The Spiceland Story

Many of you wonder why David and Jim wrote their text to begin with and why Larry Tomassini decided to join the project for the second edition. The answer is quite simple.

The authors found that their students struggled with Intermediate Accounting. When they spoke with their students the answers they received surprised them. First, the students struggled because they were 19 and 20 year olds and did not have the business background to understand the business transactions underlying most of the difficult concepts. For example, Leases, Pensions, etc. In these cases they could memorize how to do the journal entries, but they did not understand the big picture. Moreover, they did not understand why you would lease rather than purchasing the product using a note.

Second, the students struggled because they found their previous text was dense, boring, and did not give them a clear understanding of how this tied to the real world. Moreover, the intermediate accounting texts differed from the financial accounting texts they had used the previous year in that there was a lack of pedagogy.

The authors began to write a text that would eliminate these problems for their students. They decided to organize the text and each chapter so that the big picture was presented at the beginning. They found this gave the students a framework from which to more easily understand the concepts and the procedures better. Also, they opened each chapter by focusing on an easy example that students can understand so that they clearly understand the business transaction underlying the concept. After the students understand the key concept, the authors layer on complexity in a building block approach that typically uses a single example throughout the critical part of the chapter to help students to more easily understand the issues.

The authors focused on the pedagogy of the text to reinforce three key issues:

1. Give the students the pedagogy they are familiar with from their financial accounting course. This will help them in the learning process.
2. Present the material in a friendly way and tie the material to the real world so that they can see that accounting is relevant.
3. Use pedagogy to help students understand which concepts are important and which are peripheral. The additional considerations box was developed to help solve this issue.

The students have responded well to this approach and it has been further enhanced in the second edition with the Learning System Concept. The students complained about the price they paid when purchasing supplements to go with the text. So for the second edition, the authors decided to put all the resources together that they needed in order to successfully complete this course for the price of the text. The student gets the text, the Coach CD, access to the website, the Essentials of Accounting CD, and the alternate exercises and problems manual. Intermediate Accounting is probably the most challenging opponent your students will face in the accounting curriculum. The Intermediate Accounting coaching staff, Spiceland, Sepe, and Tomassini, offer not just a textbook, but a complete game plan for a win in Intermediate Accounting. For the same price as a new textbook, the Intermediate Accounting Learning System provides all the resources needed to successfully teach and learn Intermediate Accounting-a clear, succinct text, the Coach CD-ROM, a Website, the Essentials of Accounting CD-ROM, and an Alternate Exercises and Problems Manual.