TEACHING AND EVALUATION SOFTWARE TO SUPPORT AN ACCOUNTING HIGHER EDUCATION COURSE

The education and training are no longer possible without technologies. The complexity of the new accounting era demands new skills requiring an adaptation of the teaching process. Teachers have to consider several assessment components and deal with a large amount of information, accordingly, specific software must be developed to support education and training. We triangulate methods to study a course created, in 2002, in the graduation of Accounting and Administration, of a polytechnic higher education institution in Portugal. In the course, students are organized in groups in order to manage a virtual company. Our aim is to analyze the specific model developed for student's evaluation/assessment and to evaluate the degree of importance perceived by the students to each evaluation component. This model counts with a software grid that covers all the evaluation tasks such as oral presentation, written exams, operationalization of tasks, assessment of physical dossiers, punctuality and attendance, ethical behaviour and company management report. This software supports teachers in the sessions and allows feedback and transparency in the student's evaluation process. We conclude that this assessment model is very complex incorporating server component fostering new skills. The students recognize the need to be evaluated in a vast set of competencies since they consider all of them to be very important. We did not find any correlation between the student's professional experience or the student's course marks on the first-semester with their attributed importance to each assessment component. This study contributes to higher education in accounting by presenting an assessment model aligned with student's perceptions, training them for the complex and uncertain business reality.