Extra credit “Opportunities”: A tool to motivate group interaction in the classroom

Abstract

To be successful as an auditing professional, students must learn to interact effectively in group settings. We introduce the weekly group Extra Credit Opportunity (ECO) as an instructional resource designed to facilitate group interaction in the classroom. The ECO consists of three questions that students discuss in an assigned group, and should be able to answer, provided that they have thoroughly read the assigned materials for the week. Survey responses from 173 auditing students show that students perceive that the ECO facilitates interpersonal interaction and communication, promotes effective group decision making, and also fosters classroom preparedness, stimulates learning, exposes students to exam questions, and incrementally improves student grades. Overall, we believe the weekly ECO is an efficient and effective tool that can be used by educators to implement nontraditional group work and interaction in the classroom.