Developing an online social game for the first introductory accounting course

The intended contribution of this paper is to review how strategies employed by online social games can help reduce accounting anxiety and improve student performance in the first introductory accounting course for undergraduate students. It also documents the development and evaluation of an online social game specifically designed to implement those strategies. The paper briefly discusses the use of games in accounting education, and some relevant predictors of student detachment, including: accounting anxiety, a perception that accounting is too difficult, and a surface level learning style. A feature description of the online game follows, and the ways in which these features implement strategies to overcome student detachment, including: levels of progressive difficulty, a hint support mechanism, and immediate feedback on double entry practice sets. The paper concludes with the results of a test and evaluation survey, providing insight into which features of the game were thought to have had educational or entertainment value.