Feedback in Australian accounting education: issues, student perceptions and reforms

Evidence from the Course Evaluation Questionnaire (a survey of Australian university graduates) shows that the Accounting discipline ranks poorly on assessment feedback when compared to other disciplines. This finding has potentially serious implications for teaching quality because assessment feedback is vitally important in the learning cycle. Moreover, since CEQ scores are used to allocate government funds to universities, and education is Australia's fourth largest export earner, improving these feedback scores is critical from a resourcing perspective. To date few studies have sought to understand the exact nature of the causes for the relatively poor performance in feedback scores in accounting. This study contributes to our understanding of the problem from the student perspective. Guided by frameworks of good assessment feedback practices enunciated in the literature, we report student perceptions obtained from a large survey of Australian undergraduate accounting students against five 'actions' of good assessment feedback practice. We find that accounting students value feedback that is individualised, diverse, detailed, constructive and timely, but that, on the whole, students report they are not currently receiving enough feedback with these features. While perhaps not surprising, these findings are important as they confirm aspects of concern that have been previously anecdotal. In addition, the nature of the research and large respondent numbers provides a reliable basis for future research.