The project Walking the Walk: Enhancing Student Learning Using Audio Visual Depiction of Business Processes was designed to provide audiovisual materials that accurately and clearly portray common business processes. The materials were created for students studying accounting information systems who are required to draw business process documentation in the form of dataflow diagrams and systems flowcharts and prepare plans to achieve an adequate level of internal control. Furthermore, students are expected to apply this knowledge as they document and assess common business processes and as they evaluate, analyze, and interpret the efficacy of business processes and related internal controls.


The process of learning the skills required to visualize a business process is relatively straightforward. However, a learning challenge involves moving students beyond the mechanical skills of documenting a process into the more interpretive arena of analyzing and improving specific process instances and their related controls. In order to correctly analyze a particular process, students need to fully understand the activities taking place in that process. Failure to do so often results in inefficient or inappropriate process recommendations being made.

One of the primary issues with teaching and learning in the business process space is the necessity for students to visualize business activities before they are able to confidently document, assess, and redesign business processes. The teaching and learning materials available for this subject area have traditionally been text-based, and, regardless of the care taken to ensure that case studies are detailed and insightful, text-based materials remain one-dimensional descriptions of multifaceted phenomena. Static texts typically omit valuable visual cues; for example, an individual’s body language and their proximity to various objects or the physical security of a work environment. If students have the ability to see activities being performed—such as receiving goods into a warehouse or entering data into a computer system—a deeper contextual layer is present that can result in them conducting more meaningful analyses.


The project involved scripting and filming eight videos of three to four minutes’ duration that demonstrate four important business activities: processing a sales order, picking and packing goods, billing a customer, and receiving and recording payments. For each activity, a “good” and “bad” version of the process was filmed, all within the authentic workplaces of an office and a warehouse. For example, the footage below demonstrates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ versions of the receiving goods process.

While the audiovisual resources can be used by students in an entirely online capacity in conjunction with online exercises and assessments, their use in a blended manner is the optimal means to develop students’ observation, documentation, and analysis skills. Sections of a process can be played in class to illustrate how an activity is conducted and can be linked to exercises that help students identify appropriate controls. Students are also able to write a process narrative based solely on their observations (and interview notes), a learning opportunity that cannot be replicated using text-based case studies.

The existence of two versions of each activity allows for particularly rich discussions and activities. Students are able to analyze a visual depiction of a process in the ‘bad” version and identify areas for improvements and can then use the “good” version to learn about best practice as part of a comprehensive classroom learning resource that also includes a suite of dataflow diagrams and flowcharts, a risk-based analysis of each process, and teaching notes concerning content and options for using the resources.


All Walking the Walk videos were professionally filmed on campus and featured working actors. Video processes were fully documented. These included scripts, written narratives, and solutions incorporating a range of flowcharts and identification of appropriate controls. Scripts were prepared by an academic who also helped identify and procure props, source actors, and eventually direct and produce the filmed material. This involved a huge learning curve and was time consuming; however, producing the videos seemed to be the only way the finished product would fully dovetail into existing curriculum and learning materials and contain sufficient authenticity to serve as a valid teaching resource.

An activity that took a particular amount of time was scouting for locations. The scripts required the equivalent of a working warehouse, but a commercial working warehouse could not be used because of occupational health and safety and other considerations, and eventually the project team located a suitable storage warehouse on campus.

The completed materials have been successfully incorporated into courses taught at both the undergraduate level (Business Process Analysis, approximate class size of 400 first-year students) and postgraduate level (Information Processes and Controls, approximate class size of 100 second-semester students). The incorporation of the materials into these courses has been gradually refined over four semesters (two teaching years). Currently, “good” versions are being used by academic staff to augment the traditional paper-based materials. These “good” versions are delivered as applied case studies. Students are required to identify and document the process activities and flows depicted in the films. The “bad” versions have been used as interactive tutorial cases with students asked to identify, document, and correct the flaws they can see in both the process design and the control environment. Feedback received to date indicates that students see these videos as an authentic and useful learning tool. Students often notice that the locations involved are in and around the university, and students are interested that these materials have been purpose-designed and created on campus. This local effect appears to help students feel closer to the materials, which in turn improves engagement with materials and learning tasks.

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