Dr Trevor Prendergast, Head of Department, Accounting and Business, Dylan Donnelly, 1st Year BA in Accounting student, Adam O’Reilly, Student Recruitment, CPA Ireland and Brendan McLarney, Lecturer in Accounting

Athlone student wins national accounting competition

CPA Ireland and gamification application Quitch have announced the winners of the 2022 National Accounting Competition. Dylan Donnelly a student of the Technological University of the Shannon, Athlone Campus took first place with 88619 points. The Technological University of the Shannon Midlands Midwest Athlone Campus was the ‘Winning College’ of the competition.

The National Accounting Competition Ireland was hosted on the Quitch application, a gamified, mobile e-learning app that changes the way learners engage with knowledge.

Participants included first to final year accounting students as well as Masters students. Each week a range of theory-based accounting questions were released to participants on Quitch. Participants could monitor their progress under their avatar name and see their score on a leader board along with the other participants.

During the ten weeks of the competition 17 colleges across Ireland and Northern Ireland took part and the total amount of hours played was 12 days and 18 hours. There was a 76% average class accuracy and 35,871 questions were answered in one day at the peak of the competition.

Trevor Prendergast, Head of Department, Accounting and Business Computing at TUS Athlone Campus said, “We are absolutely thrilled at Dylan’s achievement, this is particularly noteworthy as he is in his first year of studies of the BA in Accounting here in TUS, Athlone campus. Dylan was also competing against more experienced students in other universities, some in their final year and studying on Masters programmes. We are delighted that Dylan availed of this opportunity with CPA Ireland and Quitch to showcase his accounting abilities on the national stage. On behalf of the lecturing team I would like to say a massive congratulations to Dylan.”

Grainne Oats, CEO of Quitch said: “I would like to congratulate Dylan, the other winners and everyone who has participated in this exciting competition. We were delighted to partner with CPA Ireland and provide students with a platform where they could use game-based techniques to answer theory-based accounting questions. There were brilliant results in the competition and we would like to congratulate everyone who took part.”

Gillian Peters, Director of Business Development at CPA Ireland said, “CPA Ireland were delighted to partner with Quitch to bring the inaugural National Accounting Competition to accountancy and finance students on the island of Ireland. As an Accountancy Body, we are focused on innovation and we were excited to bring a new gamified learning platform to the students. Congratulations to Dylan on this great achievement.”