Let's talk a little bit about course mechanics, how this course will run. We'll discuss how the video modules are set up and the assignments associated with those modules. You'll also learn something about me, your instructor for this course and the finance specialization. You'll also learn about your fellow learners taking this course. Now, this will all be relevant if you're taking this course for credit or for a certificate. If you're just taking this course for fun, you can probably skip this part. But for those of you interested in the details, let's get started. This course is set up in five different modules, where each module has its own financial topic. A module is also roughly a week's worth of material. Every module has a series of lessons and each lesson has a series of videos associated with that lesson. In general, individual videos are about 10-15 minutes long. There's also a downloadable PDF that you can use for notes. At the end of each module, there is an assessment that evaluates what you've learned. Let me first introduce myself. My name is Michael Readey, and I'm an engineer with more than 30 years of experience in industry, academia, and the National Labs. I have a bachelor's and a master's degree in ceramic engineering from the Ohio State University, and a PhD in Material Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. I spent the last several years teaching here in the Engineering Management Program at the University of Colorado Boulder and have loved every minute of it. While I did spend time as a professor of material science back in the early days of my career at Carnegie Mellon University, most of my life has been in industry. I've had a chance to work for a large Fortune 100 company like Caterpillar, where I was involved in developing their engine emission technologies business. I also had the opportunity to work for a partnership between a European company and a Canadian company, a joint venture we called AeriNOx. My job was to develop the North American market for pollution control systems designed for large natural gas fired power plants. But in 2016, I was able to teach a course to engineering students here at CU about business principles and I had so much fun that when the opportunity came up to become a full-time faculty member, I joined the program. For me, my approach is all very practical because I relate it all back to the experiences that I've had as an engineer in a business setting. I had to learn things on the fly and I don't want you to have to go through some of those same uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing situations that I had to go through. Yes, we'll dive into some equations to see how different things get calculated, but I always have in mind how you would use these concepts that we'll talk about in this course in your day job and in the job you hope to get in the future. On the personal side, here are some of the things that I like to do when I'm not in the classroom. For many years now, I've been involved in sustainability, especially as it applies to engineers and scientists. In fact, you'll hear me talk about that throughout the course. As an instructor, I wanted to get my passion out to more people. As a result, I just launched my first Coursera course called Our Sustainable Future, and that's been a very exciting development for me. I also love to bicycle, and living in Colorado provides a lot of opportunities for that. But I'm also really into my veggie garden. That's me standing in front of my sunflowers behind all the lettuces and tomatoes we were able to grow last summer. These are some of the things that really get me excited and what makes my life fun and rewarding. One more thing though, I like to think of myself as a progressive environmentalist. There are big challenges facing the world right now, environmentally and socially and we need to overcome these if we're going to have a high quality of life while providing our kids a great place for them to live and thrive. I'm a big believer that business is a great way to solve some of these challenges. I'm also a believer that many of you are going to be in significant leadership positions within the company you work for, where your decisions can have a very positive impact. Therefore, I view part of my role is to make sure that you're prepared to make those decisions that sometimes don't involve just maximizing corporate profit, and so we're going to talk about some of these things. Now it's your turn. In the discussion forum, I would like you to introduce yourself to your peers. Here are some prompt questions for you to get started. What's your name? What is or was your major in college? What are you doing today? What is a recent accomplishment that you're particularly proud of? What do you want to get out of this course? Of course, once you've introduced yourself, then meet somebody else in the class. I've put together a syllabus that describes what the specialization is all about, details about this course, and what we're going to do over the next several weeks. You'll be able to download it from the course resources and see things such as; a course description, the course learning objectives, a schedule of topics, as well as the assignments and how they'll be graded. Let's start with a look at how grades are determined. This is how the grading process is going to work. We'll have a series of homework problems that I call financial challenges, so that you can get comfortable with some calculations that we'll cover in class. We'll also have a few projects where you can apply your new knowledge to some very practical problems. These will be more substantive in nature and be peer-reviewed. We'll also have a few short quizzes based on individual lessons and a final exam that ties everything together, and that's it. Also, this course is not graded on a curve. If every one of you gets a 97 percent and an A, then I feel like I've done my job. Now some details. The financial challenges are tied to the content in each module. There will generally be about 10 problems of a variety of types: Multiple choice, true/false, and fill in the blank. There will also be many numerical problems to give you some practice calculating things based on concepts we'll cover. The fun assessments are the project challenges. We'll have one or two of these that tie together course content by using a practical problem to work through. For example, a major project for this course will be to develop a comprehensive business case for a new product introduction effort, that will pull together everything you've learned in the course. As these are more detailed, they will be reviewed by your peers. Of course, part of the assignment is to review what your peers do too. That not only makes it fun, but you can see how others tackle problems like this and we all learn a lot in the process. We'll also have a few short quizzes based on content covered in the lessons. These will also be multiple choice, true or false, or fill in the blank types of questions. The culminating assessment will be a final exam, which essentially will be a longer version of the module, financial challenges. This will occur at the end of the course and be about 25 questions that will evaluate your knowledge of the concepts as well as your ability to work through some of the numerical problems we've covered in all the modules. If you've done well up to this point, then you'll likely do well on the final exam too as it is just the same format as what you've seen. It just covers all the material we've discussed in the course. That wraps up a little bit about me and how this course works. Are you ready to dive into the world of finance for technical managers? Then let's get started. Make sure you introduce yourself to your peers as we'll all be working together as we go forward. That's enough of how this course is going to run. Our next lesson is a review of time value of money and expanding our toolkit with some new ways of looking at how a company evaluates its investments. Are you ready to get started? Then let's go.
