Student feedback gives UNE Business School lecturers the opportunity to adjust and adapt their courses to be sure that all our students not only grasp key concepts but also understand how they are applied in a business context. UNE Business School teaching staff work to deliver qualifications with practical knowledge and applications to real world scenarios.

We heard from Brent Gregory recently, who shared with us the unexpected ways in which Pokemon Go impacted his teaching and delivery of Financial Accounting.

A short overview:

I seek a lot of feedback from students. At the end of Trimester 1 last year I received some feedback about what I could do to improve as a teacher, and that was for me to walk in the shoes of my students.  To do this, I needed to learn something outside my comfort zones (and there were some other things as well).

On my first night of Holidays in July last year, I was traveling on a ferry in Brisbane at 11:00 PM and as we went past Southbank there were thousands of people congregating on the foreshore.  My investigations revealed they were playing Pokemon Go.  So I decided that is what I would learn how to do.

My Pokemon Go journey educated substantially about how businesses are organising themselves and provided with a window into digital disruption in action. More significantly I did come to realise some things about the learning journey. The contribution that a mentor or even a fellow traveler makes to the learning experience is substantial.

The most profound realisation I came to was that sometimes we are not ready for a particular learning, the first time it is presented to us. It is crucial to understand this in accounting.  Because unless some things are mastered all other learning becomes very difficult. I did struggle with how I could overcome this problem.  In response, I developed a new learning device for accounting. It is called the Accounting Triangle.  The Accounting Triangle is a way to progressively grow mastery of accounting building blocks. These are the things that a student absolutely must know! The Accounting Triangle provides the language skills to remember the more advanced elements of accounting. When the material in the Accounting Triangle is mastered, a student is equipped with vocabulary to understand the language of business.”

The Accounting Triangle was introduced in Trimester 1 this year – Brent is currently considering the impact of location and how this experience and development is to affect further methods of teaching accounting as a result of student feedback.