By Patricia Everaert and Evelien Opdecam (Ghent University, Belgium)

Board games usually involve a series of simple and innovative game elements that together allow depth of play, requiring the players to think, plan and shift tactics in a competitive and pleasant environment. By using board games players can develop higher order thinking skills in an accounting context. In this workshop we present and discuss two board games (Monoply and 30 seconds), in which game elements were carefully chosen to merge with the accounting content and therefore create an engaging and fun learning experience. All necessary material is shared with participants and innovative ideas are discussed on how to integrate these board games into a course of financial accounting, management accounting, tax or audit.

Monopoly, available in more than 37 languages, is a board game where players roll a dice to move around the game board, buying properties, in order to build houses and hotels. Players collect rent from their opponents. In this interactive workshop, we show how the Chance and Community Chest cards, and some of the rules, can be easily adapted, to use the game to record the transactions in a bookkeeping system.  The objective of this accounting version of monopoly is to become the “most profitable” player and to present an accurate balance sheet and income statement at the end of the year.

30 Seconds  is a fast-paced general knowledge game, where players generally play in teams of two to five. One team must guess a word from their teammate's description and explanation, with the aim to guess as many possible answers in 30 seconds. The main restriction is that the teammate cannot use the actual word itself. We developed “30 seconds around the accounting world”, where the rules and terms were adopted to the accounting content. We show how this game can be adapted to use during class, as an innovative learning approach.