E‐assessment: its impplementation and impact on learning outcomes

To remain globally competitive, there is increasing pressure for universities to incorporate a greater use of technology and innovation into their curriculum. In response, many higher education institutions have adopted a blended learning approach, which combines traditional face‐to‐face delivery with online teaching resources, to deliver course content. At Victoria University this is now policy and all units offered by the University are required to have an online presence by the first semester of 2009. Our first‐year core accounting unit is taught in Australia and overseas locations including Hong Kong, Malaysia and Beijing. There are a number of variations of how this blending occurs and the extent to which it is used may be influenced by a number or factors. These include the technical skills and time allocation of the teaching staff, professional IT support, student motivation, internet speed and access, explicit connection to assessment, and ease of use for assessment tasks. Some of these issues were addressed when this unit was moved to the online learning platform of WebCT. This paper documents the design and implementation of e‐assessment and online resources in this introductory accounting unit and monitors its impact on learning outcomes.