Financial Accounting Student eLearning Resources (FASTER)

This presentation will describe an initiative originated by two lecturers in Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) to develop a more open and flexible approach to teaching financial accounting. It will discuss how, with the help of the NDLR and local Learning & Teaching units, a small localised project with a specific goal of using technology to enhance flexibility has grown into a collaborative ‘open education’ project between three Institutes of Technology and a professional accountancy body.Initially, both lecturers (i.e. Orlaith Kelly and Luke Fannon of the School of Business in AIT) wanted to enhance the usefulness of Moodle for delivery of their full time introductory financial accounting courses by producing reusable accounting resources that would offer increased flexibility and content as part of a blended learning/teaching approach. In 2009 funding was received from the NDLR for the project and the focus grew to encompass open educational resources.The deliverables of the project were to produce a series of accounting videos (Camtasia screencasts), a bank of online accounting questions and question/answer sheets. The target groups of the project were first/second year students in third level institutions studying financial accounting. These resources were presented at the NDLR Fest 2010 and can be viewed on the NDLR repository.Following on from discussions with interested lecturers at the NDLR Fest, a joint funding application was made to the NDLR in 2010 by AIT, IT Carlow, Dundalk IT and CIMA. This new collaborative undertaking aims to improve on the initial project by using Articulate Studio to create financial accounting e-learning resources.This presentation (which ties in with the Technology Enhanced Teaching theme) will demonstrate the initial resources produced and contrast these with the Articulate resources, highlighting why Articulate is felt to be an improvement. Student feedback will also be reviewed.