Teaching ‘Accounting for Mangers’ to non commerce students is a challenging task. To overcome this challenge “Collaborative Learning” strategy is used to teach the accounting for managers to MBA students. Main objective of this strategy was to create an interest in the subject and make the concepts clear to the students. As result of using this strategy students were able to achieve 93% passing result in this subject. Along with subject students were able to learn many interpersonal skills which will help them in the corporate world.
Index Terms — Collaborative learning, group activities, Team learning, cooperative learning

Teaching accountancy for a non- commerce students is a challenging task, the students who join MBA program comes from various streams like Arts, Science & Engineering. Percentage of these students put together will fall between 30% – 35%. In MBA (Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum) Accounting for managers is core subject which students will study in their 1st semester, the main objective of this subject is to make students familiar with accounts and financial statement analysis.
Teaching this subject to non commerce students is challenging task. To overcome from this, i thought to solve more problems in the class and will spend more time on explanation of the concepts, but very soon i realized that students from commerce background may feel bored because they already studied same subject in degree.
Now the challenge in front of me was how to make non commerce students to understand the concepts with short period and also commerce students should enjoy learning this subject again.
Discussion with Head of the Department helped me in coming out with the strategy “Collaborative Learning” for teaching the Accounting for Managers.

Responsibility of an instructor is to do what he/ she can to create an environment in which the students can learn together. Research has shown that students learn best in a classroom where they feel free to express their ideas, they feel needed, and they feel comfortable with their peers.
A. Collaborative Learning
Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something put together differently. Collaborative learning refers to methodologies and environments in which learners engage in a common task where each individual depends on and is accountable to each other. These include both face-to-face conversations and computer discussions (online forums, chat rooms, etc.). Methods for examining collaborative learning processes include conversation analysis and statistical discourse analysis.
Vygotsky’s said that, Collaborative learning is used as an umbrella term for a variety of approaches in education that involve joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers. Thus, collaborative learning is commonly illustrated when groups of students work together to search for understanding, meaning, or solutions of their learning. Collaborative learning activities can include collaborative writing, group projects, joint problem solving, debates, study teams, and other activities.
B. Origin of the idea of team-based learning
The idea of team-based learning originated with Larry Michaelsen in the late 1970s. As a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, Michaelsen was confronted with a new and daunting pedagogical challenge. Because of enrollment pressures in his department and college, he was forced to triple the size of his primary course from 40 to 120 students.
He had used group activities and assignments in the smaller classes, and this method was effective in helping students learn how to apply concepts, rather than simply to learn about them.

III. IMPLEMENTATION
A. Formation of Groups

The class was divided into 10 groups and each group consisting of 4 commerce students and 2 non commerce students
B. Effective use of groups
To make the effective use of groups i did the following:
• Assigned students to teams.
• Sets goals, expected team roles, and parameters.
• Suggested work plan/stages, identifies key components/tasks of the project, making it simple for students to determine who does what.
• Established checkpoints for assessments
C. Creation of assignments
The most significant single task is creating assignments that are effective for groups. When bad assignments are given to groups, both the teacher and the class end up dissatisfied with small group learning a good assignment is one that is effective in enhancing group development as well as in furthering high-level student learning. Keeping this in the mind assignments were prepared and given to the groups to solve them.
Students were given with the assignments along with the deadline for submission which they are suppose to work in groups. While submission all the group members need to be present randomly question related to assignment will be asked to the members to know about the level of contribution in the completion of assignments. If any member is unable to answer to the question then entire group would be responsible for it. By doing so everyone tried to motivate each other in completion of the assignments.
D. Role play
This can help students to get more involved with the subject matter. Students were paired and gave each of them an assignment to play the part of a certain theorist or leader from finance field. The pair wrote a conversation between their characters pertaining to a specific problem or issue. I walked around the room and monitored the progress of the role plays. Certain pairs were chosen randomly to act out their skit in front of the class. These role plays motivated students to know more about the subject, most important learning of this activity was groups were able to celebrate their diversity & manage the conflicts among themselves.
E. Class room Problems
Collaborative learning helped a lot in class room while solving the problems. Students were informed to sit with their group members throughout the semester because whenever it is necessary it will be easy for them to communicate with each other.
Problems were presented to the class and students were asked to solve the problems in their respective groups. Whenever non commerce students found difficulties in solving the problems commerce students helped them to overcome out of it. If still the group was unable to solve the problem then i had helped them in solving the problems.
The same process was followed for the entire semester to solve the problems and to the make accounting concepts clear. This activity made students to break out of their comfort zone and meet new people in the class. And most interesting factor was student’s time was invested in their own learning.
F. Experience
First semester in which I tried this approach new teaching strategy, it worked so well that it accomplished two things that i had not even anticipated. First, the approach was prompting most students to take responsibility for their own and their peers’ learning. Second, i was having fun. Because the students were getting their initial understanding of the content through their own efforts

G. Student’s opinion
Student 1: Group activities helped us to learn the concepts easily and share our areas of difficulties.
Student 2: Team of commerce & non commerce members helped a lot to non commerce students and that was great opportunity to commerce students to expose their knowledge to others.
Student 3: Learning in a group helped us to know each other’s competencies and everyone participated actively. We were able to understand concepts in a much easier way.
Student 4: Pair group learning helped me to break my comfort zone and work with others. I felt the subject very easy and enjoyed the process of teaching non commerce students. I was able to score 100 on 100 for this subject.
H. Problem: Some Students Having Negative Experiences
Teaching with small groups obviously has great potential. But we can’t find the same potential throughout the semester. Although Most of the students feel learning in a group is very effective and powerful, there are students who feel learning in groups have negative experiences.
When i interacted with students who have had courses in which small groups were used and asked them whether they felt the experience overall had been a positive or a negative one. Most of the students said, it was a negative experience. When i asked why, they reported a number of similar problems. Like,
– “I had to do most of the work and yet all of us got the same grade”.
– “Several of the students in my group simply didn’t care what grade they got (but I do), and they didn’t put much time in the work.”
– “We were supposed to meet outside of class, but our group never found a good time to do that. So we didn’t have many meetings where most of the group was there.”
There are good and bad ways of using small groups for educational purposes. As a result, is need to learn about the different ways of using small groups in their teaching, and learn how to assess the different groups properly.

IV. FINDINGS
Collaborative learning in small groups provided a place where:
• Learners actively participate.
• Concepts become clear.
• Respect is given to every member.
• Diversity is celebrated, and all contributions are valued.
• Students learn skills for resolving conflicts when they arise.
• Student’s time is invested in their own learning
V. CONCLUSION
Collaborative learning helped all the students to learn the accounting for managers’ subject very easily and made concepts clear. At the end of the semester in final exam students were able to achieve the 92% passing result in this subject with 18% students securing ‘S’ Grade (10/10) and 55% students securing ‘A’ Grade ( 9/10). Students learnt many things which will help them in the corporate life.