AccountingPod, University of Waikato and Xero Learn join forces to deliver innovative in-class learning

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A major content road-test for Xero Learn (Xero’s innovative new learning platform for educators) has been completed with AccountingPod delivering its dynamic content and auto-marking technology to 260 students from two AIS classes at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Waikato University, accounting lecturer, Jackie Allen explains why she chose to plug-in Xero Learn and AccountingPod to her courses,

“I am always on the look-out for opportunities to integrate new technology learning into my Accounting Information Systems papers. A few years ago, I piloted and then fully implemented a module introducing my students to Xero Accounting Software. This initiative was a great success. Familiarity with Xero has become almost a baseline requirement for entering the accounting workforce. So, when AccountingPod came along with content and teaching tools for Xero and now Xero Learn, I jumped at the chance to innovate.”

Rising to the challenge to provide real-world business experience for students in the cloud, AccountingPod has teamed up with Xero Learn to provide the realistic content case studies and auto-marking of student work on Xero.

Judith Cambridge, co-founder of AccountingPod believes that auto-marking for teachers is the secret sauce to their content case studies.

“We save teachers hundreds of hours of marking time so they can focus on other valuable areas of teaching. We also mark at a more granular level to really understand the student learning journey on an accounting platform like Xero Learn.“

Jackie too saw a key benefit of using the technology focused content creator AccountingPod.

“As lecturer, there is a lot to be said for sharing the load when it comes to assessment. AccountingPod takes on not only the delivery of content but also the responsibility for marking assessments.”

AccountingPod provided a realistic agri-business data set and teaching content to Waikato University over a four week period, populating 6,000 data lines for each student case study and auto-marking nearly five million data points from Xero Learn.

“Our goal is to close the gap between accounting theory and current business practice by delivering realistic accounting content, auto-marking, feedback and anti-cheat to our tertiaries via the cloud. Xero Learn’s platform that hosts the data and student activity has performed really well, and we congratulate the team there” says Judith.

On the student experience side Jackie commented,

“As with any paper there was a spread of final results for this module, but I can say with certainty that the students who engaged with the process really enjoyed their learning – although some didn’t realise how much they had learnt until they reflected on the experience at the end. Undoubtedly there were challenges, but I think challenging our students is in danger of becoming an increasingly scarce phenomenon, yet is vitally important in this world full of disruption.”

Says Judith, “like Xero Learn and Waikato University, we are committed to investing in the future generation of accountants by providing them with ‘work or entrepreneur ready’ skills. That’s why we built AccountingPod, to engage those students who thought accounting was boring! Business and accounting in today’s world is exciting, it’s multi-faceted, fast paced, technology driven and really needs new players to engage in guiding the future of business”.

Collaborations between educators and content creators like this really illustrate the powerful learning and development that can happen for students when technology is harnessed. It not only drives real-life teaching scenarios but works to close the gap on education to employability skills.

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