Hi Leigh,
There is a website for this resource:www.ppresources.co.nz as I said we have master copies & can make as many hard copies as we want. I f we do have a budget for someone to search for resources like this that would be great.

This diagram shows the progression from source documents to final accounts in a manual accounting system. There are 7 journals:

Sales Journal - all invoices issued are entered in the Sales Journal

Sales Returns Journal - all credit notes are issued in the Sales Returns Journal

Cash Receipts Journal - Cash dockets, receipts, cheques received and direct credits are entered in the Cash Receipts Journal


General Journal - Contracts, memos are entered in the General Journal. Any transactions which do not involve Sale of Goods or Purchase of Goods are entered in the General Journal. For example Owner Equity additions or purchase of equipment or Owner Drawings.

Purchases Journal - all invoices received are entered in the Purchases Journal.

Purchase Returns Journal - all credit notes received are entered in the Purchases Returns Journal.

Cash Payments Journal - Receipts received, cheques issued and direct debits are entered in the Cash Payments Journal.

These entries are then transferred to 3 Ledgers: Receivables, Payables & General Ledger.

Mastering MYOB is a very good resource but there are a couple of things I would like to change. I had thought about contacting the author & asking if we could revise it, but thought we could go with it if we need to get our course up & running quickly & look at revising it later. It will be a really useful starting point in MYOB. I will contact the author when I get back & see what we can work out.

In the last few months I have done 2 Accounting Courses using MYOB.
The first was a really good introduction to MYOB. It is an NCES US & I think we can use it as such both online & in our NCBAC (will check that out with NZQA). If we can’t use it as a US course we will use it as an introduction to MYOB. It comes complete with additional exercises, an assessment and answers. This is a well written resource which takes the student through the steps required for a transaction and displays the resulting invoice or purchase order. Then there are 3 more exercises where the student has to set up businesses (these consolidate their learning}.
This resource is user-friendly and uses Plus 6TE. We can print as many copies as we want & send them out to students with Plus 6TE on a CD. The only problem is the student would have to go to the nearest CLC to sit the assessment (with Q4U online they have to do this).
The assessment was straight forward and easy to interpret & covered all the elements required for the US.

The second course was US 331/332. This was not so user-friendly. I didn’t have problems with the course as I had been through the book a couple of times before. I did have problems with the assessment. It was not easy to interpret, included features which were not covered in the book & the correct answers contained transactions which were not mentioned in the actual assessment.

There are several sections in the book for 331/332 which I will amend as they are not included in the elements and not used by businesses which operate MYOB. For example Time Billing and Back orders.

To deliver a successful Accounting course the facilitator must be familiar with the material & know how to get the correct answers, i.e. must be familiar with the methods used to get the result.

We have a modified assessment for these units (331/332) which we will get moderated.

Online Courses
It is important to stay in contact with your students. In order to have a successful Discussion Board the facilitator must keep responding to all students. If you just set up the Discussion topic & then leave it to the students they will not communicate as frequently as when the facilitator continues to contribute.
If the student has a deadline to finish the unit or course & the deadline is approaching a facilitator should e-mail the student & ask how they are going or if they are having problems rather than remind them that the unit is due.
The facilitator should be checking the Digital Drop Box on a regular basis say 2x a week. If a student has a deadline then a facilitator should also have one & perhaps let the students know at the beginning of the course that their assignments will be marked within a week or a reasonable time.
Specific feedback is really important: a student wants to know what they have done well & what they have not done well so a facilitator should always provide specific feedback

08/09/06

Project Scope - Online Course:-

Operate computer accounts receivable and payable ledger systems to administer financial information

and
Operate computer general ledger accounting systems to administer financial information

Department contact: Jean Tilleyshort

EDC contact: Leigh Blackall

Project leader: Vida Thompson


Project summary

The aims of this project are to provide an on-line course for students who wish to gain basic knowledge of an accounting program; and to study at a time and in an environment which suits them. This course will be a Level 3 NZQA qualification.

Project background

This project was undertaken because there is a need in our Community to provide this training/resource. There are many small business owners in our area who are using accounting programs, but generally not efficiently (due to lack of training). This problem arises because the accounting software comes with the business; having been purchased by the previous owner. As a result the current owner does not receive the introductory training provided when the software is purchased.
It is difficult for these small business owners to attend Face-to-Face sessions at set times to improve their knowledge of their particular accounting program.
We want to take our resources to them on-line and facilitate this course so the owners learn through communication (both with Facilitators and peers) and contribute their thoughts to the group, and as a result maximise their knowledge of accounting software.
At the end of the course our students will be able to enter data, correct mistakes and generate reports in the program. They will have the confidence to use the program to its full potential.
We do have several students who are studying the above courses at our Community Learning Centre but it is difficult for them to make time to attend our sessions, so being able to complete the course online would be ideal for these people.
We have had many enquiries regarding Basic Accounting Courses from people who would like to complete the course but cannot get to our Centre, either because of time constraints or distance to travel.
The Department of Business, Travel and Tourism run a National Certificate in Business Administration Course (Level 4) which includes a Level 3 Accounting course. This certificate is well-designed and will provide students with an advanced knowledge of business systems. The Level 3 accounting component is a blended course which means students are required to attend face-to-face sessions totalling 32 hours, with 18 self-directed hours. This is not an option for our prospective students.
There is an online intuto option for MYOB 331/332 Unit Standards but we cannot seem to get access to it. Also I feel intuto would not be the best choice for this course as accounting programs are complicated and intuto does have limitations with regard to communication and accessing good resources and references. With the intuto system a student has to go to intuto then open the program they need for the course then go back to intuto to read the information then go back to the program and pull up the exercise card to carry out the exercises. I feel the delivery of this course would be much more successful by using a textbook in conjunction with good online quizzes, theory questions and facilitator support in a program such as Blacboard.



