Comparative Study Between Traditional and Peer Assisted Learning of Business Management Students on Accounting Module

Candidates who study business disciplines are trained to be all-round administrative staff to handle business-related issues. Knowledge of a basic accounting principle for supporting financial decisions is vital in business operations, and is especially crucial for managerial workers of a listed company. Indeed, the accounting module is one of the core modules for higher education students who are studying in business disciplines. With the College Heads’ endorsement when departments joined the Peer-Assisted-Learning using Supplemental Instruction (PALSI) scheme, the academic results of two accounting modules were collected anonymously for research purposes.
The subject registration information shows that each cohort had at least 300 enrolments and, at most, over 800 enrolments. A review of academic results throughout four academic years was performed, the sample size of the study consisting of a total of 1,815 PALSI students and 5,869 non-PALSI students. This article focuses on the quantitative analysis in comparing the performance of PALSI students and non-PALSI students by monitoring their academic results consecutively in different cohorts. In this study, a t-test is implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of the peer-assisted learning scheme by identifying the academic results of each cohort to ascertain if there is a significant difference between the two groups.
Similar investigation on the effectiveness of the PALSI scheme with different accounting knowledge background before joining the undergraduate programmes is implemented in the latter part. The findings of the analysis provide remarkable academic enhancement for students with PALSI support, and it is concluded that the scheme is worth extending to different subjects in the business discipline in the future.