DIPCAT: Designing Innovative Pedagogy for Complex Accountancy Topics

The DIPCAT project has created an internationally-oriented learning platform in accountancy that supports skill development for early career professionals.

Graduates planning to work in specialist areas of accountancy require specific competencies. They must develop sound subject-specialist knowledge, professional skills, values, ethics and attitudes during their studies.

This often cannot be achieved through one-way, didactic teaching methods, which consist only of traditional lectures, seminars, and modes of assessment.

The Designing Innovative Pedagogy for Complex Accounting Topics (DIPCAT) project aimed to address this gap in Higher Education by creating an internationally-oriented learning platform in accountancy that facilitates this essential hard and soft skill development for early career professionals.

Bournemouth University led eleven other European Universities in the three-year, Erasmus+ funded project, which came to an end in December 2021.

The approach

The project designed, developed and delivered four integrated accountancy case studies with contemporary content and innovative methods for wider dissemination in Higher Education.

The case studies and the supplementary materials are designed to address all the competencies that are needed for emerging accountancy professionals – such as subject-specific knowledge, problem solving ability, interdisciplinary thinking, soft skills and the ability to recognise ethical issues in accountancy.

While adaptable to short courses (e.g. ISPs or CPD), taken in their entirety, each case provides the scaffolding, content and assessment for 20-credit modules.

The cases and their supplemental learning materials, tasks and pedagogical innovations will be freely available through the European Union repository.

The case studies

IO1 - International Taxation

IO1 gives students an appreciation for the complexities Multinational Entities (MNEs), tax advisers and authorities face in the current international tax environment, with reference to national and supra-national frameworks. IO1 has been developed during a time of significant and continual changes to such tax frameworks (2018-2021).

IO1 highlights national and international tax issues of a fictious MNE (Sophia’s Dream Group) operating throughout Europe. It contributes to the innovation and impact of project-DIPCAT with respect to the over-arching relevance of international tax challenges. IO1 focuses on the key challenges identified by the OECD in their 2018 interim report, ‘Tax Challenges arising from Digitalisation’: nexus and profit allocation. In addition, the case considers methodological and administrative complexities of transfer pricing.

IO2 – modelling for the changing requirements in accounting for financial instruments

IO2's aim is to explain to students the complex regulation behind the accounting for financial instruments. It is designed not only to “tell” the rules but to have students collaborate and solve complex issues, make judgements and complicated decisions. IO2 is built around a case study (Sophia’s Dream Group), which is used in many cases as a common background in the project.

Compared with the previous regulation, probably the biggest change is that companies must be able to use more sophisticated methods to report on these very common items of the financial statements and, even for the simplest instruments, important judgments are going to be required and the use of modeling is inevitable.

The topic – due to its size – is split into two phases. Phase number one covers the classification and measurement issues, while phase two deals with the expected credit loss model (ECL model).

IO3 - Digitalization in Auditing

IO3 provides students with an understanding of the complexities involved in auditing the financial statements of a multinational enterprise (MNE). IO3 was developed at a time when the importance of the use of audit software and the associated performance of process mining as well as analytical audit procedures as part of the financial statement audit has increased significantly (2018-2021).

IO3 highlights the audit approach of a fictitious multinational company (Sophia's Dream Group) operating across Europe. It contributes to the innovation and impact of the DIPCAT project in terms of the over-arching relevance of digitalisation in international auditing. IO3 focuses on analytical audit activities as well as process mining.

IO3 covers a variety of topics that together form the framework, content and assessment for a 20-credit module in the final year of undergraduate and/or postgraduate study. The professional competencies fostered through casework are problem solving, critical thinking, communication, presentation, teamwork and technical research with reference to the Bologna Qualifications Framework for the European Higher Education Area." In addition, students acquire important skills in the use and application of relevant auditing software.

IO4 - Corporate Social Responsibility and Tax Avoidance

IO4 focuses on the link between firms’ tax behaviour and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It aims to engender deep critical thinking about the links between CSR and aggressive tax behaviours and to encourage students to answer these questions: Can a company claim to be socially responsible while adopting aggressive tax practices? Is paying taxes a moral duty or just a cost to be mitigated?

IO4 offers two case studies to help students increase their awareness and critical thinking and thus be better able to evaluate the behaviour of companies, considering both their social and tax behaviour, and assessing the ethical and social implications of the latter.

IO4 contributes to the innovation and impact of the DIPCAT project as it increases students' judgement and sensitivity towards ethics, sustainability, and social responsibility issues. IO4 encourages the formation of responsible citizens, thus allowing students to contribute to the improvement of society, whether they will be entrepreneurs, managers, investors, funders, policymakers, or consumers.

The cases proposed in this IO4 have been used in teaching modules for undergraduate and graduate students. They encourage innovation in teaching methods applied in accounting courses, where very traditional teaching approaches have prevailed until now.

Solutions to the case studies and additional teaching materials are available to Higher Education Institutions for free.

Please request the solutions by contacting Dr Phyllis Alexander

Intensive study programmes

The cases were first tested in a week-long Intensive Study Programme (ISP) at BU in September 2019.

Around 100 students from 12 universities across Europe, as well as Southern Connecticut University in the USA, came together to work on the case studies.

Subsequent Intensive Study Programmes were planned to be delivered in Innsbruck and Budapest in 2020 and 2021 but, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, these were delivered via hybrid events that students could participate in remotely.

Students provided feedback and evaluation which facilitated and focused improvements to the learning platform.

The intensive study programmes also gave students opportunity to network with each other and with professionals and policymakers in accountancy.

“We’re constantly in touch with our professional networks to make sure that we’re producing students that are going to be career ready and that have honed those all-important employability skills like communication and teamwork.”

Dissemination and impact

The final output of the project is a unique, innovative and comprehensive learning platform which has already been integrated into the curricula of many accounting units. It has the potential to have significant impact at a regional, national and European level.

The finished International Tax and CSR cases were showcased at the Tax Research Network’s Education Day in September 2021 and have already been adopted at other Higher Education Institutions. The IFRS and Auditing cases were showcased at an International Accounting Conference in Budapest in November 2021.

The outcomes of the project will further enhance the quality of education at Higher Education Institutions using the platform. Participating students develop competencies required in international accountancy practice, enhancing their employability for SMEs as well as multi-national organisations.

Read the DIPCAT dissemination booklet

The future

While DIPCAT has now come to an end, the partners continue to collaborate in research, professional practice and education, as they have done for over 25 years.

The consortium has another Erasmus+ project currently underway – Smart Teaching in Accounting – Meeting Place Online, with its first intensive study programme taking place in November 2021.