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Accounting educators face the increasingly important task of teaching ethics. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of different ethics instructional methods on accounting students’ ethical judgements. This study examines whether the ethical decision making of accounting students differs (1) between those instructed through a web-based teaching module and those adopting a more traditional textbook-focused approach, and (2) between gender. A total of 156 students from a second-year financial accounting course participated in the study, with 90 students utilising the web-based module which was designed based on Rest’s (1979) model on ethics development. The other 66 students were instructed through a more traditional teaching approach based on regular class discussions using the ethical problems presented in the textbook. Subsequently, when presented with a whistle-blowing situation, the results of the study suggest that the attitudes and judgements of students instructed through the web-based module were more ethical than those utilising the traditional textbook module. Further, gender was found to impact ethical judgements but only among students who were exposed to the web-based module. The implications of the findings on accounting ethics education are discussed.

Item Type:	Conference Extract
Keywords:	business ethics, web based teaching, traditional teaching, university, accounting
Research Division:	Philosophy and Religious Studies
Research Group:	Applied ethics
Research Field:	Business ethics
Objective Division:	Culture and Society
Objective Group:	Ethics
Objective Field:	Business ethics
UTAS Author:	McManus, L (Professor Lisa McManus)
ID Code:	133496
Year Published:	2007
Deposited By:	TSBE
Deposited On:	2019-06-28
Last Modified:	2019-06-28
Downloads:	0