Laughing to learn: harnessing student-developed memes in financial accounting classrooms

This paper investigates the effect of using student-developed memes on students’ learning experience. It sheds light on the perceived usefulness of memes, a non-traditional active learning tool, and their effect on students’ performance in class quizzes. The study employs survey questionnaire and focus group design to collect data from classes of undergraduate introductory financial accounting course at a leading public university in Egypt. Results show that developing memes significantly enhanced students’ perceived engagement in class and interest in the course, which was generally viewed as boring. Students’ scores in class quizzes significantly improved relative to prior scores before developing memes and compared to scores of students who did not develop memes. This paper contributes novel evidence to a growing body of research on the impact of active learning in accounting education and suggests creative learning/teaching tools and areas of improvement for consideration in accounting education practices.