Prof. dr. Patricia Everaert and dr. Evelien Opdecam provided an invited Class Room Session at the EAA in Valencia on Wednesday 10th of May, 2017. They instructed colleagues on active learning by playing with Legos.
“By playing a part of the Redesign Game with real Lego-bricks, participants felt how the Redesign Game works for the student. Colleague academics from all over the world experienced the fun of active learning in small teams, which provided ideas to rethink the own teaching."
The objective of the game is to redesign a given truck to reduce its product cost. During the game, there is a competition between the teams, and teams receive different instructions in terms of cost reductions to achieve (with or without a target cost). Product costing is based on an ABC cost system, with different component costs and overhead allocated based on unique/common components. The game has a high degree of realism by including a detailed description of the product specifications (based on customer requirements) and safety requirements that must be met before a new design is acceptable.
The game provides an active and fun way to teach target costing, ABC, the cost of quality, the cost of engineering changes, etc. It has been published in Issues in Accounting Education by Patricia Everaert and Dan Swenson as “Truck Redesign Case: Simulating the Target Costing Process in a New Product Design Environment”, Issues in Accounting Education, Vol. 29, Issue 1, pages 61-85. In 2012, it has received the best paper Award at the Management Accounting Research Conference of the American Accounting Association.
