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Professional accountants today face many challenges caused by many factors, most notably the evolution of information technology - the digital revolution. Professional accountants are required to possess specific knowledge and skills inherent to the accounting profession, as well as generic skills. Higher education in accounting is one of the fundamental forms of formal education that enables professional accountants to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills and to develop professional competence. In accounting education, understanding the role of the modern professional accountant, required knowledge and skills, serves as the basis for establishing relevant teaching areas, units, and learning outcomes. Accounting education should consider market requirements related to the necessary skills and knowledge of professional accountants, and adjust accounting curriculum as well as teaching methods accordingly. In this regard, teaching methods are linked to learning outcomes and they should enable accounting graduates to acquire labour market-relevant skills and knowledge. There is a continuing need to adjust accounting education to market demands in the wake of ongoing academic discussions about the existing gap between accounting education and requirements of accounting practice. The aim of the paper is to explore current innovative teaching methods in higher education in accounting, with a particular focus on the means of integrating information technology (IT/ICT) into accounting education, based on a literature review of relevant sources. The paper also explores how innovative teaching methods affect the development of skills required of a modern professional accountant. The development of information technologies affects the content of education as well as teaching methods. A review of recent literature also focuses on analyzing the use of innovative teaching methods based on student attitudes and examines the level of information technology integration in accounting education and its impact on learning outcomes. The research findings contribute to the understanding of innovation in accounting education, summarizing new teaching methods and the impact of information technology in that context. These findings will primarily serve accounting educators by providing insight into innovative teaching methods and the extent of their current presence in accounting education, as well as their benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contexts of higher learning, students must be supported effectively in developing their knowledge, skills, and competencies. Thus, faculty members (incl. lecturers and administrators) are faced with the management task to organize and align innovative teaching and learning formats. As we know from research, the use of knowledge visualization is both a facilitating tool for cognitive processing and learning itself, and for strategic decision-making processes within organizations. However, the literature on the types of (IT-enabled) knowledge visualization for learning in higher education contexts is highly fragmented and dispersed and includes different branches for researchers and practitioners. This makes it difficult to achieve an overview and find systematic and consistent visual approaches along students' learning paths. By highlighting the role of knowledge visualization to support organizing innovative teaching and learning, we provide a systematic, structured overview of such approaches. The goal of this paper is thus to structure the field of knowledge visualization for lifelong and university-based learning based on seminal papers. For this purpose, we present a segmentation approach with six areas to analyse the role of knowledge visualization for learning in higher education contexts, namely: Visualizing Learning Offers (e.g., Curriculum Visualization Tools), Visual Learning Environments (e.g., Metaverse), Learning Content Visualization (e.g., Visual Variation Patterns), Visual Techniques for Learning (e.g., Concept Mapping), Visual Learning Analytics (e.g., Learner Dashboards), and Visualizing Learning Outcomes (e.g., Digital Course Badges). Based on systemizing key concepts, our paper concludes with promising future research avenues for each of the six areas, as well as for the domain of knowledge visualization for higher learning itself. We conclude with specific ideas how the area of visualizing learning offers can act as a spearhead for empirical research (and practice transfer) in the knowledge visualization domain. This should help practitioners and researchers from higher education contexts who consider lifelong learning as knowledge management task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a significant academic increase in the field of entrepreneurship since 2010, this has resulted in dramatic increase of organizational- as well as course initiatives at universities across the globe. There is an ongoing debate regarding suitable ways to teach entrepreneurship spanning between arguments for more theoretical- or more practical approaches. Entangled in higher education uptake of entrepreneurship is also the concept of innovation, and student- and faculty driven innovation initiatives. In this paper, we present experiences from action research engagement in building, scaling and exporting entrepreneurship education and university innovation strategy during a 10 year period. We present data from eight action -- reflection cycles. Findings are presented in a discussion format as implications for entrepreneurship course development, and implications for university innovation management. Implications for course development are to i) teach entrepreneurship "as a method", ii) push for interdisciplinary classes, iii) emphasize group projects, and finally