THE MISSION

This quest is not for the faint of heart. Along the way, you’ll battle challenging problems, decode financial puzzles, and work side-by-side with your Party to ensure everyone makes it out of the Upside Down safely. Your courage, curiosity, and collaboration will be the keys to victory.

Upon successful completion of this semester-long quest, you will be able to:

• Apply transactional analysis, input transactions into the accounting system, process this input, for a corporation engaged in service and/or merchandising operations.
• Explain the nature and purpose of IFRS, Long-Term Liabilities, Stockholder's Equity and Reporting Requirements, Statement of Cash Flows, & financial statement analysis.
• Explain the content, form, and purpose of the basic financial statements (including footnotes) and how they satisfy the information needs of investors, creditors, and other users.

My Teaching Philosophy

I believe everyone is capable of learning and the differences each person brings into a class enrich the learning of the group. Each person learns at a unique rhythm, which is precisely why I love online classes! Unlike a live classroom, asynchronous online environments, like ours, provide you with the luxury of thinking and reflecting before you engage. They create a seat at the table for everyone. They also enable us to use the world as our classroom. I design my courses to showcase and celebrate the diversity of the members of our learning community and to encourage each of student to connect our course content to their own life.  

No matter how much underlining and bold I use in the text-only syllabus (sorry past me!), nothing about it inspires someone to get excited about the course. I’ve found that a graphic syllabus establishes the tone that I want for a course. Instead of treating the syllabus as a list of rules, penalties, and a code of conduct, I try to make it a “welcome to learning” invitation, and the visual components help with that signaling. Though entirely anecdotal, I’ve also found that the classroom energy on the first day of the semester is markedly different. Graphic syllabi (combined with more welcoming and learner-focused language (...)) have been shown to influence students’ opinions of the instructor, finding them to be kinder, more approachable, and more creative (Nusbaum et al 2020). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of trying to butter up students in order to get glowing evaluations and such. But these are all good things in my opinion, as students’ level of comfort with a professor can do wonders in the learning environment. If my syllabus can contribute to that, it’s a great first step!

I’ve found the welcoming vibe of the graphic syllabi pairs well with my gradeless approach. For several of my students, this is the first time they’ve been in an alternatively-graded course. The graphic syllabus signals up front that things are going to be different. It also allows me to lay out my approach to labor-based assessment in a warm and nonthreatening way, which has led to much calmer first-day discussions of the method. A graphic syllabus and ungrading are certainly not corequisites, but I believe there’s some definite synergy.

I love designing, redesigning, and getting creative with my syllabus. I spend quite a bit of time and effort into creating this document every semester. I know that this may be the first interaction a student has with me and my course, so I grant myself the time to go a little overboard with the syllabus. I believe that all my hard work does have the intended impact. A few semesters ago, I had a student share with me that she dreaded taking accounting, but after receiving my syllabus, she knew she had made the right choice. She said, “A teacher that puts that much effort into the class…cares.” This reduced her anxiety and helped her approach the class with a positive attitude.