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!

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.

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.

This course is presented in a surprising comprehensive way that will let you understand the basic functions of accounting. It will help you build the concrete foundations that will enable you to make sense of more complicated concepts as you progress in your career. Professor Brian Bushee is in my opinion a gifted tutor since he possesses the ability to transfer his knowledge in a simple interesting and comprehensive way that will let you understand the logic behind the accounting principles and the way of thinking without requiring from you any related background. He helped me expand my horizons and actually find a job in the accounting sector but most of all he made me understand and form my way of thinking around accounting in a robust and confident way. I give my thanks and gratitude to the maestro of Debits and Credits and I hope he will help you in the same way and even more.

I'm convinced Professor Bouchee is the A in Accounting. His ability to clearly communicate and engage me in this class was of pleasant surprise. I used to consider Accounting to be a daunting (and quite honestly, tedious) subject. Turns out it is a very valuable and essential tool in tracking and analyzing the overall operation and financial health of a business. I could not have come to this realization and intuitive feel for the subject if it wasn't for the professors' impressive teaching ability.

I would like to note his usage of '"virtual students" to bring in important questions and different perspectives to the concepts at hand. Many times, their interjections and the arguments generated from them were a big help when trying to understand these such concepts.

Overall, the course is top notch, will definitely recommend it.

The course was easy enough for beginners with 0 financial accounting knowledge. Professor Bushee explained all the content very well in a manner that was easy to understand. The homeworks had a mix of easy and difficult questions that helped me practice the content that was learned. The only issue, which is a really minor issue, is that the homework does not tell you why you are wrong sometimes. This makes sense because you can retake the homework, so obviously they don't want to give you the answer just like that. But it was a little difficult at times because I would get something wrong but not know why. However, this only happened a few times and also there are forums where you can ask questions so you could turn to that for help. Overall, a really great and useful course. Thank you!

I have no prior experience in Accounting, yet I did not expect to learn so much from this course given that it's merely an introductory course but how wrong I was! Accounting is essentially a very dry subject but so important in doing and understanding business operations. Prof. Bushee did a really great job at making Accounting as fun as it can be with the help of the virtual students which I find not annoying at all. I learned so much from just this one course than I learned from another Maths Specialization (ahem not gonna say which one). I like Prof. Bushee so much that I will take his other courses on Coursera. For those of you who need to know Accounting for some reasons (personally, I wanna invest in stock market), just enroll in this course it's really worth it!

Having near to zero knowledge about accounting this was a great introductory course for me. In other "introductory" accounting courses, I find often times lecturers forget the lack of literacy of students, and basically throw everything at you, which makes things a lot harder.

That is where this course stands out. The professor really takes his time to break down and explain concepts while providing many examples. The virtual students are a great idea! I did find them useful to reinforce imporant aspects while bringing a bit of humor to the class.

Now be prepared to invest some time into this, I found workload of week 3 especially big!

In summary, great course for beginners. I look forward to take other courses from this professor.

I’ve just completed this course and have to say I have learned a lot! The professor Brian Bushee is very good, meaning that he explains everything in details and an easy understandable language. Which is very important when you learn something like financial accounting and financial statements and most challenging in a language which is not your first language. Course is very interesting and informative. P.S. before starting course I’ve read most asked questions and one of them was about virtual students, but I have to say I did enjoy going through this course with them :) learning accounting something could get boring, but they definitely brought some fun and most importantly asked questions I wanted to ask!

Wow, is this a great course! Professor Bushee has such a talent for making what could be very complicated, straightforward and simple. He has a great knack for explaining Financial Accounting step by step and building upon each lesson in subsequent lessons. He goes slow enough to make it easy to grasp the material but fast enough to keep the students. His nutty sense of humor is really great and I loved the comments he had the virtual students make. Very entertaining and sometimes they were the questions I would have asked live myself.

It was quite a helpful course for me. I had no subject of accounting in my BS Economics degree, and I felt the need to learn the basics of the financial accounting as I was offered some jobs in the field of accounting. It was given a training, but still it was very challenging. Now after taking this course I am very confident for any entry level job in accounting.

Very interesting and the course is presented in a nice way. Though in my opinion, it's tough for a complete beginner in the accounting field. It needs to be reviewed over and over

Videos are too long and content delivery could improved with less use of cartoons.

Professor Bushee is an amazing teacher. the course covers extremely important topics in accounting. however, after the first two weeks( which were absolutely amazing), it felt like everything suddenly moved from 0-100 real quick. the explanations to concepts became more and more superficial and difficult to digest. i had to watch the 3rd week's contents at least 3 times over to understand, and by the 4th week, I had almost no excitement to see what we would be covering during the week. I simply pushed through to get my certificate.

The pacing also got very weird. the professor would reference a topic that we were to cover in a future video or week and then we would end up not covering it, or he'd only spend a few seconds talking about it. the last two weeks felt like 4 weeks worth of content that were forcefully condensed into two weeks.

It's the most difficult course so far after I took the business foundation course, however, it's very challenge and useful. I am not good at it, but I did learn a lot. It would be better if professor stop saying the cold jokes which is even more boring when taking this not quite attractive course. I started to realize the beauty of it only after I finished chapter 3... So hard!

I would like for the course to have more information on what is included in the Liabilities, Shareholder's equities, Assets etc. More explanation on the T-accounts, and the answers to quizzes not to differ from the videos, e.g which accounts increase when dividends are announced.

This course is somewhat difficult if you do it in solidarity and are not familiar with accounting concepts.

i couldn't stand the virtual students. The lectures were very drawn out so i would lose focus.

I thought the animations made the course a bit less professional.

The pace is a little too fast for a beginner like me.

a bit difficoult, but nice pdfs

Frequency of knowledge evaluations is abysmal. There is one 10 question quiz for every 2 hours of lecture. The professor's sense of humour made the dryness of the material bearable.

This is very good course increase accounting knowledge

I'm actually a big fan of learning all subjects out there. Typically, I will take a course and learn to appreciate the content and enjoy the new perspective of seeing the world. I definitely cannot say the same about this course. It has got to be one of the most poorly taught classes that I have ever taken, and I have taken many courses, including undergraduate, graduate, and online courses. This professor clearly did not put much effort in trying to communicate the concepts effectively. In fact, he went out of his way to create an animation of students who are clearly caricatures of students who have annoyed him in the past. Most of the time, the animated students' input is a waste of time and seems to be put there so that Buchee can entertain himself while acting like a complete fool by patronizing animated characters that he himself made. Honestly, this course was a pain to finish and I stepped away from Coursera for weeks on end due to the absolute boredom and nausea of having to sit through this guy's videos. If you're taking this course for the specialization, get ready because you're about to be bored and annoyed to death. My advice, get through the course as fast as you can before you completely lose interest, step away, and have to once again torture yourself in reviewing the material.

The virtual students are annoying and don't serve a real purpose. It's giving me online defensive driving classes that people take to get out of speeding tickets. For a couple of videos, instructor refused to call "conservatism principle" by its proper name because the word "conservatism" hurt one of the virtual students' feelings?

The grading format on the quizzes aren't helpful. There's no partial credit on questions with multiple correct answers, it's all or nothing. And there's no guidance on figuring out what answers were missing outside of "You didn't select all of the correct answers". In Week 4, there's no feedback period.

I don't think this class is helpful for people who don't know the first thing about accounting. I didn't know anything about accounting but had to take this course as a prerequisite. I retained maybe a couple of vocabulary terms, but nothing of real substance because the material isn't presented in a way people with no prior accounting knowledge can completely grasp.