Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Financial Accounting by University of Pennsylvania

Awesome course. The professor did an excellent work keeping the engagement high and explained the key concepts very well.

The only thing I didn't like was how fast week 4 went. The leap was huge and there weren't enough explanations to understand how the professor came up with some numbers (unlike what happened in earlier weeks, when there were many clarifications and more examples). Aside from that, I'd recommend taking it.

Professor Brian Bushee is definitely hilarious with his lowkey jokes and virtual students, but he approaches the theoretical side way too abstractly (only terms and straight formulas), all in a row, making it significantly hard to understand or even memorize what he is trying to teach. Tons of exercises partially make up for it, but I would enjoy better if his slides weren't basically composed of terms and definitions.

Professor Bushee's presence on camera and instruction style were very good.

As a complete beginner in the field, the content of weeks 3 and 4 was a bit excessive and presented too rapidly

Would prefer more detailed feedback (specifically recommended areas of study) in response to failed quizzes.

Overall an informative (but difficult) course that confirmed my long-standing belief that I have little aptitude for accounting

A great course for someone (such as myself) who has next to no knowledge of finance and accounting. I was looking to be able to generally make sense of company financial reports, and that's exactly what I gained from this course. It became a tad more technical than I needed it to be in weeks 3 and 4, but don't let that put you off. It's worth the extra effort (and a couple of failed first attempts at quizzes) to pass.

I was new this financial accounting thing. The initial concepts of accounting are very important to understand whole chapters and Those concepts need to be covered in detail and in a simple manner. The way of teaching was great and having a word problem practice quiz as homework would have helped more with detailed answers. At the end a great professor with great knowledge and great teaching. Glad to be part of it.

Aside from the annoying cartoons and their fake computerized voices that were extremely distracting, the course was challenging and the quizzes helped reinforce the material. If the cartoons were sparsely used, it would've been okay, but they were a constant source of annoyance. But the syllabus was solid and the course was very practical in nature, which helped me understand the fundamentals of this subject.

It was a really great course! The lectures were high-quality, to-the-point. and very enjoyable. I wish there had been a bit more opportunities to practice the calculations, though. The first couple weeks were perfect because the instructor provided plenty of exercises, but the other two weeks did not have as many of those, and I'm worried that I won't be able to retain the knowledge without the practice.

I feel like I am really learning a lot about a topic I've always considered to be pretty difficult. Professor Bushee does a good job of communicating the concepts and the way they fit together. His approach has helped me develop a confident grasp of the fundamentals--which is saying a lot since I've tried to make sense of this material before but have never quite gotten my head around it in the past.

The explanations can be a bit more introductory in nature. As I already had experience in accountancy, I could keep with the course, but it felt like as an introductory course, there should be more explanation orientation towards making it even simpler. The variety of topics and the depth was brilliant and very useful. The ratio analysis using various Financial Reporting Statements seems very useful.

In terms of content, very good course. I think it can be updated regarding tools and perhaps a different way of delivering the information. I liked the cases, and how each topic was addressed and shown with an specific example. I didn't find very useful the questions in the final exam, though I had to re do it, and that is something that I'm not used to, I didn't enjoy the type of questions.

Very clear, organised, and entertaining course. Professor Bushee (and his tech team) did a great job. Some non-graded practice exercises could be provided to the students as a form of training prior to the different tests. I would suggest the following number of non-graded exercise sets per week: 2 easy (2 x 10 questions) + 2 medium (2 x 10 questions) + 2 hard (2 x 10 questions).

Not enough homework or explanation of homework problems to prepare you for final exam and make sure you fully understand all concepts. More practice problems with better explanations when you answer a question incorrectly would be a great plus. While the instructor says no accounting textbook is necessary, that seems to be the only way to get more practice with the concepts.

Loved taking this course with Prof. Bushee and learned a ton not having any accounting knowledge. It took longer than suggested each week for me. I would have appreciated better explanations in the final exams as I passed them but still do not understand some of the questions and resulting answers. I wish this could be addressed so I could better understand.

Very good content, very organized. But the material is heavy and need a lot of focus as the instructor needs to deliver a lot in very short time. I got back to some videos more than two times because I've missed some information. But in general it was not very hard.

The instructor is humorous and entertaining and I liked the virtual students very much.

Pretty good course. The instructor is engaging, and parts of the course make sense. I had a lot of trouble with Accounting, and I spoke with a friend and he agreed. Accounting is one of those subjects where things don't necessarily make sense in a way you can just figure out. The only way to get those items is brute force, memorize them.

There needs to be an additional class for explanation of terms earlier on and how they work on a balance sheet. 15 examples in a row using new concepts in each example of a balance sheet is not enough. I'm googling critical terms like Cost of Goods Sold to figure out the missing pieces, and that is the sign the course is not complete.

For a somewhat mundane course, I think Mr. Bushee did an excellent job in presenting a lot of material in an organized fashion. Given the scope of material, I would recommend taking notes and listening or reading the lecture notes at least twice. Would have liked to have seen more explanation on account terminology. Thank you.

The course lectures are excellent. The professor gives enough motivation and good questions. The practice examples are excellent too but this kind of course needs more practice examples, especially for someone who is a complete beginner with the terminology. The 30 mn time limit on the final exams is stressful.

This is a through peek into account if one is not an account student/professional. Now I can indeed "read" a company's annual report and make sense of it.

Prof Bushee has a dry sense of humor (does that fit the stereotype of accountants) but he is a good instructor, trying hard to make things challenging.

Thoughtful and smart introduction to accounting. I thought some of the quiz/test questions were worded poorly so some of the test content did not feel like you were actually being tested on your knowledge of the content, it was testing how literal or non-literal your understanding of the questions to be.

Lecturer explained concepts really clearly and in way such that it is easy to understand. The examples given are great as I can see how the concepts work and how they are applied. The pace is fast for a beginner but acceptable taking into account that it spans over only a few hours for 4 weeks.

You could improve a little bit by considering that this course will not be taken by just Economics related students. You might want to develop a short notes kind of stuff for ease of access. Otherwise, great work sir! Especially, when you do the "Put the gain in, take the gain out..." :P

I think this course was exceptional in the way professor Brian teaches, makes things simplified. It is needless to say this course requires a lot of concentration and is more than an introduction especially concerning those who come from a totally different background (like myself).

Professor kept it lively. Accounting is hard, and the work was challenging but he taught well, kept it engaging, and taught me a LOT. This class truly shows the quality of education that Coursera houses, at a truly great price compared to a class at an institution.

some of the videos were very long and theoretical. I do realize this may have been way easier in front of a live crowd. I would think of way to make the videos simpler and more exciting like less theories and more had written example. Over all THANK YOU