Accounting is sometimes counterintuitive and this course does not alleviate that. Expect to spend twice the recommended weekly time on the course, especially if you have no background in accounting. Expect to have to retake the quizzes multiple times to get a pass. (The scoring approach for quizzes means that getting 2 of 3 selections correct in a 5 selection question will still result in a zero score for that question.)

The lecturer tries to add humor with cartoon characters, puns and songs. This takes up valuable time that would be better spent explaining the reasons behind some of the counterintuitive aspects (e.g. a debit will increase a cash account); or offering some approaches to assist in memorizing the key equations and relationships.

The course can be completed successfully (if somewhat painfully).

Suggest you print out the quizzes before you watch the videos (Note: the questions will change each time you submit an attempt, so be ready for new questions!). The printout will let you try to identify the answers as you go. Also, make notes of equations and do your best to relate them to the entries in the spreadsheets to try and identify the impact of low level alterations on high level entries.

The teacher is really enthusiastic about his material, his lessons seem to cover the major notions around the topic and the overall technical quality of this course can't be critized. Thanks again :)

A very useful course for someone without any or a little prior knowledge about financial accounting. Full of examples and math works. A helpful guide to learn the A B C of basic financial accounting.

I took Brian Bushee's course and found him to be one of the BEST INSTRUCTORS I'VE EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. If you've had trouble with accounting courses in the past, HE IS THE INSTRUCTOR FOR YOU!!!

great course simple to understand and very entertaining. i really like the idea of the virtual students they add a nice touch to the course and the instructions and provide good questions and answers

Stick to the fundamentals and get rid of the animations—they distract from the material. Stress the importance of learning the "grammar"—the types of accounts. Lessen the amount of "curve ball equations" and test at the introduction level to make sure we really learn the basics.

I resorted to a couple of other Accounting training web sites for supporting information on all of the topics covered here.

I really appreciated the step-by-step on the two case studies and real-world reference to the 3M annual report.

Thanks!

First - what I liked:

Prof. Bushee was a great professor. I appreciated all the pdf slides that accompanied the course, those made it much easier to study.

What I didn't like:

It was a tremendous amount of material to cover in a short time. As I was going through each week, I felt I was understanding, but when I got to the final (part 1), I had so much difficulty. This tells me that while I understood each component, when they were combined, I was slightly lost. (and I say this as someone with a masters in engineering, so numbers are not an issue for me). I think a better overview of how all the financial statements fit together would have been helpful. It also occurs to me that for someone like myself who really just needs an overview (will never work as an accountant, but want to be able to read/analyze financial statements, this may have been too much information.

course content and case examples are very old (5+ years) by the time I completed the course

The way the material was taught was very dry. I wish there had been many more practical examples. The tests were the best time to really put the material into practice, but there were so few explanations for the answers that it was hard to learn from them. Especially after Week 4, when all that was left was the final quiz and there were zero explanations for the answers, making it really hard to learn from. I just think the material should have been put into more practical accounting terms.

The course is very easy to understand, and most importantly it is fun to learn accounting! I find this course covers basic yet comprehensive contents compared to other basic accounting online courses.

This class felt rushed. Certain sections should have been longer. For example explaining in more depth how one determines what is categorized as an asset or an expense. Some sort of reading material probably would have been helpful for a better understanding of the basics and terminology. I would have preferred longer lectures with (non-graded) practice quizzed for the week rather than spend so much time in the lectures doing examples.

The wording on the quizzes and exams felt very unclear and confusing. The chart based quizzes and exams were some times difficult to read because it was clear that one line item was a subtotal of another the above items and sometimes it wasn't clear on how many of the above items it included.

Still a good class overall but required a lot of researching (and learning from other videos online) to achieve to complete this course. If I have to learn from somewhere else than there is something off with the course. Otherwise why should I pay to attain certificates here.

Financial Accounting made fun. Wow

I HAVE COMPLETED THE COURSE AND STILL HAVE NOT RECEIVED MY CERTIFICATE

There are thousands of exceptions and tricky parts involved in accounting but Professor Brian Bushee made sure to cover each and every doubt a student can have with the use of virtual students. Being my first time even touch the accounting subjects, I feel my basics a strong and crystal clear. Thank you so much Prof. Brian Bushee.

It is a great course for beginers like me to start to learn about accounting. The concepts are easy to understand, and the examples are very helpful for understanding. I like the virtual students btw.

The professor made lectures fun and easier to digest, and the hands-on case studies are good practice to cement the lessons taught. Will definitely recommend to people who want to learn accounting!

I found the first few weeks challenging but interesting and I was learning a lot. Then, in week 3 the course content just seemed to take a huge leap in terms of complexity, and in my opinion it's a bit of a jump for an introductory course!

The videos went so fast that I found myself replaying parts and still not understanding what was being said. I have always been a very high achieving student and I was barely a

Prof Bushee taught clearly and the course has wide topic coverage. I’m pretty confident with my accounting knowledge after this course.

Was pretty confusing and even though there were good examples, the basic information in the notes seemed a bit light. Also very focused on the US system.

The course was boring and not very engaging. I can see it was trying to be fun but the virtual classmates made me cringe. Maybe they wouldn't be so bad if you had used real voices.

Much better than the graduate level Accounting class I took in college. Prof. Bushee makes it fun and interesting

To be frank, did not think the information was formatted in a easy to learn fashion. The little interactive students were an attempt to break up the lessons, but I found them distracting. Without additional practice on the theories, application was hindered. Outside reading and practice materials are a MUST. This course, on it's own was not helpful. Instead I relied on various sources (outside of Coursera/Wharton) to help further my comprehension. I completed the MBA Math course two months prior and attempted to connect what I learned previously to this course. I was unable to, adding frustration to the evident learning curve. This course definitely needs help in restructuring to provide max benefit to different learning styles.

Starting from the premise that accounting is probably perceived as boring by most, this course does little to try and break that preconceived notion. The animated characters are pretty annoying, they slow down the process of information transfer from professor to student, and they generally make stupid points that seem to get a kick out of the professor

Very dry presentation, even cartoons are not funny or engaging,

Suggesting to check out "Accounting stuff" on the youtube, to see how a good and artful presentation makes learning accounting easy and fun.