Susan Whittaker

I am a senior lecturer in Accounting and Finance. I have been lecturing at UWE for 11 years, previous to which I was a professional accountant. I worked as a professional accountant for 16 years working on audits of public and private sector clients and qualified as a FCCA. Since coming into teaching I have been interested in teaching a professional subject, Auditing, in an academic setting and this was the subject of my PhD which I completed in 2014. As part of my research, together with an e-learning technologist I developed an online audit simulation where students could work through a financial audit. This simulationis featured on UWE website http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/study/courses/coursesbysubject/accountingeconomicsfinance/auditsimulation.aspx and is currently licensed to 16 universities in the UK and abroad.

I previously was the programme leader of BA Accounting and Finance for 6 years and currently hold two roles in the department. I am the International Direct Entrant Tutor for students entering Accounting, Economics and Finance programmes directly at levels 2 and 3. I am also the Learning and Teaching Coordinator for Accounting, Economics and Finance department.

Area of expertise I teach Auditing and also work with a network of 16 universities who use the simulation to introduce innovation into the course. This year we held an inter-university competition where teams of students competed to present their work on the audit simulation. This was judged by a team of accountants from RSM Chartered Accountants. In 2017 I became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Publications

Whittaker, S. (2014) Practice or theory? A phenomenographic study of teachers’ perceptions of teaching auditing in higher education. PhD, University of the West of England. Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/22437 '