a business process diagram for car dealers’ recording of sales and sales returns of new cars and the car manufacturer’s subsequent recording of the same transactions and (2) querying a database to determine why dashboards maintained by the dealers and the manufacturer do not always agree. Scaf...

ChatGPT, a language-learning model chatbot, has garnered considerable attention for its ability to respond to users' questions. Using data from 14 countries and 186 institutions, we compare ChatGPT and student performance for 28,085 questions from accounting assessments and textbook test banks. As of January 2023, ChatGPT provides correct answers f...

ChatGPT, a language-learning model chatbot, has garnered considerable attention for its ability to respond to users’ questions. Using data from 14 countries and 186 institutions, we compare ChatGPT and student performance for 28,085 questions from accounting assessments and textbook test banks. As of January 2023, ChatGPT provides correct answers f...

This case is intended to impart basic spreadsheet skills to students that do not have them. It trains them to transform data, create formulas (with functions, IF statements, and absolute references), aggregate data, look up values, configure pivot tables, sort data, record macros, and extract spreadsheet tasks from conversation. These skills are ne...

This case prompts learners to analyze compensation data and worker agreements to assess a company's likely compliance with requirements for classifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees for the 20 factors the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) applies to determine compliance with Rev. Rul. 87-41 (IRS 1987) and Treas. Reg. {sectio...

In the context of a kaiten-sushi restaurant, this guided learning experience minimizes learners’ cognitive load as they construct a business process diagram (BPD) from the transcript of a conversation. The guidance provides a construction strategy, directs the construction, and illustrates the diagram. Instructors can vary the guidance to match lea...

Big Data and the data analytical software for analyzing it have developed far enough that some trends have emerged. People are clever. Leave them alone with resources and they will do interesting things with them, giving both intended and unintended consequences. This commentary stems from the 2016 Journal of Information Systems Research Conference...

Based on a conversation between a sales manager and an internal auditor of the used car dealer EasyBuy, students answer questions that prompt them to identify errors in a draft business process diagram (BPD) for the sales process, make inferences about the business process, and distinguish between accounting and nonaccounting events. The draft BPD...

Although students begin with a spreadsheet to analyze the effect of a change in credit score cutoff on loan performance on sales, they discover that this approach becomes unwieldy as the analysis becomes more complex. As more attributes from more sheets are required, the spreadsheet solution becomes difficult to implement or audit. The case thus mo...

Springer and Borthick (2004a) designed cognitive conflict tasks in sophomore accounting to develop critical thinking. While prior work showed that students completing critical thinking courses had stronger content knowledge (Springer and Borthick 2007), it provided no evidence that these experiences would improve performance in courses with new con...

To provide real-time assurance, auditors must rely on continuous auditing. Although the need for continuous auditing is readily apparent, not many auditors have experience in implementing or relying on it. The purpose of this writing is to illustrate how Chan and Vasarhelyi's (2011) stages of continuous auditing might be instantiated in a highly au...

As the volume of data in organizational databases grows, organizations are seeking to use this data to improve organizational success. To this end, users are being asked to query these databases to provide information to help answer questions posed by key management personnel. Users who have had extensive experience with an organization’s data can...

In this case, students (1) extend business process diagrams (BPD) to represent current and contemplated business processes for accounts payable processing for a convenience store company's merchandise purchases and (2) use the graphical representations of the business processes to identify control weaknesses and their potential effects on the finan...

As student learning outcomes and retention receive more attention in higher education, failure rates in principles of accounting courses, gate-keeper courses for business majors, are coming under scrutiny. This study shows promising results from use of a learning innovation, ultra-short online videos, for addressing three common reasons for poor pe...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates managers and auditors to assess the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting. Our study investigates two methods that organizations commonly use to document their business processes – descriptive narrative (hereafter, textual) and diagrammatic – and their effect on the accuracy of auditors’ a...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) mandates the assessment of internal controls over financial reporting and many organizations are using diagrams to express their internal control processes. While educators regularly stress the effectiveness of diagrammatic representation of process information over textual representation, no prior study has offered con...

As student learning outcomes and retention receive more attention in higher education, failure rates in principles of accounting courses, gate-keeper courses for business majors, are coming under scrutiny. This study shows promising results from use of a learning innovation, ultra-short online videos, for addressing three common reasons for poor pe...

In this case, students (1) listen to (or read a transcript of) conversations among managers of a convenience store company about current and contemplated supply chain processes, (2) prepare a system flowchart and a business process diagram (BPD) to represent the processes, and (3) use these graphical representations to make inferences about system...

: This case supports the high‐level objective of learning to model business situations to design databases and query them to solve business problems. Students analyze Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and related fulfillment data to develop business intelligence for a grower of bedding plants selling to big‐box retailers. Students prepare a bus...

Service-oriented computing and the ensuing science of services represent significant challenges to academia. As we come to grips with its many implications, we are slowly beginning to realize the challenges of introducing service-orientation in research. The change also requires a rethinking of strategies used for educating computing professionals....

In this simulation of a merger and acquisition due diligence engagement for a fast-fashion retailer's inventory account, learners develop IT audit skills by (1) preparing a business process representation, (2) identifying audit objectives for testing management assertions about inventory, (3) designing audit procedures to implement audit objectives...

This simulation affords an opportunity for learning to audit system devel-opment for an accounting application. The simulation responds to the growing em-phasis on controlling system development for complying with the internal control as-surance requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (U.S. House of Representatives). Because o...

