Designing Innovative Pedagogy for Complex Accountancy Topics Erasmus Project

Project Title

Designing Innovative Pedagogy for Complex Accountancy Topics

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality and Relevance of Higher Education in Partner Countries; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

Higher Education (HE) graduates entering the accountancy profession in the digital era need a range of essential skills and specialist knowledge. HE providers need to continually update technical curricula and refresh pedagogical practices to meet these needs and maintain professional relevance.

There are a variety of roles potentially available to accountancy graduates. In some European Countries, HE graduates are now competing with apprentices for these roles. Therefore, employers’ expectations of the set of competencies HE accountancy graduates have increased. These competencies include cognitive skills (law, practices, ethics, commercial), interpersonal skills (communication, presentation, emotional intelligence, teamwork), and practical skills (numeracy, ICT, language, writing, critical analysis, problem-solving). The diversity of culture and language, and educational and legal systems should enrich HE curriculum design and development in the areas of taxation, financial reporting, CSR and audit, thereby differentiating such provision from domestic training programs. This was the ethos of this project.

The project is entitled Designing Innovative Pedagogy for Complex Accountancy Topics (DIPCAT). Four distinct but integrated sets of case studies have been developed comprising original content, learning materials, activities and two databases. The topics of cases address areas of global and immediate concerns in international taxation, corporate governance and tax avoidance, financial reporting for financial instruments (IFRS 9) and auditing in the digital era.

Thirty-nine academics from twelve European HE Institutions collaborated on this project. The project-partners have a long history of working together and with other professionals in the development of teaching materials, intensive study programmes, student and staff exchanges, research and other knowledge exchanges. The combined subject expertise, professional experiences, global networks and academic resources of the partnership far exceeds the sum of individual contributions. The partners consulted with accounting and tax experts during the design and development phases of the case studies. The experts were from the Big Four, MNEs and the Professional and Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (e.g. ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA and CIOT) in the respective countries. Such consultation has ensured the professional relevance and practical application of the learning materials.

The DIPCAT cases and its various and numerous learning materials, tools and teaching techniques have been embedded into the curricula of several HEIs over the project’s three-year timeframe. This practice yielded additional student/tutor-feedback opportunities, thereby facilitating fine-tuning refinements to ensure robust and engaging intellectual outputs. The COVID-19 Pandemic provided an impetus to become even more innovative with technical and pedagogical development and delivery. Two of the intensive study programs were delivered in a hybrid manner, while still facilitating cross-national (online) collaboration. Ultimately, the Intellectual Outputs developed for this project will serve HE facilitators of short and/or long courses.

Project Website

http://www.dipcat.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 179197,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY & Country: UK

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITATEA DE VEST DIN TIMISOARA
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DO PORTO
• Universita’ degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo
• ISM VADYBOS IR EKONOMIKOS UNIVERSITETAS UAB
• UNIVERSIDAD DE VIGO
• BUDAPESTI CORVINUS EGYETEM
• UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK