Evolution of Powerpoint … HyperDocs…
In honour of Stephen and Astrid’s trip to Australia as the keynote speakers at the RMIT Accounting Educators Conference next week (Mon 19 November 2018), the Talking Accounting team invited them to provide a guest blog. Enjoy!
Evolution of PowerPoint … HyperDocs…
By Stephen A Coetzee & Astrid Schmulian
In his recent post (October 1, 2018), David Bond considered “Death to PowerPoint! Maybe…”. Rather than as drastic an outcome as death, we propose an evolution – HyperDocs with Google Slides. HyperDocs, championed by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton and Sarah Landis, are transforming teaching and learning at school-level and now in higher education.
HyperDocs embrace the online collaborative features of Google Slides (or Docs) and allows you to move deeper within the SAMR model of classroom technology integration. Where PowerPoint has largely ‘Substituted’ the overhead projector and whiteboard, HyperDocs allow a move from ‘Substitution’ to ‘Modification’ or ‘Redefinition’.
Historically, accounting instructors identified specific learning outcomes and imparted the knowledge to achieve these outcomes during a PowerPoint driven lecture. After class, students worked through homework questions in preparation for the assessment. Over time, this model may have evolved by flipping the lecture out of the class to YouTube, potentially creating time in class for greater discussion and interaction. This discussion may, however, continue to be teacher-driven, focused on examples or questions for the whole class group and delivered at a uniform pace. Students remain passive and there remains little time for differentiated, one-to-one engagement between the instructor and individual students or amongst students and their peers. There may also be little evidence of knowledge creation or construction, for long-term retention and understanding.
HyperDocs transfer ownership of your lesson plan to your students, facilitating their self-paced exploration of the material necessary to construct their knowledge in order to achieve the learning outcomes, as illustrated in the linked HyperDoc “Accounting for Bees”
Allowing the HyperDoc to guide your students’ exploration of a topic, enables them to pace their learning and gives you, as the instructor, greater freedom from the podium to engage with students individually or in smaller groups, constructively scaffolding their learning, while your HyperDoc is facilitating the larger class group’s learning. HyperDocs can offer students a choice of material relevant to their level of knowledge, such as additional basic material for students still finding their way through the basics of a topic, or material to extend students that may work faster or are at a higher level of understanding of a topic.
An inherent risk with HyperDocs is that the document becomes a collection of hyperlinks or an online worksheet at the ‘Substitution’ level. Instructors should take advantage of the ability of Google Slides to participate actively and collaboratively with others and to learn from a variety of media. Because it is digital, HyperDocs can bring static learning material to life with video and animation. Introducing the HyperBook…
Death to textbooks? Maybe…
Please share the links to the HyperDocs you create in the comments below or on Twitter, #accountingeducation, for others to be inspired by.
Stephen & Astrid are faculty in the Department of Accounting at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. They have been teaching intermediate financial accounting as a team for more than 10 years and have published extensively in accounting education. For more information: www.ifrsrookies.com