Syllabus for ACC-101

PRINCIPLES OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Principles of Financial Accounting is designed to help students learn to record business transactions, summarize these transactions, and prepare, interpret, and use financial statements. This course begins with the accounting cycle, merchandising concerns, and financial assets, and it finishes with plant assets, liabilities, and stockholders’ equity.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

After completing this course, you should be able to:

CO1 Apply accounting practices to a company’s financial transactions.

CO2 Explain the accounting recording cycle and the basic financial statements.

CO3 Apply the accounting concepts and techniques for financial assets and inventories.

CO4 Explain the accounting treatment for intangible assets, liabilities, and stockholders’ equity.

COURSE MATERIALS

You will need the following materials to complete your coursework. Some course materials may be free, open source, or available from other providers. You can access free or open-source materials by clicking the links provided below or in the module details documents. To purchase course materials, please visit the University's textbook supplier.

Williams, J. R., Haka, S. F., Bettner, M. S., & Carcello, J. V. (2018). Financial and managerial accounting: The basis for business decisions (18th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

ISBN-13: 978-1259692406

COURSE STRUCTURE

Principles of Financial Accounting is a three-credit, online course consisting of 11 modules. Modules include learning objectives, study materials, and activities. Module titles are listed below.

Module 1: Information for Decision Making

Module 2: Basic Financial Statements

Module 3: The Accounting Cycle, Part 1

Module 4: The Accounting Cycle, Part 2

Module 5: The Accounting Cycle, Part 3

Module 6: Accounting for Merchandising Activities

Module 7: Accounting for Financial Assets, Inventories, and the Cost of Goods Sold

Module 8: Plant and Intangible Assets

Module 9 Liabilities

Module 10: Stockholders' Equity

Module 11: Income and Changes in Retained Earnings

ASSESSMENT METHODS

For your formal work in the course, you are required to participate in online discussion forums, complete written assignments, take a proctored midterm examination, and complete a final project. See below for more details.

Consult the Course Calendar for assignment due dates.

Promoting Originality

One or more of your course activities may utilize a tool designed to promote original work and evaluate your submissions for plagiarism. More information about this tool is available in About SafeAssign.

Discussion Forums

Principles of Financial Accounting requires you to participate in five graded online discussion assignments, in addition to an ungraded Introductions Forum in Module 1.

Communication with the mentor and among fellow students is a critical component of online learning. Participation in online discussions involves two distinct assignments: an initial response to a posted assignment and subsequent comments on classmates' responses. Meaningful participation is relevant to the content, adds value, and advances the discussion. Comments such as "I agree" and "ditto" are not considered value-adding participation. Therefore, when you agree or disagree with a classmate, the reading, or your mentor, state and support your agreement or disagreement. You will be evaluated on the quality and quantity of your participation. Responses and comments should be properly proofread and edited, professional, and respectful.

Written Assignments

The 11 written assignments consist mostly of exercises and problems taken from the end of each chapter in the textbook. You are to submit your answers to these exercises and problems to your mentor for correction and grading. When preparing the assignments, please identify each exercise and problem clearly by textbook chapter and exercise or problem number, with the exercises first, followed by the problems. To receive full credit for your answers, you must show all work and include complete solutions.

Prepare your written assignments using whatever word processing program you have on your computer. Include your name at the top of the paper, as well as the course name and code and the semester and year in which you are enrolled.

Before submitting your first assignment, check with your mentor to determine whether your word processing software is compatible with your mentor's software. If so, you can submit your work as you prepared it. If not, save your assignment as a rich-text format (.rtf) file, using the Save As command of your software program. Rich text retains basic formatting and can be read by any other word processing program.

Midterm Examination

For a list of key concepts that may appear on your exam(s), refer to the study guide(s) available in the Examinations section of the course Web site.

Principles of Financial Accounting requires you to take a closed-book, proctored midterm examination. Consult the Course Calendar for the scheduling of the exam.

The midterm is 2 hours long and covers all material assigned through Module 6 (Chapters 1 through 6 in the textbook) and includes multiple-choice objective items.

For the midterm, you are required to use the University’s Online Proctor Service. Please refer to the Examinations and Proctors section of the Online Student Handbook (see General Information area of the course website) for further information about scheduling and taking online exams and for all exam policies and procedures. You are strongly advised to schedule your exam within the first week of the semester.

Online exams are administered through the course website. Consult the Course Calendar for the official dates of your midterm exam week.

Note: Scientific, graphing or financial calculator allowed (no phones or tablets); scratch paper allowed.

Statement about Cheating

You are on your honor not to cheat during the exam. Cheating means:

Looking up any answer or part of an answer in an unauthorized textbook or on the Internet, or using any other source to find the answer.
Copying and pasting or in any way copying responses or parts of responses from any other source into your online test. This includes but is not limited to copying and pasting from other documents or spreadsheets, whether written by yourself or anyone else.
Plagiarizing answers.
Asking anyone else to assist you by whatever means available while you take the exam.
Copying any part of the exam to share with other students.
Telling your mentor that you need another attempt at the exam because your connection to the Internet was interrupted when that is not true.

If there is evidence that you have cheated or plagiarized in your exam, the exam will be declared invalid, and you will fail the course.

Final Project

In lieu of a final examination, you are required to complete a final project (worth 20 percent of your course grade). The final project consists of two comprehensive problems.

Instructions for completing and submitting the final project will be made available to you in the penultimate week of the course in the Final Project section of the course website. Please consult the Course Calendar for the project's due date.

GRADING AND EVALUATION

Your grade in the course will be determined as follows:

Discussion forums (5)—17 percent
Written assignments (11)—33 percent
Midterm exam (proctored)—30 percent
Final project—20 percent

All activities will receive a numerical grade of 0–100. You will receive a score of 0 for any work not submitted. Your final grade in the course will be a letter grade. Letter grade equivalents for numerical grades are as follows:

A	=	93–100	C+	=	78–79
A–	=	90–92	C	=	73–77
B+	=	88–89	C–	=	70–72
B	=	83–87	D	=	60–69
B–	=	80–82	F	=	Below 60

To receive credit for the course, you must earn a letter grade of C or better (for an area of study course) or D or better (for a non area of study course), based on the weighted average of all assigned course work (e.g., exams, assignments, discussion postings).

STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

First Steps to Success

To succeed in this course, take the following first steps:

Carefully read the entire Syllabus, making sure that all aspects of the course are clear to you and that you have all the materials required for the course.

Take the time to read the entire Online Student Handbook. The Handbook answers many questions about how to proceed through the course, how to schedule exams, and how to get the most from your educational experience at Thomas Edison State University.

Arrange to take your examination(s) by following the instructions in this Syllabus and the Online Student Handbook.

Familiarize yourself with the learning management systems environment—how to navigate it and what the various course areas contain. If you know what to expect as you navigate the course, you can better pace yourself and complete the work on time.

If you are not familiar with web-based learning be sure to review the processes for posting responses online and submitting assignments before class begins.

Study Tips

Consider the following study tips for success:

To stay on track throughout the course, begin each week by consulting the Course Calendar. The Course Calendar provides an overview of the course and indicates due dates for submitting assignments, posting discussions, and scheduling and taking examinations.

Check Announcements regularly for new course information.

ACADEMIC POLICIES

To ensure success in all your academic endeavors and coursework at Thomas Edison State University, familiarize yourself with all administrative and academic policies including those related to academic integrity, course late submissions, course extensions, and grading policies.

For more, see: