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This article identifies, classifies, and summarizes cooperative learning papers from the business disciplines to provide a resource for accounting educators who wish to promote collaboration in the classroom. This cross-disciplinary approach offers accounting educators a substantive resource on cooperative learning that guides implementation of this pedagogy. The article also offers suggestions for implementing cooperative learning.

Peer review, peer networking, and peer collaboration are familiar terms to accounting educators and researchers. Examples of collaboration can be found in both academic and practitioner journal articles. Academic research papers are submitted to journals and undergo a peer review process, which results in significantly improved manuscripts. Accounting educators network at conferences to share classroom methodologies and techniques and to find co-authors with whom to collaborate on research projects. Gaffney and Krishnan (2000) note that peer review is a useful tool for discussing and documenting teaching effectiveness, and that peer collaboration can help junior faculty improve their teaching performance. Effectiveness of peer groups and peer collaboration has also been demonstrated in accounting practice. Hagen et al. (1996) describe “best practices” that were achieved when internal auditors from 12 different banks formed a bank peer group. Russell et al.'s (1999) survey indicates that 56 percent of management accountants work in cross-functional teams, and according to Siegel (2000), today's accountant frequently works on cross-functional teams with professionals in other parts of the firm. The vast array of examples demonstrating the benefits of collaboration speak to the importance and effectiveness of peer groups as integral components of learning in academic and business environments. This paper considers teaching approaches from non-accounting business disciplines to offer accounting educators additional perspectives and options for implementing cooperative learning. Drawing on the cooperative learning exercises and experiences of educators in all business disciplines can augment and enhance efforts to effectively promote collaboration in accounting classes and enhance the development of skills needed by students to succeed in the profession. Over the past decade, a considerable number of studies have investigated cooperative learning in accounting education.1 The purpose of this paper is to identify cooperative learning studies from non-accounting business disciplines, categorize these studies, and summarize them as “best practices”.2 This cross-disciplinary approach offers accounting educators a substantive resource on cooperative learning that can guide implementation of this pedagogy in the classroom. Existing cooperative learning studies can be classified into six distinct research streams: (1) student involvement/engagement through cooperative learning; (2) group and team processes to produce effective learning; (3) effects of cooperative learning on student performance; (4) student satisfaction with the learning process; (5) examples of cooperative learning experiences; and (6) reviews of cooperative learning, mostly from the general education literature. When describing studies within each classification, we indicate the business discipline of the article and the article type. Article types include “descriptive” papers, which describe a particular cooperative learning technique and “empirical” studies, which investigate a cooperative learning mechanism through experimental manipulation, a survey, or other data collection method. Some papers explain how to implement a particular aspect of cooperative learning and also empirically test that implementation. These papers are included in the “empirical” studies category. Each paper is assigned a number for easy reference in the narrative.

The practice community identified six major categories of concerns with accounting education (Albrecht & Sack, 2000, p. 50).3 Two of these concerns (pedagogy and skill development) may be addressed by using cooperative learning methods. Professors who use student-centered learning techniques, such as cooperative learning, foster an environment that is more creative and less dependent on lecture. As a result, students have more opportunities to develop some of the skills that are essential for professional success: oral and written communication skills, critical thinking skills, interpersonal skills, and the ability to work in diverse groups. Messmer (1999) notes that gaining teamwork skills enhances a professional's value to the firm, particularly as more businesses adopt a collaborative management approach that encourages professionals to share ideas and strategies throughout the organization. In view of the potential gains that may be achieved by using cooperative learning, this collection of research from across the business disciplines offers a variety of opportunities for accounting educators. First, for those who have not yet experimented with cooperative learning techniques or projects, this guide provides a wide variety of applications for exploring the potential of this pedagogy in the classroom. Second, for those who have already begun to use cooperative learning techniques, this guide might serve as a valuable resource to try different, innovative projects from the other business disciplines. Finally, this resource guide may stimulate further research regarding the efficacy of cooperative learning as it relates to accounting education. This additional body of research should prove invaluable as we continue to seek the most efficient and effective methods to prepare our students for professional success.