Developing digital creativity through authentic assessment

Abstract

Digital creativity, the use of digital tools and technologies to explore creative ideas and new ways of displaying your ideas, research or work, is emerging as an important competency for graduates across many disciplines. The development of digital creativity competency in domains traditionally perceived as being less creative, including the accounting profession, has yet to be explored. This study reports on the use of an authentic assessment for learning to develop students’ digital creativity in an undergraduate competency-based accounting course. It documents the design and development of the assessment and analyses the students’ digital creative outputs as well as lived experiences. Although many of the outputs were at a lower level of digital creativity, most of the students appear to have experienced the process positively and gained insight into their course material and need for digital creativity in accounting. The design of the authentic assessment can inform the development of similar assessments in other disciplinary settings.

Keywords:

• Authentic assessment
• digital creativity
• social constructivism
• competency-based education

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Kim Watty and her colleagues at the Deakin Business School, Professor Phillip Dawson and his colleagues at the Deakin Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE), and the participants at the British Accounting and Finance Association’s Accounting Education Special Interest Group Conference 2021, for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Cecile Janse van Rensburg is conducting a Ph.D. study at the Department of Accounting at the University of Pretoria (UP) on the topic of “approaches to digital learning and authentic assessment in accounting education”.

Stephen A. Coetzee, PhD, is a professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research interest is competency-based accounting education.

Astrid Schmulian, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research interest is competency-based accounting education.