LEARNERS’ AND THEIR TEACHER’S EXPERIENCES OF AN AUTHENTIC ONLINE ASSESSMENT TEST IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF BASIC ACCOUNTING CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

Accounting as a school subject provides a foundation for understanding the economic activities and conditions of a business, it serves as a common language both within the business and for communicating business information to the external financial community. When learners grasp the key financial transactions as well as the analysis, interpretation and communication of financial statements, they are able to understand the fundamental concepts of basic accounting principles and practice. However, there is a lack of adequate preparation at school level in accounting. Learners are taught how to do accounting, but the principles and reasons for accounting, that is, the basic concepts of accounting, are not adequately taught and assessed (Steenkamp, Baard & Frick, 2010). As a result, South African learners’ performance in the subject is poor. We contend that teachers contribute to poor performance because they have inadequacies in their own content knowledge of the subject (Ozden, 2008), as they were not properly trained and equipped to teach it competently (Letshwene, 2014). They also employ inadequate assessment techniques in the subject by using a traditional paper-based approach (Ngwenya & Maistry, 2012). As a way of supporting teachers in their teaching practice, the Department of Education has formulated assessment guidelines that prescribe an alternative form of assessment that can be completed electronically, using online assessment to gauge learners’ understanding of content knowledge of any topic. The usefulness of an online assessment tool is measured in terms of how it reveals the understanding and content knowledge of learners in a meaningful social context. Thus, the aim of this paper is to report on the design of an authentic online assessment of grade 10 learners’ and their teacher’s understanding of basic accounting content knowledge. QuestBase software was used in the design of online assessment embedded within the theoretical constructs of authentic learning, and with the first three cognitive levels of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. The theoretical framework of authentic learning mirrors real-world relevance with authentic activities from multiple perspectives and provides the opportunity for learners to reflect on the learning process. An exploratory qualitative case study design was used in this inquiry and qualitative data was generated from individual and focus-group interviews and observation. Findings indicated that the participants (six learners and their teacher) had positive experiences in completing the authentic online assessment test of basic accounting content knowledge. However, learners still struggled to successfully deal with calculations and also showed a lack of knowledge and understanding of the basic concepts of the subject. Most significantly, this paper aims not to “prove that learning has improved” but rather that the use of an online assessment tool (QuestBase) within the theoretical framework of authentic learning and assessment reflects the real-life context of learners.