DEVELOPING DIGITAL WORKED EXAMPLES TO EFFICIENTLY DEVELOP PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE Monte Wynder, Michelle Joubert, Gabriel Parle University of the Sunshine Coast (AUSTRALIA) Abstract Universities in Australia, responding to reduced government support, are changing rapidly in efforts to increase efficiency. At the institutional level this includes increasing staff workloads, decreasing face- to-face contact, and greater reliance on sessional staff members. At the same time, the student cohort face financial pressures that often require a balance between work and education. These macro-level changes have put pressure at the ‘coal face’ as educators are called upon to adapt their teaching methods. Blended learning has been advanced as a means of achieving both cost savings and increased learning effectiveness [1,2]. This study provides a personal account of a group of accounting academics (content specialists) who have responded to institutional pressures by becoming ad hoc instructional designers. These challenges may resonate with many other academics. Without specialist training in educational technology, many academics are being called upon to develop learning materials to support their university’s commitment to Blended Learning. We also consider the wealth of materials already made available online by other academics, and the relative benefits of production versus referring students to existing resources. For academics who choose to develop their own Digital Learning Objects (DLOs), Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) [3,4] provides insights and guidance. Specifically, worked examples [5,6,7] provide an efficient way to develop procedural knowledge [8] that can be efficiently and effectively distributed as DLOs. Videos that explain and illustrate the problem-solving steps in fundamental accounting problems offer an alternative, or at least a supplement, to individual consultation. Student feedback has been positive, and the pattern of student access to on-line materials suggests that they are particularly useful for just-in-time learning. Our experience also suggests that, despite a significant initial investment of time, there are significant time savings to be achieved by the educator. Keywords: Digital Learning Objects, Cognitive Load Theory, Procedural Knowledge. 1 INTRODUCTION The changing tertiary education landscape is creating and amplifying the challenge for educators, as well as providing new opportunities for efficiently reaching students in more engaging ways. Discipline experts, some of whom commenced their careers pre-PowerPoint, are now being expected to connect with students in new ways. Understanding the relative strengths, and weaknesses, of alternative mediums of instruction is important when matching them to learning objectives [9,10,11]. In addition to conveying facts and definitions (declarative knowledge), and developing an understanding of concepts and the relationships between them (conceptual knowledge) [12], procedural knowledge, i.e., the “action sequences for solving problems” [12,13] is fundamental to accounting. Worked examples have been identified as a powerful way to facilitate the acquisition of procedural knowledge [14,15]. This paper describes the use of Digital Learning Objects (DLOs) to distribute worked examples to students for Just in Time (JIT) access and learning. Such worked examples are widely available on the internet as discipline experts turn to this medium for connecting with a huge audience (well beyond their students). Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is used to guide design choices in the development of these DLOs. Cognitive Load Theory offers motivation and guidance for the development of worked examples to support the acquisition of procedural knowledge. Mostyn [16] called for further research in accounting to explore the insights from CLT and this paper responds to that call. Our findings highlight the efficiency and effectiveness gains for both students and educators from providing worked examples in the form of DLOs. Based on the experience of discipline, rather than instructional design, experts this paper seeks to provide practical insights for other accounting academics. Proceedings of EDULEARN17 Conference 3rd-5th July 2017, Barcelona, Spain ISBN: 978-84-697-3777-4 1894