Experimental Teaching Center of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics was established in August 2006, and was awarded the “National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center” in July 2007. In January 2014, School of Accounting established the Experimental Teaching Center (hereinafter referred to as “Center”). The Center, supported and co-run by SWUFE Experimental Teaching Center, aims to design and implement certain experiment accounting courses and projects. To build laboratories with its professional features, to guide and to organize students to participate in all kinds of academic experimental competitions, as well as to set up practice platform for innovation and education.The director of this center is Zou Yan, the associate professor in SOA.
The Center has set up four experimental projects: Experiment of basic courses, Application of financial software, Comprehensive experiments and Academic research experiments.
(1) Experiment of basic courses: accounting cycle, statements analysis and other basic experiments will be included in the curriculum so that students could learn and understand basic knowledge of accounting operations.
(2) Application of financial software: aims to apply accounting information system of different Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software applications to design and practical operation, such as SAP, UFIDA, Kingdee, to suffice different learning objectives.
(3) Comprehensive experiments: refers to the application of Small Private Online Course (SPOC), combining comprehensive ability training of the high-grade students both online and offline. With the ability training through teamwork, cash budget, production planning and market competition, the courses offer students the opportunity to experience and simulate enterprise operations, stimulating innovative thinking and cultivating entrepreneurial skills.
(4) Academic research experiments: contains big data empirical research and behavior experiments research. Interacting with management psychology, organizational behavior and other disciplines, keeping in line with the international standards, researchers can provide adequate research, teaching experimental research platform for management or the related subjects and courses, and thus to standardize the theoretical research and teaching activities of management behavior.
The main activities of this center contain experimental course system construction, knowledge competitions of practical discipline and seminars.
(1) Course system construction includes writing of experiment teaching material , experiment design, establishment of experiment course, the application of information technology in education, construction of experimental teaching platform and research on teaching reform project.
(2) Competitions include: (a) Annual discipline competitions, such as “Business Simulation and ERP sandbox contest”, with over 700 student participants; (b) Training, guiding and organizing more than 30 students to participate in national competitions, such as “National College Students ERP Sandbox Simulation Contest”, "National Innovation & Entrepreneurship Cup College Students Entrepreneurial Simulation Contest”, and “Global Management Challenge (GMC)”. Every year the students from our university have won medals in the major events, and the instructors received numerous awards for “Outstanding Instructor”.
(3) Seminars include hosting or participating in the entrepreneurship teaching resources seminars in the southwestern area, communication of experience among faculty in southwestern financial universities and software applications or faculty training and so on.
School of Accounting is vigorously exploring and trying in experimental teaching, and endeavors to create good environment for students so that they can learn and practice simultaneously, making it easier for them to apply knowledge into practice, and enhancing their systematic understanding of accounting work; while, improving their higher-order thinking abilities through the experience of trial and error, so as to accomplish our mission.
