Example of excellence - Role-play in Accounting

In 2019, I had the pleasure of observing a very engaging and authentic form of assessment in Damien Lambert's class: role play based on storyboards of auditing scenarios that students have created. 

In this assignment, students are to demonstrate their understanding of the processes and activities involved in the planning, performance and conclusion of a financial report audit through the creation of a hypothetical scenario. The assignment also aimed to help students develop key skills and attributes of a effective auditor, according to a survey by Forbes and KPMG (2015):

This assessment format has been implemented in many Auditing and Assurance units, not only at Monash campuses but also in a graduate audit unit at San Francisco State University. With its four-year history and counting, this assessment has become a remarkable tradition. 

This year, I caught up with Damien, Ashna Prasad and Lisa Powell to learn more about how they have managed to successfully facilitate role play when students are not physically in the room. The answer is, unsurprisingly, technology. More specifically, empowering students to showcase their creativity through the use of technology. 

Which aspects of assessment design have stayed the same? 

• Students are in groups of 4-5 members
• Provision of written instructions
• Detailed marking guide for storyboard (group) and role play (individual and group evaluation)
• Group activities to help students connect with group members and build rapport
• Role-play/presentation tips videos created in collaboration with Monash Centre of Theatre and Performance
• Visual illustrations and visual performance art workshop run by a professional artist

What's new?

• Hybrid cohort: some groups met face-to-face, and some worked completely online
• Format of the role play performance: video submission, instead of live performance
• Instructional videos for the assessments and other resources
• Sample storyboard to demonstrate exemplars
• Feedback Fruits used to facilitate peer evaluation
• Students experienced less stress and anxiety of role-playing live, while showing more creativity through the creative process of making videos. 

Show time!

Here are some highlights from student performances. Enjoy!

These snippets of student role play are a testament to the power of students' creativity when they are given the space, guidance and autonomy to express it. The team and other colleagues have also written a paper about their teaching practice, and highlighted "enhanced creativity and human skills", as well as "high levels of engagement, motivation, and enthusiasm" among students. 

"Creativity in intelligence having fun." 

Albert Einstein

It goes without saying that contextualised and creative forms of assessment bring about challenges in terms of time, resources and student reception. Upon reflection, the team shared about a small minority of students who struggled with the lack of structure and ambiguity from the revised assessment format (Powell et al., 2015). Improvements such as more visual aids, video demonstrations and scaffolding towards dealing with ambiguous situations and uncertainties are in store for future student cohorts. 

How have you innovated to transform your teaching for a hybrid or online environment? We'd love to hear about your experience in the comments below. 

What's going on at STARLab?

I visited Caulfield's STARLab (Simulated Teaching and Research Laboratories) to observe the BFX5260 Treasury and Financial Markets teaching team in action, and I was in for a treat. The morning started out with great energy. Students were lining up to get their ID card scanned for attendance, and looking eager to get started. 

This semester, the BFX5260 teaching team have implemented co-teaching, the flipped-class model, trading simulation, and digital in-class assessment all at once. How do they do it? Let’s dive in. 

Co-teaching

Wayne Huf, Amale Scally, Simon Yap, Long Pham and Linh Nguyen make a great teaching team. They did a fantastic job collaborating to facilitate two classrooms simultaneously. One of the goals was to keep the two classes going at the same pace, and timing of in-class assessments to be in sync. 

In order to achieve that, responsibilities are shared among the teaching team. Everyone takes turn to instruct, facilitate activities and provide technical support to students every week.  

The co-teaching model got everyone in the team on their feet, and actively attending to every group in the class. It was great to see how much attention and support students received throughout the session. 

Flipped-classroom model

The concept of a flipped-classroom model has been around for some time, and has earned its place in the current landscape of higher education. Exploration and familiarisation with the new weekly topic happens prior to class time, and that's what has been implemented in BFX5260.

'Pre-load' materials including short videos, reading and exercise files have been provided for students to engage in independent learning every week. Moodle resources were referenced frequently during the session, which was a fantastic way to reemphasise the significance of the Moodle site as a one-stop-shop to assist students with their study. Workshop times are dedicated to hands-on activities and peer-learning where students exchange ideas and consolidate new knowledge. What's more, is that students are incentivised to complete pre-class work by a weekly test at the beginning of class. Even though questions are randomised, students were allowed to discuss and work collaboratively through this assessment.

An important note to take here is that the link between pre-class and in-class work has been well illustrated. Without having done their work prior to coming to the session, students' learning experience would not have received the same benefits and impact.

Excel classes were offered to students to help them
become more confident with using the software

Trading simulations

Throughout the session, students went through a range of simulated trading scenarios. Pre-programmed prompts were scheduled during some of the activities to increase interactiveness and sophistication of the exercise. This was a fantastic illustration of how complex and fast-paced a real trading environment could be.

