Decision Aids and Experiential Learning

Rose and Wolfe (2000) demonstrated that decision aid design is critical to learning from decision aids, and aids that produce less cognitive load result in superior learning by aid users compared to aids that produce more cognitive load. The current research investigates whether a tax decision aid has differential affects on the knowledge acquisition of accounting students with varying perceived aptitudes for tax and interest in tax as a career. Results indicate that participants with more interest in and perceived aptitude for tax acquire more tax‐related knowledge during manual task completion than participants with less perceived aptitude and interest. Similar to prior research, decision aids generally decrease learning relative to unaided environments. When decision aids do not produce a heavy cognitive load, however, participants with less perceived aptitude for and interest in tax learn as much in aided environments as they learn in unaided environments.