To help accounting students bridge the gap between theory and practice before they hit the workforce, David Wood, the Glenn D. Ardis Professor in the School of Accountancy (SOA), has worked with student employees at Brigham Young University to build the EY Academic Resource Center Experience platform (EYARC Experience). The educational platform is funded by the EY Foundation, which sponsors the creation and distribution of educational materials to accounting programs worldwide.
“Professor Wood helps us identify the gaps of knowledge in the workforce or in student populations around the world, and we work to target those gaps to make sure that students are getting the full extent of the knowledge they need,” says Megan Barton, an accounting student from San Antonio, who helps generate content for EYARC Experience to supplement classroom learning.
Similar to platforms like Canvas or Learning Suite, EYARC Experience allows professors to provide content for their students—completely free of cost. They choose from the available materials and assign students quizzes, simulations, and videos on a variety of topics.
“We have some of the first and only content on generative AI for accountants,” Wood says. “AI is highly used in the workforce, and our learning materials help prepare students to enter the profession at or ahead of the level of current employees. By giving students cutting-edge experiences, we expect they will be phenomenally successful when they graduate.”
In addition to courses on how to use AI and other common technologies in the accounting field, some of the content is designed to assist students in building interpersonal skills, like interviewing: Students interview AI “employees” in auditing modules and then receive in-depth feedback on what they did well and what they could improve.
“We can scale interviewing, so everyone has an individualized experience,” Wood says. He explains that this one-on-one practice simply isn’t feasible in traditional classes with large numbers of students—but it can be accomplished through AI.
The AI personalities, simulations, and other assignments are developed by a team of BYU students from accounting, information systems, and computer science majors working with EY professionals and faculty from around the country. Barton works with her fellow SOA students to write all of the content and program the prompt engineering, which they send to the tech team who code and post the finished module.
“It’s super humbling to work with them and a great chance to learn from students who specialize in an area I know very little about,” Barton says. “The value of the team overall is increased because of everyone’s individual unique contributions.”
The EYARC Experience student employees meet with Wood weekly to discuss their next steps. “We collaborate as a team,” Wood says. “Academics and EY professionals provide guidance and final review of all materials, but we give a lot of control to students to design the materials and run the group as they think is best.”
The interdisciplinary team has generated and published almost 30 assignments since the project began in February 2024, and Wood estimates that EYARC Experience’s content is now being used by almost 8,000 students in various universities, both internationally and domestically.
“We’d like to create the very best learning materials in the world, and we would like to have as many people benefit from that as possible,” Wood says. Even as EYARC Experience aims to reach accounting students around the globe, the project is also providing hands-on experience to its creators at BYU Marriott.
“I wanted to learn more and to be right on the front lines of advancements in generative AI, SQL, and prompt engineering—I recognized that these were not yet strengths I had, and I wanted to develop them,” Barton explains. “We dive deep into accounting topics to think about how to teach it not only to students but also to ourselves.”
Wood has confidence in the potential BYU Marriott students have to help the world around them—both as students and as employees. “When our students are given opportunities to do amazing things, they jump far over the bar,” Wood says. “When we invest in them, and when our alumni invest in them, it’s incredible what students can do.”