Calcbench recently chatted with Saeed Roohani, Professor of Accounting and PwC XBRL Fellow at Bryant University about his use of Calcbench with students in his accounting classes.  

1.      How is your use of Calcbench in the classroom benefiting your students?
Calcbench gives my students a greater appreciation for the field of accounting.  We all know textbook materials can be a bit dry without any real world application.  Calcbench helps show how to apply what we learn in the classroom to the real world.  

For example, for introductory courses, we emphasize ratios at the end of each chapter to help students to put the chapter’s lessons to use and use Calcbench to get the data we need.  I also use Calcbench in my graduate Corporate Governance course where I have every team present a topic (e.g., trends in executive compensations, industry trends, styles of footnote disclosures, top executive gender issues, etc.). I particularly appreciate the industry and sector data where I (or my students) can answer policy questions with data.

Calcbench really helps motivates students to not only see the impact of the data in action, but it also satisfies their appetite for using technology in accounting.

2.      How do you see Calcbench benefiting your own research?
I have a couple of research papers in process where I’m using Calcbench as the data source.  So far, my research involves content of MD&A and internal control reports, and I plan to continue using Calcbench to further this work.

3.      What excites you most about the possibilities of XBRL?
When introducing XBRL concepts to my students, I generally wait until they get some experience with Calcbench and become amazed by the possibility of real-time data retrieval.  I also tell them that they’re generally looking at the CPA-audited financial data (emphasizing that other sources of financial data on the internet may not be CPA-audited).   When they learn this is all possible because of XBRL, they are very interested to know more about XBRL.  I then dive into a deeper discussion of XBRL and its potential.

Want to try Calcbench in your classroom? Contact us today or learn more here.