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

4.7
stars
8,037 ratings

About the Course

Master the technical skills needed to analyze financial statements and disclosures for use in financial analysis, and learn how accounting standards and managerial incentives affect the financial reporting process. By the end of this course, you’ll be able to read the three most common financial statements: the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. Then you can apply these skills to a real-world business challenge as part of the Wharton Business Foundations Specialization....

Top reviews

MM

Feb 3, 2016

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!!!

EY

Sep 19, 2019

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.

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26 - 50 of 1,884 Reviews for Introduction to Financial Accounting

By Osama M A

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Jul 24, 2018

hello my opinion don't use animation part again

Thanks

By Eric H

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Feb 25, 2018

The info is good, but it's painful to watch the videos.

By Abhay G

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Sep 18, 2019

It keeps getting boring after every video.

By Nadia K

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Jun 16, 2016

Really don't think I learned about accounting after this course. The "virtual students" were distracting, as were the attempts at humour. I came in not knowing much about accounting and don't feel like I left knowing much more.

By Emily G

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May 21, 2016

The graphics that argue for incorrect information are confusing. I believe there could have been clearer examples and better organization of equations and charts.

By Claudia C

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Jun 11, 2020

I prefer more interactive courses, with some exercises. I find it quite boring and not immediate to understand

By Navdeep S

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Jul 7, 2020

This is an excellent introductory course to Financial Accounting. However, it is fast paced, and the professor will throw curveballs at you every now and then, which means this course is not for the faint of heart. I also found the wording of certain questions to be a bit vague and confusing, so I had to resort to other learning resources to comprehend what was being asked. And the animations can be a hit or miss, but I think the ones that asked questions or asked for more elaborating were spot on. Prof. Bushee does seem to know where students might struggle and doesn't shy away from elucidating complex topics.

All things considered, I feel this was an immensely rewarding and intellectually challenging course. The final exams tied together the subject matter of every module beautifully, and now I feel I have a really solid grounding if I want to pursue more advanced courses in accounting.

I would recommend this course to everyone who wants to learn about accounting and/or start a career in finance. For those who have had no prior exposure to accounting, this course may seem a bit daunting at first. But fret not. An immense amount of resources is available online, completely free of cost, which you could refer to in order to better comprehend the concepts. If you stick with it, I can assure you that you will find this course worth your time and effort. I found it very rewarding, and I hope so do you!

By D. T W

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Feb 13, 2020

The professor provided a wonderful course. He took a subject that seems scary and made it enjoyable and fun. I thought his jokes, and the use of his virtual students, were an unexpected element that I actually enjoyed more and more throughout the class. For the virtual students, their use of valid questions I may/may not have thought of were great as well as sometimes just saying slow down and repeat. This shows the professor's excellence over his subject AND teaching it.

The material was presented logically and in bite-sized pieces that were easier for a non-business person to understand and retain. The two running examples, Relic Spotter and 3M, were great to synthesize all of the information that had been learned in the current and previous week(s).

While I will definitely have to go through the materials again to cement them into my head, I have learned a lot from this course and thoroughly enjoyed it!

By Oren L

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Apr 5, 2019

The recorded course is ok, but the homework is to basic.

In order to succeed in something like accounting, I would suggest to have a lot more practice available. such as : other written examples that we would need to fill out.

By Ahmed M A E

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Dec 17, 2018

Very informative, but has tricky exercises.

By Pyro W

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Jul 8, 2020

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.

By Cosimo R

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Apr 30, 2018

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

By Asia S

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Aug 22, 2017

Final Quiz questions were very confusing and some did't align with what was taught in class. It would have been more effective if we had more practice and more examples throughout the course. the final was very difficult compared to the other examples and tests.

By Joseph W A

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Jun 27, 2020

Course was very difficult to follow although the content itself was excellent. It needs to be delivered in a more engaging manner especially for students who do not have any prior accounting background.

By Prachita S

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Jun 14, 2020

The complete course created more confusion than clarification. The way the content was explained didnt make the learning easy.