iv) use entrepreneurial witnesses. Implications for university innovation strategy are to i) use a broad definition of the concept, ii) own the agenda, iii) nurture early phases of ideas, and finally iv) build the innovation ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge is an essential source for competitive advantage. The existence of knowledge and the encouragement of knowledge sharing (KS) cultures within learning environments will increase the quality of education and create opportunities for innovation. As universities are environments for creating knowledge, KS and leadership styles are important vehicles to enhance or impair Innovation through this knowledge environment. Higher education in Iraq, as many countries, is facing major challenges that require certain types of leadership styles. Education provision needs to maintain international standards in curricula, approaches, methods, and systems. Although there are many styles have been studied in the leadership area, the most important style that is effective in terms of knowledge sharing and innovation is transformational leadership. This paper aims to develop a conceptual model of the effect of transformational leadership (TL) on innovation through knowledge sharing (KS) in Iraqi higher education institutions. Interpretvisim approach was used through conducting interviews with 26 senior management and members of staff, in faculty of Economic and Administration in Iraq. The results show the need for KS within the faculty and the importance of TL on process innovation more than product innovation. This research consider an initial attempt to explore the impact of TL on innovation through mediating effect of KS within domain of higher education in the developing countries particularly in Arabic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The campusemerge is the first teaching award for innovative multi-media based for seminars or lectures at all Lower Saxon universities. The award is promoted from the project "Multimedial & aktiv". The aim of this project is to foster the integration of eLearning in the academic subjects in Higher Education. This will be reached by two aspects: the development of a federal dissemination concept of subject-oriented know-how as well as the promotion of a multi-media teaching award. By the reason that the award is for academic courses with multimedia elements the attendees were requested to present the concept of their course as video and abstract. From eleven Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences 26 presentations are submitted. The winners are found by a two-stage assessment procedure: First a public voting and subsequent an interdisciplinary professional jury. Nearly 1.000 users took part in the public voting. The videos are seen in more than 40 countries. To check whether the procedure of the teaching award has come, an evaluation was carried out. A two-stage methodical investigation design became developed in a student project seminar. This evaluation takes into consideration the attendees as well as the public voter. A few results of the evaluation are presented in this paper. ELearning has been established in Lower Saxon Higher Education for the past eight years now. A lot of cooperations are originated in federal projects, especially between teachers, educational technologists as well as staff from IT-support. However, it is now obvious that the subject-oriented support of teachers still needs further development. The project "Multimedial & aktiv" intended to meet these needs. Up to the present, different new impulses have originated in the project to the strengthening of the apprenticeship in the area of Multimedia for universities in Lower Saxony. With campusemerge a communication canal was created who represents good media-supported apprenticeship, which has excited attention all over the Lower Saxony, nationally and internationally. The teaching price has produced a row more interesting didactic attempts and contacts which led on account of the transparence of the competition for all partners and enthusiasts to an active exchange and to the network education. This network will grow and will continue on a permanent basis. Out of this originate informal forms of the helpful knowledge mediation as well as interest in structured continuing education formats how it provides campuseducation. The first workshops with the subject-oriented support are held with great success. These workshops are co-operation between participants of campusemerge and trainer from CELSHE. One Workshop for in German called MINT(mathematics, informatics, nature-sciences, technical)-subjects is exemplarily demonstrated in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online education in institutional contexts means new organizational problems. The fact that universities need to change to accommodate the impact of technology on learning is already known and accepted. Coping with changes from adoption until institutionalization of online education represents a formidable management challenge for universities. Online education, under the umbrella of e-learning was perceived by several early researchers as an innovation per-se, "established and embedded" in educational institutions. Nevertheless, the Department for Education and Skills of UK insists that e-learning is not embedded at any stage of education. The focus was strongly set on technological, practical and pedagogical aspects but there are relevant reports about failures in embedding innovations in educational institutions. The institutional lack of strategies to cope with international students and new technologies as well as supporting for future online developments clearly appeared in recent studies. Competition in the market of Higher Education has pushed universities towards the adoption of sophisticated organizational