The design of these workshops has thoughtfully taken into account valuable opportunities for students to apply what they have learned, and go from knowing to doing. What's more, is that students go to practice making decisions promptly and effectively, to respond to the dynamic nature of their future employment context.

To guide students through these simulations, procedural knowledge was demonstrated on Excel by the facilitator, followed by time for repetition on students' computer.

Students working on their Excel sheet

Learning is then solidified by peer learning. The trading simulations happened as individual exercises as well as group activities. Conversations were buzzing among students in the room to discuss the process and results of their practice. 

Students discussed during the exercises

By closely watching and assisting students while the simulations occurred, the facilitator was able to recognise and showcase outstanding work from individual student for the whole class. The students were also rewarded with very encouraging comments from the instructor and their peers, adding even more energy to the atmosphere. 

In-class assessment

In-class assessment was conducted at the end to solidify everything new students have learned throughout the session. To ensure the integrity and authenticity of students' attempt during the assessment, a software called AB Tutor was run in the control room. Excel files containing students' work were pulled from their Monash computer and deleted once the transfer has been completed.

The control room - where the "magic" happens

The vision

The learning activities in STARLab do not only provide an opportunity for students to gain simulated trading experience, but also expose students to ethic considerations, encourage them to be professional and understand the value of their human inputs behind machines. Click the video below to hear from the teaching team and a unit alumnus themselves. 

A closing thought

It was inspiring to see the amount of thought and effort that went into designing and delivering the unit. Perhaps it took trial-and-error to continuously improving their teaching practice, but the team have been rewarded with the level of participation and engagement among students.

We look forward to observing more active learning strategies in your classroom.

Let the Students Prepare the Learning Material Using Moodle Wiki

Less used Moodle activities

In this new series of blogs, TaLT would like to explore the less used Moodle activities and share with you some great experience from our academics. In many cases, you will find the approaches quite handy and useful creating a student-centred and collaborative learning environment for our learners. And in some cases, such as using Moodle wiki, it might also create a more interesting assessment and feedback approach while reducing teacher workload.

Moodle Wiki 

When people hear word "Wiki", the first thing that comes to their mind would be Wikipedia. Whether or not its contents are suitable for the academic purpose is a question. But it is definitely a very good example using Wiki to host interesting contents. A Wiki allows any user of the website to create, edit, and even comment on contents. It requires no coding knowledge but still offers functions such as multimedia or hyperlinks. In teaching practices, it provides great potential for a collaborative learning approach.

Moodle also has a Wiki activity for us to use. It can be quite useful when designing learning activities such as group lecture notes, brainstorming, group projects, and drafting when contributing to other internet Wikis.

Let the students prepare the learning material

Last semester, one of us own, Associate Professor Dewi Tojib, started to try a new learning task with Moodle Wiki for her students in the unit MKC2110 Buyer behaviour in marketing.

In this assessment task, students worked together in pairs to create a Wiki entry based on a randomly assigned consumer behaviour concept introduced in the unit. It required students to research, describe the concept, and discuss one real-life marking stimulus using the concept with visual materials. After students had submitted their wiki entries, teachers reviewed, graded, and provided feedback to the initial submission. Students would revise the wiki entries until they got the teacher's approval. A detailed Wiki marking rubric has been designed by Dewi and distributed to the students to standardise the grading.

After several weeks hard working from the students and teachers, a consumer behaviour Wiki containing dozens of concept items has been created in this collaborative learning process. Students also have the ability to comment on the Wiki entries. The Wiki was widely used when students prepared for the final exam. (447 clicks by 129 out of 160 students)

It has been a quite successful trial using Wiki as a collaborative learning tool. Detailed instruction and marking rubric offered students good guidance when writing Wiki entries. Students also received individual feedback to their work from the teachers. At the end of the assessment task, student work compiled into a useful Wiki learning resource which students used quite actively. The social constructivist learning theory was used to shift the teacher-centred approach to a student-centred one. We believe that it helped the students feel more satisfied in the learning process.

Future work

How can the assessment task be improved next semester? How about enhancing the student interactions in the Wiki. Maybe the new task can provide them opportunities to comment on all Wiki entries and edit their own entries in a more flexible approach. Hopefully, it might improve the student engagement and improve the student community cohesion by sharing knowledge. If you have any new idea about using Wiki in teaching, please feel free to post a comment below the blog.


Reference
Biasutti M., El-Denghaidy H., Using Wiki in teacher education: Impact on knowledge management processes and student satisfaction, Computers & Education, Volume 59, Issue 3, November 2012, 861-872