Course Welcome & Overview
Course Welcome & Overview
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Watch This First: Kevin Kimball Welcome Video
Links to an external site. If you ever get lost and don't know what you have already completed |
Welcome to Introduction to Accounting for a User's Perspective
I am excited that you have decided to stretch yourself and learn the world-wide language of business: accounting.
These course materials are best accessed through a web-browser such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, but the materials are also accessible through iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. If you have problems accessing the YouTube videos, please check your browser security settings Links to an external site..
The course is organized into 16 modules. Each module contains reading and video material as well as quizzes. To view which modules and learning activities you have or have not already completed, web-browser users can click on the Modules link on the left course navigation menu. This will take you to the module view. From here you will also immediately see a green check mark next to all completed requirements.
If you have any questions regarding a content within a learning module, please use the Help Form to submit your question. This way other students who may have the same question can also look up the answer.
Once you have fully read this page, please move on to the next requirement by clicking on the Next link at the bottom right of this page, or just click on the Modules link on the left-side of this page and work your way down through the requirements.
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Your Professor
My name is Kevin Kimball.
I am a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) and an associate professor of accounting at Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYUH Links to an external site.), where I have been teaching for the past 16 years.
My wife (of 23+ years) and I have 6 wonderful children.
Recently, I helped develop an Android app that helps students more quickly learn how their debits and credits impact the financial statements. The app is called the Debits and Credits Trainer and, for those of you who are interested, is available on the Google Play store for $.99. Later on in the course you may find this app to be very helpful. Here is the video that introduces the app:
Debits and Credits Trainer
Links to an external site.Now, just in case you are really interested in learning more about me, you can watch my "I'm a BYU Accounting Grad - Kevin Kimball" video by clicking on the YouTube link directly to the right of my photo above. If you want to know even more about me, you can click here to read my LinkedIn Profile
Links to an external site.. Finally, many people ask, because I work at BYU-Hawaii, whether I am a surfer or not. All I can say on that is that I love to surf, but probably am not good enough to really be called a "surfer" yet. See below:
Surfing Goat Island (Laie)
Links to an external site.
Course Overview
The purpose of this course is to provide you an introduction to accounting which is the world-wide language of business. You simply can not go into a business meeting today that discusses how a business will achieve its objectives without benefiting from an understanding of accounting and accounting-based terminology. Aside from that a solid understanding of accounting provides a great variety of career opportunities. When I look back at my fellow BYU (Provo) accounting graduates, I realize that they have all gone into a variety of careers as partners in professional services firms specializing in audit, tax and consulting, chief financial officers, chief executive officers, attorneys, entrepreneurs and governmental leaders. In fact, accounting can be a great undergraduate degree for many different careers paths, for example, one of my fellow graduates is currently a dentist that regularly uses his accounting knowledge and skills to run his own dental practice.
My hope is that this course will provide you with a solid foundation in the core terminology, concepts, processes and procedures of financial accounting, which provides accounting information to external users. Although I will introduce the topic of managerial accounting, which provides accounting information to internal users, this course is not designed to teach you the basics of managerial accounting. Our primary focus in this course will be on the most introductory, foundational concepts of financial accounting.
This course begins by laying a foundation in general business topics, such as how businesses are financed, what structures they use, what types of businesses they run, and how accounting facilitates management's role in achieving the business' objectives.
Once this general business foundation is set, we will learn about the accounting cycle, which is the processes and procedures that management uses to identify, analyze and record the key information needed to prepare its general purpose financial statements, the income statement, statement of shareholder equity, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. We will learn how to prepare and read these financial statements to provide a foundation for later learning how to make lending and investing decisions.
Course Learning Objectives
This course has been organized into small, manageable segments called Learning Modules which you can access simply by clicking on the "Modules" button on the far left-hand of your screen. As you will notice below, each Learning Module starts you off with an Overview of the module and describes what you will need to do to complete it. Then, for each topic, it provides a link to materials that you should "Study" in detail. The title of the "Study" material is usually formulated as a question to get you thinking about the desired learning objective. When you click on a given "Study" link, the link will open up to provide you a 3-step learning process that will include videos (usually 10 minutes or less, but some are as long as 12 minutes) and/or text materials for you to study, a quiz on the material to help you test your understanding, and, if needed a chance to go back, learn, and try the quiz again. After you have mastered the learned the material for each topic and evidenced that learning by scoring 80% or better on the topic quizzes, the whole module wraps up with a 10 point "Module Quiz" covering all the topics within the module.
Here is a copy of what you would see for Module 1 which introduces the Learning Topic "Key Players in the World of Finance and Business", provides "Study" material and related quizzes to help you learn the material and assess your learning of the material. I hope you will always strive to achieve 100% on the quizzes, but the modules have been set up to show a green check mark (i.e. requirement complete) whenever you score 80% or higher on a topic quiz, module quiz or exam.
Three exams will be administered throughout the course as follows:
- Exam #1 40 questions covering Modules 1-5
- Exam #2 40 questions covering Modules 6-10
- Exam #3 50 questions covering Modules 11-16
Course Administration
As far as I can tell, this is one of the first, totally free Massive Open Online Courses on Financial Accounting so with that comes a bit of a learning curve for myself as I try to help potentially over 1,000 students successfully learn the fundamentals of financial accounting. With that in mind, here is what I believe you can expect from me:
- Professor response time: My goal is that I will be able to respond to each question received within 48 hours. However, if I get hit with > 1,000 questions on the first day, I will need more than 48 hours to respond to everyone.
- Grading: All quizzes and exams will be automatically graded and my personally-written feedback will be provided as soon as you press the button to submit the quiz or exam.
- Weekly updates: In general, I will make an announcement about the course at least once per week, please read them.
- Discussions: We will not be using the built-in Discussion group feature provided by Canvas; however, I will likely create a content page of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and my responses to them so that everyone in the class can benefit from such questions and responses. When, it is created, I will post it at the very top of all the modules for your reference.
- Involvement of Others: I hope to have one teaching assistant (TA) help me respond to your questions.
Student Expectations
- Complete the assignments during the open course period. This is a 16 module course with three exams. If students complete two modules per week, they will have plenty of time to complete the whole course while it is available. Please pace yourself accordingly.
- I anticipate that to complete two modules per week, the average student will need to spend between 4 and 6 hours per week watching videos, reading and practicing the material and completing related quizzes and exams.
- Please keep trying the quizzes until you have mastered the material being tested, or at least until you have completed the requirement by scoring at least 80% or more on them.
- Feel free to drop the course if you really aren't interested. Guide: How do I drop a Canvas Network course?
What to do if you need help
Accounting questions: If you have a question about accounting, please post it in the Help Forum. That way I will be able to respond to your question there, and all the other student in the class will be able to benefit from your question and my response to it.
Now if you really need to send a message directly to me and you do not feel that your question, or my response to it, would be valuable to the rest of the class, please feel free to send me a message using the "Inbox" button on the top right of this screen. Please make sure that you ONLY select Kevin Kimball as the recipient. Please, please, please do not add everyone else in the course as recipients. The following link will teach you how to communicate with your instructor and peers.
Technical support:Click on the word "Help" in the upper right-hand corner of your Canvas screen. From there, you will be able to search the Canvas Guides. There is also a collection of "How to" guides found at How to use Canvas Network.