Phone it in

Students who join Jon Tyler’s introductory accounting class aren’t told to turn their mobile phones off. In fact, they’re required to turn them on.

The use of mobile devices as a classroom tool is part of the award-winning approach to teaching the mandatory subject Accounting for Business Decisions A.

The subject is compulsory for all first-year business students, whether they plan to do accounting or not. It is also an elective available to students from any other UTS faculty.

As a result it’s a monster. It has had the largest intake of all subjects at UTS for each of the past six years, with 1500 students enrolled in the class in the Autumn 2013 semester alone. Inevitably, this involves big groups of first-year students sitting in the unfamiliar and perhaps slightly daunting environment of a large lecture theatre.

So a cross-faculty and cross-generational team was asked to look at ways to make the class more engaging and creative, including for those students required to take the subject despite not being "numbers people".

Today, Accounting for Business Decisions lectures are "interactive learning spaces" and instead of students being told to turn off their phones in class their devices are being recruited as a learning tool. Formal assessments include a project where students explain to their peers difficult, and sometimes dry, accounting concepts using creative techniques such as animation and video.

These initiatives don’t just make lectures more enjoyable. They also prepare students for a world where creativity is an attribute they'll need whether they're an entrepreneur or an auditor.

"The modern workplace is different – there’s more innovation needed, there’s less predictability and people need to be able to respond quickly," said Dr Laurel Evelyn Dyson, a senior lecturer with the Faculty of Engineering and IT who also worked on the modernisation project. "It’s not just technical accounting knowledge that graduates require but the ability to respond to this new environment."

In lectures students use their mobile phones in conjunction with mInteract, a classroom interaction system developed at UTS. One or more times during a lecture they may be asked to use their devices to access and answer – anonymously – a multiple choice question on the topic they're tackling.

Almost immediately they'll see on the screen in front of them what percentage of the class chose which option – a bit like the "ask the audience" section of a game show.

This way students get instant feedback as to whether they're right or wrong, rather than discovering gaps in their knowledge further down the track. And the realisation that they're not the only ones finding a concept challenging gives them the confidence to ask questions, said Dr Tyler, a senior lecturer and Deputy Head of Accounting at UTS Business School.

Lecturers can also quickly see whether a particular topic needs further work and adjust their teaching "on the fly".

"Generally, in groups people don't put up their hand and say 'I don’t understand",” he said. "This gives you the ability to anonymously 'put up your hand' and say 'I think the answer is 15', without everyone turning around and looking at you."

In a "peer teaching" initiative, students in this subject are also asked to create "screencasts" to explain key accounting concepts in their own words for the benefit of their peers.

The screencasts – created using the free Jing program – are critiqued by their target audience of other students within an online forum. Final assessment and marking is done by more senior accounting students. (Dr Tyler says having him assess them would be like having him decide which band will be the next big thing.)

"They explain accounting in the kind of language young people understand," said Dr Dyson. One student even managed to explain the concept of "cost of goods sold"through song.

Another screencast explained why accounting journal entries are like relationships. "You wouldn’t get that out of a textbook," laughed Dr Dyson.