By Luana V

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Aug 21, 2017

Course is not very interactive (or has rudimentary interactivity), it's exhausting to complete and follow.

By Shayan K

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Nov 1, 2019

Difficult to follow and videos are very old fashioned.

By Yu W

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Jul 1, 2020

really dry and hard to keep people motivated

By Francesca M

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Feb 9, 2019

I've only done week 1 of this course, and even though it is said to be for beginners, I would argue and say that it is not designed for beginners. Beginner courses should be designed to teach a student the basics of a subject, and for week 1 there are too many concepts thrown into the lesson plan and there's no way someone who is just learning this will be able to successfully complete the quiz, and the course. The design of Introduction to Marketing was great, the entire course taught you the basics of what you'd expect in Marketing, and it didn't overload you with concepts.

Expecting a student to get an 80% or above on the quizzes when they are just learning accounting is ridiculous. Also, when reviewing the quiz to see what answers you got wrong, all of the questions should provide you with the correct answer so you can at least see what you did wrong.

Overall, this is not a course that is designed very well for beginners, rather this course would discourage beginners from even pursuing a career path in accounting.

By Anna O

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Apr 10, 2020

Material was not engaging, even though I love accounting. I found it an effort to watch the videos and given that I chose to do this for a general upskill I would have preferred to had enjoyed it as opposed to it becoming a chore.

By Al K A S

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Jun 9, 2020

too difficult to follow up with him

maybe it's the topic that is very different for me

but his way of teaching is also weird

By Franco M

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Sep 7, 2016

Amazing

By Yanshen S

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Apr 25, 2020

I really like this course. My main purpose to learn accounting is to better understanding financial statements of public companies so that I can invest in stock better. Before this course, I only have rough understanding of accounting, but not knowing much on the relationships and changes between different items. Professor Bushee made this topic self-contained and very easy to understand. He instructed this course both intensively and extensively, with numerous examples to help us memorize concepts (well I personally think that remembering examples is the best way to remember new concepts, that's how human learn though).

I specially like his virtual students. I can imagine that Professor Bushee took a lot of efforts to make these funny animations, e.g. students have different nationalities, accents (I like that French student's accent haha) and characteristics (some students are cautious when asking questions, while some are "prudent"). I also liked the scene that all students fell asleep, that they quit class for coffee, and that they quit the last class for preparing final exams). Nevertheless, I found the questions by these virtual students very insightful and close to what I have in mind! This again proves Professor Bushee took much time to understand students' common questions throughout his career and put them on the screen for us!

By Rina C G

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Sep 1, 2018

Professor Brian Bushee made learning financial accounting very enjoyable! Not only was his lecture videos informative (of course), he finds ways of injecting humor in his lectures to stir away from the boring subjects and very serious matters. His lecture notes files are also named in a very organized way that corresponds to the week that they were taken up in so back referencing during exam reviews would be a breeze. He also made a point of including A LOT of examples and examples after examples that covers about everything in the course so the student will not be surprised during exams of items that were not taken up. I just wish the virtual students could have better audio and accent in terms of delivering the statements but this was well compensated in the speech bubbles that come with the appearance of the virtual student. Over all, these helped in my understanding of the concepts better. This course is highly recommended to everyone. I am an engineer by profession and I used to fear accounting subjects prior to my finishing the degree. But taking up this course made that fear go away.

By William H

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Aug 12, 2016

Professor Brian Bushee is a wonderful teacher. He makes Financial Accounting interesting by illustrating how it can be practically applied in real life scenarios. There are many examples so that you don't have to conceptualize everything and the material is more comprehensible. He makes it entertaining by introducing virtual students that ask him questions that real students would ask and a few that i hadn't thought to ask but provide beneficial information.

There is a lot of material. It is quite complex. Financial Accounting is a mix of rules, intuition, terms that must be learned, very particular processes, and last but not least, some math. This isn't for the faint of heart. That said, I found it interesting and learned more than I had planned on. I may take the follow up course as well. I can't imagine learning this material from a typical instructor. I wouldn't enjoy it and i wouldn't be able to take as much from it. Superior course. Apologies for any typos.