GAMIFYING A FLIPPED FIRST YEAR ACCOUNTING CLASSROOM USING KAHOOT!

Abstract

Accounting is often perceived as boring, difficult, methodical and being all about number crunching by a lot of students and society in general. These negative perceptions impact on students’ learning and their approach to the study of accounting. Additionally, studying accounting in English as a second language as well as in the first year of university compounds the amount of problems students may face, adversely affecting their performance. In a bid to address these problems, the flipped classroom approach was employed and its benefits complemented and enhanced by gamification using Kahoot! The aim of this paper is to share with accounting educators and other educators dealing with similar issues on how to engage students in a large lecture setting, in a flipped classroom model. Whilst a lot of studies have been conducted and much has been written on the use of Kahoot! in the classroom, not much has been done in the context of using the tool in a flipped accounting lecture. The benefits of gamification, flipped classroom, quizzes and feedback have been validated in the literature and have been reviewed in this paper. Kahoot! offered several benefits to ISSN: 2289-7615 94 the teaching team as well the students including instant feedback for the students, an opportunity for the lecturer to elaborate on this feedback, a communication tool between the lecturers and students regarding problem areas, reflection on the lecturer’s part as to what was working well and what wasn’t, and last but not least, students enjoyed learning whilst playing! Key terms: student engagement, student perceptions, game-based learning, instant feedback, accounting education