From Numbers to Leaderboards: How I Brought Accounting to Life with Kung Fu Quiz
For many students, balancing ledgers, calculating taxes, analysing financial statements, accounting can quickly feel like an endless world of numbers, formulas, and rules.
As a vocational high school (SMK) accounting teacher in Indonesia, I faced this reality in my classroom every single day. Whenever lessons became too focused on theory and one-way explanations, students quickly lost interest.
At the same time, Indonesia’s Kurikulum Merdeka (Independent Curriculum) also encourages more meaningful, engaging, and student-centred learning. And, I knew something had to change because I wanted my students to not just learn accounting, but to truly experience it.
As educators, our mission is to cultivate an environment that is both joyful and profoundly impactful.
That left me with one question: How could I make that happen in my own classroom?
Finding a Better Way to Engage Students
I began looking for ways to make accounting more interactive, something that would help students understand what they were learning, discuss it with each other, and actually enjoy the learning process.
I experimented with various educational technologies, but finding the right fit took some trial and error. Then I discovered Kung Fu Quiz. That discovery changed everything. Suddenly, accounting was no longer confined to formulas and economic concepts.
By integrating Kung Fu Quiz, I turned standard reviews into friendly, high-energy quiz battles, and the atmosphere in my classroom shifted almost immediately.
When I assigned a Video Quiz on debit and credit rules for the first time, students who would normally stay silent were calling out answers, debating who was right, and cheering each other on.
Accounting was still accounting; the calculations, concepts, and learning objectives hadn't changed. What changed was how my students experienced them.
That experience also reminded me that technology works best when it supports the creativity of the teacher rather than replacing it.
Kung Fu Quiz gives educators another way to teach creatively and bring new energy into the classroom.
Today, my classroom is unrecognizable from the quiet, passive room it once was. My students genuinely smile, laugh, and look forward to our sessions.
This experience taught me something I continue to carry into my teaching: no subject is inherently boring. It depends on how we help students experience it. And this is how a little bit of gamification helped turn accounting into a more engaging, collaborative, and joyful learning experience and changed the way my students experienced the subject.
