Perceptions of the Usefulness of Virtual Learning Environments in Accounting Education: A Comparative Evaluation of Undergraduate Accounting Students in Spain and England

Abstract

As the power of the virtual world continues to manifest itself in people's quality of life and capabilities (including learning), this paper aims to assess accounting students' perceptions of the usefulness of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) to their learning experiences. It also considers the factors that may influence students' preferences for the VLE compared to face-toface learning. The study administered a structured questionnaire to final-year undergraduate accounting students in two universities, one in Spain and the other in England, and applied t-test, correlation and factor analyses. Although the results show that students from both countries find VLE tools and techniques useful for their learning, within the frame of the contingency theory of education, the study found that students' perceptions of the usefulness of VLEs are strongly dependent upon their country of study, due to the significant differences between Spanish and English students in five of the seven VLE contextual factors.

Self-assessment via a blended-learning strategy to improve performance in an accounting subject

“…By analysing the students' opinions on their perceptions of the self-assessment activities, we have been able to show that they felt that they were interesting and useful, as other studies have done (Owston, York, & Murtha, 2013;Santamaría, Ramos, & Sánchez-Antolín, 2012), some of which were conducted in the field of Economics and Business Studies (López Gavira & Omoteso, 2013;Wells, DeLange, & Fieger, 2008). It is also interesting to note that they rated usefulness higher than interestingness.…”

Accounting Students' Perceptions on A Role of Distance Education in Their Soft Skills Development

“…Most of the studies have discussed students' perceptions of the role of distance education environment in improving learning outcomes in Accounting and Business education (De Lange et al, 2003;Love & Fry, 2006;Basioudis et al, 2012;Tseng et al, 2019), while very few independent studies that have discussed students' perceptions on the role of distance education in soft skills development in accounting education (Weil et al, 2011a;López Gavira & Omoteso, 2013;Ratnaningsih, 2013;Weil et al, 2013b;Herrador-Alcaide et al, 2019). The success of distance learning tools apply is usually influenced by the student's satisfaction factor with distance education E-Systems (Almaiah et al, 2020;Shams et al, 2022).…”

Rendimiento académico y utilización de entornos virtuales de aprendizaje por los alumnos de una asignatura de contabilidad

“…Por su parte, el uso de entornos virtuales de aprendizaje facilita un enfoque de aprendizaje más centrado en el estudiante (Mitchell, DiPetta y Kerr, 2001;Wells, Fieger y de Lange, 2008), permite a los alumnos asumir un papel más activo al no ser meros receptores de información, como puede ocurrir en las clases tradicionales y una relación entre profesores y alumnos más individual (López Gavira y Omoteso, 2013). Todos estos aspectos pueden culminar en un aprendizaje de mejor calidad (Potter y Johnston, 2006;Wells, Fieger y de Lange, 2008), especialmente cuando se combinan con la enseñanza tradicional en el aula (McVay, Murphy y Yoon, 2008).…”