practices to ensure effectiveness. These new institutional models require changing traditional functions and roles, as online education does not usually fit into the existing university structure. The transition from on-campus to online education evolves in new roles, either in the pedagogical or in the administration domains. Organizational factors, more than teachers and students attitudes or technological features seem to mark the differences in the general perception about technology-mediated education getting successfully embedded in institutional new programs, roles, procedures, culture and structures. The aim of this paper is to revisit the existing theoretical background about the process from adoption until institutionalization of online education and explore the needs for further research. The overall purpose is to encourage researchers to fill the gaps of knowledge helping university managers to address a more clear understanding of the individual and organizational interactions that influence the development of strategies and institutionalization of emergent online educational initiatives. Exploring the current theoretical background it could be found that IT-innovation adoption models describe very extensively organizational issues, but they mainly take into account educational innovation take-up, adoption and implementation as isolated stages. They focus on factors and prescribed practices, but not on the human interactions during the transition from individual adoption until institutionalization. The disconnection between individual and organizational IT adoption research was remarked by the Diffusion Interest Group in Information Technology (DIGIT) in their 2004 conference. Since then, several authors have claimed for a better understanding of this linkage. The lack of clearness about the phenomena and a description of how individual and group-level processes enable and/or hinder the development of organizational routines, were reported as a still under-developed topic and according to the findings of this review it seems to be still an ongoing theme. Consequently, under the circumstance of the transformation that universities are undergoing, the need for a systematic study analyzing the implementation of emergent IT innovations in education appears as significant. Particularly, the process from its adoption at individual level until its institutionalization and the linkage between individual and organizational purposes need to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we systematize the findings of a study related to the staff training and professional development in higher education. The integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the pedagogical practice of higher education institutions has been a worldwide movement, as a reactive process to meet the needs of today's societies characterised by constantly growing levels of socio-economic competitiveness. Faced with this reality, universities have invested in the development of programs to expand professors' ICT skills as this is proved to be related to the modernization of graduate and postgraduate programs, to the adoption of more innovation teaching methodologies, and consequently to the improvement of students' training. With the purpose of encouraging the adoption of digital technologies and the use of online environments for teaching purposes, the E-Learning Lab of the University of Lisbon has been providing workshops since its constitution, in 2010. The core areas of the workshops are: (i) the use of learning management systems as a support of students' learning; (ii) the pedagogical models for e-learning, and (iii) the use of multimedia tools for developing digital educational resources. This study focuses on the data collected through an online questionnaire addressed to the total of the professors enrolled in these workshops. It aims to identify the factors that contribute to a high level of satisfaction with these staff professional development' initiatives. A quantitative methodological approach was adopted. Data was collected between 2014 and 2017 from the 19 workshops developed with approximately 170 participants and with a total number of 103 respondents. The results outlined the relevancy of factors associated with the relevancy of the workshops to professors teaching practices, the value attributed to the supporting materials, the balance between the technical and the pedagogical skills addressed in the workshop, the work dynamics, and the knowledge and competence of the training staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning, especially in the context of higher education, means creating, storing, sharing and using knowledge in a complex way, both for personal and societal benefits. Therefore, knowledge management is at home in universities. It should be at the core of managerial practices, but also of educational processes. The literature in the field pays attention to both aspects. Some themes seem to be particularly important, especially those related with the challenges universities face. Special consideration is given to the role of the Internet in learning, while the strategies for increasing knowledge creation and knowledge acquisitions through the Internet are lesser discussed. Academic literature draws the attention on creatively using knowledge more than in creating it, stressing the high potential of the Internet in the context of higher education. Students tend to favour the Internet and to integrate it in their studies and research, in order to increase their knowledge, not just to communicate with peers. Studies regarding students all over the world suggest that the Internet facilitates learning and the spread of information, but at the present moment it is not efficiently used. In this context, the present paper investigates how effective