DEVELOPING AN INSTITUTIONAL DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT ECOSYSTEM IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION: A QUALITATIVE CASE STUDY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/IJMOE.831063Keywords:
Digital Engagement, Accounting Education, Digital Transformation, Career Readiness, Graduate EmployabilityAbstract
Higher education programs are expected to develop students’ digital capabilities by embedding digital skills within broader professional competencies and critical thinking frameworks․ However‚ many accounting programs fail to prepare students to engage with the digital world in depth‚ despite significant investment in educational technologies․ This study seeks to examine how an institutional digital engagement ecosystem can be developed in higher accounting education․ A qualitative case study approach was adopted using document analysis of strategic plans, quality assurance reports, i-Score reports, community engagement reports, and other institutional documents from the Faculty of Accountancy, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). The documents were thematically analysed to identify antecedents, mechanisms and outcomes of digital engagement․ The results show that institutional support‚ strategic alignment‚ digital infrastructure‚ stakeholder collaboration and professional accreditation are antecedents of digital engagement through experiential learning‚ digital innovation and collaborative learning mechanisms․ These processes contribute to connected learning‚ critical document literacy‚ career readiness‚ graduate employability‚ and institutional excellence․ Based on a sociotechnical systems approach and existing literature‚ the study builds an institutional digital engagement ecosystem to explain the social and technical factors in enhancing digital learning in accounting education․ The findings help higher education institutions understand how to enable digital transformation‚ and how graduates may operate in the changing profession․
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