Related projects

This project will be designed for our Community Learning Centres as this is where we see the need for it. We have many enquiries regarding accounting courses. These courses could be useful for other students who may want to own a business in the future such as Catering or Horticulture students, possibly Turf Management students.
This project could also be developed further to encompass open source software which would mean it was less specific. This development would be useful for people looking for employment within a business as the course would be more general and the knowledge gained could be adapted to any accounting software. Also it would be useful for anyone setting up a business as they would have the skills to search the open software and find a program to suit their business at little or no cost.

Project scope

Vida Thompson will be involved in setting the course up in Blackboard with help from Leigh & Bronwyn. Jean Tilleyshort will oversee the project.

Steps to be taken:
1. Outline the Course
2. We need to define the course: design quizzes, and an exercise for students to complete when they have finished all sections in the book (this will be part of the assessment).
3. The student will be assessed on completion of certain sections of the book also.
4. We need to obtain a Blackboard 7 shell & set up Resources, Discussion Board, Digital Drop box, Assessment, Quizzes and assignments.
5. Set up an Introductory face-to-face session to assess the student skill level, and if the student does not have the required skill level we will need to enroll them in some other units first, for example US 2784 (Excel) which they can do online through our Community Learning Centres

Possible issues and considerations
Limits
1. The student will need to purchase a copy of the textbook.
2. The student will need to download a copy of a suitable accounting program.

Possibilities
The possibilities have been covered under “Related Projects”.

Resources
1. Textbook (possibly US 331/332 by Cheryl Price and Julia Wix).
2. Accounting software.
3. Computer capable of running Blackboard 7.
5. Introductory screen recording of navigating within an accounting program.


Authorisation to proceed to funding application:

Head of Department sign: date:

Project Leader sign: date:

Educational Development sign: date:

Check out my Personal Resource List on del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/vidat

My 4 most important Issues/Considerations when Designing A flexible Learning Course

1. Access to Course content. The course must be designed so that the students can access the course content easily within the program. Blackboard is very easy to navigate in, so this would be the program of choice.
   
2. How to set up the assessment part of the course to make it easy for the students to complete online. I recently did a Blackboard 7 course so this point is now not such a big issue as I have learned a little about how to post information to various categories in Blackboard.
   
3. The initial contact with students, how to keep the communication lines open & getting the communication going between students. This was done very well by Bronwyn, Leigh & Terry so that would be a good example to follow. I thought the introduction & promise of a chocolate fish was a good strategy, even if you couldn’t actually eat the fish.
   
4. Ensuring the information provided to students is concise, clear & at the correct level for them. It will be very important to assess the Learner level carefully.
   

Copyright information

Screen recording of CreativeCommons licences

Digital Learning Resource

Useful Information about Open Software

What is Copyright?

Before you can legally reuse learning resources from the internet (or any other source) it is important to know about copyright. Every published work is protected whether it has the © or not. This means it may not be copied or changed without the owner’s permission.

Open Software
In recent years sites on the internet have provided a place where owners can publish their work and allow people to use it under terms they set.
Useful sites are:-
http://creativecommons.org/
Australian Flexible Learning Framework Community
http://del.icio.us/leighblackall/OpenCourseWare
http://sourceforge.net/
http://opencontent.org/ocwfinder/

You can use the above sites or search for using a search engine of your choice & fill in the topic you require0 + open software (eg. Accounting + open software).
These are excellent sites for finding resources to use in Flexible Learning but it is important to know the terms of the license if you are going to use a certain resource, as licenses vary. If you are not aware of what the license symbols mean then you may inadvertently use the resource illegally. We will look at Creative Commons Licenses.

There are 6 different licenses in CreativeCommons which allow the world to copy, distribute and sometimes change the original work under the owner’s conditions. Symbols are used for each type of license & these are inserted by the name of all works available from CreativeCommons (see chart below).If permission is obtained from the owner of the license the conditions are over-ruled.
Other sites do not use symbols so it is very important to read the License agreement before clicking “I Agree” because if a person does not know the content of the license agreement they could us the software illegally.