knowledge management is in education and how the Internet could be used to create knowledge in the context of learning. The starting point of the investigation is given by the four activities of knowledge management presented by Watson (2003) - acquirement, analysis, preservation and use of knowledge. The present research identifies how these are applied in the context of learning. Special attention is given to how students use the acquired knowledge to create new knowledge. The paper argues in favour of a more complex use of the Internet both in education, leading not only to more efficient acquiring of knowledge but also to the creation of valuable knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New forms of eLearning support systems have been introduced to higher education to help meet student-centred learning paradigms. ELearning continues to develop rapidly, supported by increasing sophistication of information technology, and by better understanding of how to make course content and delivery more effective. While the development in eLearning has been exciting and beneficial, finding ways of enhancing the quality of provision has posed a serious challenge. This paper evaluates the implementation of an international MBA eLearning programme of a UK university, with a focus on one of its largest overseas sites - Oman. The main objective was to investigate the eLearning perceptions and experiences of the students and to use the findings to evaluate the effectiveness of the learning system to enhance course design and delivery. A longitudinal semi-structured questionnaire approach was used, with four rounds of data collected between 2008 and 2011. In addition to survey question responses, comments and suggestions were invited from the respondents. This paper discusses the results of the most recent survey, carried out online in 2011. Overall, the findings indicate a high level of satisfaction with the programme following changes made based on findings from previous surveys. However the new findings suggest further changes are desirable in the structure and content of the eLearning approach. In particular, the perceptions of the students suggested room for improvement in the following areas: communication and student support; learning support systems; assignment and examination support and feedback. It is hoped that this research can offer valuable insights to this university and to the wider academic audience of eLearning course developers and managers involved in current or prospective overseas eLearning programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations need a "strategy 2.0" that takes advantages and prevents risks of using Web 2.0 tools; higher education institutions can, as any other organisation, profit from the advantages of these tools, as these institutions need to balance acquisition processes with learner's participation and contributions, but these tools have been used, to the present, in these educational contexts, in logistic processes rather than in training processes. The use of these tools in training processes can contribute to pedagogical innovation and to develop students' learning and professional skills; so, it must be promoted. This paper presents a case study, aiming to validate the strategy 2.0 used in Information System Management classes of Management Course in a Portuguese higher education institution, as the skills developed in students during the referred teaching and learning process. This validation will be a contribution to the design of appropriate guidelines to the definition of a strategy 2.0 for higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge and knowledge sharing are recognised as being important resources for competitive advantage, and key to enhancing the innovation of organisations. It is argued that the encouragement of knowledge-sharing cultures within learning environments such as universities, can increase the quality of education and can create opportunities for innovation. This research aims to examine the impact of sharing (donating and collecting) knowledge on product and process innovation. A total of 230 usable questionnaires were collected from private colleges in Iraq. Structural equation modelling with AMOS 20 confirmed the importance of knowledge sharing in developing innovation in higher education. The results revealed that collecting knowledge has a greater effect on product and process innovation than donating knowledge. Guidelines are developed for academics as well as leaders, and evidence is provided in support of the use of sharing knowledge in enhancing product and process innovation within higher education in developing countries generally and in Iraq in particular. The implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the demands that today's society is making of the European Space of Higher Education (ESHE) is the establishment of a system that favors providing students with a comprehensive education that aims to achieve the optimum development of the skills needed in our current society. Another requirement concerns reforming the methodologies applied in classrooms, focusing the emphasis on learning and evaluation (personal, social and professional) based on competences and giving students a more prominent role in these processes. This social and academic framework is based on an organic model of information in which information is reused, reinterpreted and returned. We are talking about promoting complex methodological changes which involve the redefinition of the whole concept of learning and evaluation which are key aspects of the education system. Faced with this outlook, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) has devised a new transverse evaluation instrument based on learning competences: the e-transfolio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]