Utilization of Generalized Audit Software in an Information Systems Auditing Course

摘要

This article has presented information on the design, implementation and evaluation of an audit software project that requires students to use both IDEA and ACL software. After self-paced, basic training in each product, students are required to perform identical audit tasks using both software packages. Successful completion of the project by almost all students indicates that such a graded, self-study approach is reasonable for learning audit software packages. Therefore, it would appear that such an approach could be used in the workplace as well as in the classroom. Student evaluations of the project and software are also presented, and indicate significant satisfaction with the project training. Although some practitioners find IDEA more user-friendly than ACL, the difference noted by student learners was much more pronounced, and would seem to indicate a more difficult learning curve for ACL.