Our introductory accounting unit is an identical unit offered at each of our five campuses in three major cities in Australia. We have a National Lecturer in Charge who designs and oversees the unit and Campus Lecturers who teach on each of the campuses. The unit uses a blended module with flipped classrooms (workshops) resulting in a more hands on approach to learning.

The unit has three assessments:

1. Student engagement

                Three weekly components make up the first Assessment – 1. Preparatory work (Learning management system [LEO] quizzes), 2. In-class participation (subjective), and 3. Discussion forum (based on real world scenarios each week – general focus on Sustainable development goals (SDGs) and business ethics

2. Written report – financial statement analysis

3. Final exam (all topics)

Assessment 1 – Engagement, is assessed for a total of 10 weeks:

Component 1 – Preparatory work

Students are asked to read required chapters, watch short conceptual videos on various topics in the Learning Management System (LMS) prior to workshops and complete topic quizzes in LEO

Motivation: To increase students’ willingness to read preparatory material prior to class so that they are conceptually aware of the topic to be covered, subsequently enabling more in-depth discussion and time to cover complex issues – improve learning outcomes.

Students assessed, not on score, but rather on number of questions answered

Component 2 –  In class engagement

In class assessment was subjective by noting students who were engaged with the material in class.

Component 3 – Discussion forum

Easily assessed through LEO reports. Again, students not evaluated on what they wrote as long as it was relevant, but rather that they were engaged with the forum.

After analysing past engagement results these are the observations:

• The average grade for Assessment one across all students was 12.5%. (as mentioned, quizzes in the past were created in LEO)
• Those students who achieved greater than 13% for assessment 1 ALL had final grades that were credit or above
• Students who achieved between 8 and 10% did not achieve greater than a pass in their final grade
• Those students who achieved less than 8% for assessment one for the most part failed.

Overall, engagement enabled students to understand the learning outcomes to a greater extent and ultimately, increased their final grades. My aim was to increase the number of students engaged

Mobile applications (apps) used as learning and teaching tools are not uncommon in Higher Education. Apps with gamified elements integrated into their design, in addition to facilitating learning, can further engage and motivate students, particularly  where engagement is of particular importance because it may factor into student retention. After researching various possibilities, I chose Quitch.

Why? For online quizzes to be effective, student feedback should be available soon after completion. This is where Quitch is most effective.  Further, I found the support from Quitch was just about instant. I examined both the student view on the mobile app as well as the educator web portal, I was able to navigate quite easily around. The reporting and stats available in the app gave me instant information regarding student performance and engagement. Every student was given a pseudo name, their real names and student numbers were NOT published in the mobile app. The educator portal identified both the pseudo name and students’ real names. And, despite that I would not be evaluating students on whether they got answers correct, the Quitch app has an inherent competition and students are awarded points in the competition for every question they got correct. (Not connected to assessment 1).

You can set that students have multiple tries which I did, but it was the first try only that counted towards achieving a point for getting the question correct. These points culminated into a leader board that students could see, i.e., which pseudo named student was winning the competition.

I first developed a Master Quitch site that had 10 sections (one for each assessable week). Ten questions were added to each various weekly topics. I called the out of class quiz “Quitch on the Go” as students could complete these anywhere, anytime.

There were multiple choice, fill in the blank and true or false questions. Questions allowed for ‘hints’ (text page references) and ‘answer explanations’. Setting it all up was super easy and Quitch support responded very quickly to any query I had.

I wanted students to feel motivated and to have easy access. Questions were not hard or onerous but rather encourage students to ‘look up’ what the answer might be. Questions were set to release early in the week and close the following Monday at 8am.

Once scheduled, the mobile app pings to students that there is a new question to answer so students could go on to their phones and answer wherever they were. Or they could choose to wait until they had looked up relevant page numbers in the textbook. Once open questions remained open until the whole quiz closed. Students could attempt multiple times, however, as mentioned, the first attempt is the one that counted towards Quitch competition scores.

If students got the answer wrong, they would get instant feedback with the hint to help them get it correct. And if they got it correct, they also got a Yay, well done! Or other motivating statements.

After I had created the master site I copied and new classes created for each of the campuses. A student roster for individual campuses was loaded to each class. And students were sent invites to their email account to join the class.

The second component of assessment 1 was in class engagement. Previously, this component was very subjective and difficult to evaluate if you have students who prefer to wait until another student has spoken, or they don’t want to speak in case they are wrong. It’s important to consider learning styles and personality when evaluating in class engagement. To overcome this, I created a new ‘game’ within the same weekly section of Quitch. It contained three questions only and was released to students periodically at certain topical points throughout a workshop. Timed at 90 seconds and closed. These were only available to students who attend workshops.

The in-class quizzes became a conversation and engaging piece amongst students – shared views. Attempts used as an evaluation of students’ engagement in class. I could go on and have a look at results to see if students had really captured the essence of the topic that I had been talking about. If not, I would recap the material. Students also received receive bonus points towards the ‘competition’ leader board for participating in class.

Campus lecturers opened and closed the Quitch Bonus questions periodically at the same point as other campus lecturers but dependent upon the time at which they reach each conceptual point (caters to individual campus progression throughout the workshop). Individual campus lecturers were also able to monitor their own campus cohorts.

Each campus has its own competition ‘leader board’. Quitch educator portal was very easy to use, you could burrow deeper into results and identify those students whom they saw were either disengaged or not doing so well.

I was also able to identify an overall leader board and determine which campuses were doing better than others, being able to identify if some students needed extra support on various topics. Basically, I was able to keep my finger on the pulse of all students and provide additional support and/or information as needed.

In comparing student performance from the semester where LEO quizzes were used to those students in the semester which used Quitch I found that students playing Quitch in class got students involved and encouraged fun and competitiveness. It encouraged students to read more about weekly conceptual topics. It encouraged collaboration

I wanted to increase engagement with the unit – ultimately this improves learning outcomes. Having constant engagement with students through Quitch enabled me to monitor those who were not engaging. Quitch has auto emails that are sent to students who aren’t engaged and those who are at risk.

I have used the LEO learning management system for quizzes in the past, but it was very individualistic and did not engage students. Quitch provided instant animated feedback to students. Badges for doing well. Very motivating. It’s a real game changer. As a competition it has really pulled students in. Ultimately, wanting to win encourages them to read the text more and utilize the additional information available to them in LEO the LMS. Students are learning and engaged. They are achieving better learning outcomes. This I achieved with the implementation of the gamified mobile application – Quitch.

What has been the feedback from students?

Students have said they love it and that it has been very useful to them as a learning tool and that it was ‘loads of fun’.

As soon as the Quitch bonus slide appeared during classes, they got their phone out straight away – total concentration. And then they laughed if they have totally bombed it.