Improving financial information literacy in introduction to financial accounting

The motivation for this study came from a desire to improve teaching of the use of accounting information for decision making. The information literacy standards and related performance indicators guided the development of a semester-long case study by accounting faculty and academic business librarians. Their collaboration yielded a series of instruction modules and related student exercises leading up to a group activity involving the evaluation of a company as a potential investment for retirement savings. Students enrolled in two sections of an introductory accounting course volunteered to participate in this study. They provided information about their knowledge before and after all of the activities using a repeated measures research design involving pre-test and post-test questionnaires. The results of the study suggest significant improvements in financial information literacy upon completion of the case study.