In spite of continual demands for higher-order thinking skills in accounting graduates, accounting educators have resisted emphasizing these skills in courses on the assumption that doing so would jeopardize students' grasp of traditional account- ing knowledge. We offer experimental results indicating that this fear may be unwar- ranted. We found...

We demonstrated that knowledge structure training is effective in imparting transaction flow and control objective knowledge structures and that knowledge structure mediates the relationship between structure training and performance in internal control reviews. A performance degradation associated with participant-task structure incompatibility ar...

In this case, students develop a business process diagram to understand the business situation and create database queries to detect billing discrepancies and manage costs for corporate cell phone service. Using a database query tool or audit software, students query a database with tables for call details, invoices, invoice details, plan rates, an...

In this case, students develop and use database queries to analyze possible causes of a potential budget overrun for telephone warranty service for a company that sells personal computers (PCs). Students query a Microsoft Access® database with tables for sales of PCs, estimates for technician time, employees, technician costs, and service minutes p...

Acknowledgements: For helpful comments, the authors are indebted to editors Dan Stone and Brad Tuttle, an associate editor, and anonymous reviewers.

This article explains the rationale for, the design of, and the implementa- tion of business simulation episodes for eliciting a developmental shift from knowing to thinking in introductory accounting courses. Using business simulations this way re- sponds to a long-standing need for learning experiences that create opportunities for students to wo...

The objective of the Fly Airline case is for you to learn to develop audit procedures in a context, e-ticket revenue, in which most of the evidence is available electronically, and in which many tests of controls and substantive tests can be per- formed using data stored in electronic form. In sequence, you will identify controls and their objectiv...

In recent years, learning has been reconceptualized from an additive process characterized by an individual's acquisition of knowledge to a socially enabled developmental process in which learners continually reorganize knowledge structures and create new representations. In the new view, learning is defined as the development that results from soc...

As a result of the shortage of professional programmers to extract timely information from databases, end-users are increasingly developing their own database queries. Because end-user querying is error-prone, characterizing the sources of query errors and using that knowledge to improve the effectiveness of end-user query development can improve t...

This paper examines the effects of information request ambiguity and construct incongruence on end user's ability to develop SQL queries with an interactive relational database query language. In this experiment, ambiguity in information requests adversely affected accuracy and efficiency. Incongruities among the information request, the query synt...

This case illustrates how database queries can be used to provide continuous assurance in a situation where two trading partners want assurance of the other's compliance with their agreements. In this two-sided assurance situation, a car maker wants assurance that its dealers make timely responses to web site customers and the dealers want assuranc...

With the proliferation of relational database programs for PC's and other platforms, many business end-users are creating, maintaining, and querying their own databases. More importantly, business end-users use the output of these queries as the basis for operational, tactical, and strategic decisions. Inaccurate data reduce the expected quality of...

This paper develops the motivation for collaborative discovery learning online and explains its application in master's course in information systems assurance. In discovery learning, participants learn to recognize a problem, characterize what a solution would look like, search for relevant information, develop a solution strategy, and executive t...

A persistent question associated with theories of situated learning is how to put them into action. The concept of situated learning, in which the learner and the task are placed in the context of the overall social practice, stems from Lave (1988) and Lave et al.'s (1988) recognition that a traditional view of learning as the end result of a proce...

Many accounting firms have changed the way their auditors evaluate inter-nal control. Instead of preparing flowcharts documenting transaction flows, they only docu-ment the controls that have a bearing on specific financial statement assertions. This shift in documentation marks a change in the structure of the internal control evaluation task from...

This research develops a taxonomy of SQL errors, which could be used as the basis for query complexity measures and a formalization of the effects of query errors. Knowing more about the errors that users make would allow designers of query languages to see which aspects of SQL cause problems for users and thus identify how to create better query l...

The paper discusses cost assumptions on activity based costing. Assumptions underlying activity based costing are: (1) costs in each cost pool are driven by homogeneous activities, (2) costs in each cost pool are strictly proportional to the activity. Activity based cost systems generally provide better cost data than volume based systems in comple...

Computer use in medicine is fast emerging as an invaluable tool in many areas of patient care. When defective software used in medicine is responsible for injury to patients, the software provider must share in the liability for that injury. When software is associated with personal injury, software providers may be subject to strict liability in t...

Thesis (D.B.A.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1982. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

It is important for computing centers' users to practice ethical behavior in their computing activities. Most users act responsibly, but the few who do not have the potential for disrupting all users' work. Computing centers have the difficult role of striking a balance between securing computer systems against unauthorized access and making the sy...

User Services is firmly entrenched in computing, and it is now time to consider the prospects for its future. That is, what functions will User Services continue to support and what new functions will be added? How will these functions change and in what ways? What must computing professionals in User Services do to prepare themselves for the years...

Sometimes it is worthwhile to view college and university computing centers as an outsider. It is amazing that between large and small, public and private, one sees many similarities. Most colleges and universities have their own hardware or access to computing power from a local network. There are statistical and graphical packages to maintain, do...

In recent years, a growing number of computing users have experienced the effects of the replacement of their local computing facilities with remote computing facilities. Unfortunately, remote computing may imply remoteness not only in the sense of distance but also in the senses of accessibility, control, compatibility, and responsiveness. The pro...

Staffing the User Services function of a computing center requires recruiting, training, and keeping qualified personnel while expending a fixed set of resources. These resources include not only the purely monetary ones of salaries and physical facilities but also other resources such as supervisory time. This paper addresses these activities from...

Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge the funding provided by the University of Waterloo's Centre for Information Systems Assurance. We are grateful to Scott Paquette and Gary Baker for help in administering the experiment.