A Student Success Coach with the University of North Dakota’s online Master of Accountancy program shares a brief program overview and takes a deep dive into what students can expect in the Blackboard online learning software. The webinar includes a preview of two courses, including a snippet of a lecture and a look at a module.
Transcript
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – Slide 1, Cover: Hello and welcome. I am a student support specialist who works with the University of North Dakota’s online graduate students. My role is to support students from enrollment through graduation to ensure they have everything they need to be successful in our online programs.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – Slide 2, Dr. Notbohm Bio: Today, we’re talking about UNB’s online Master of Accountancy Program for non-accounting majors which is led by program director, Dr. Matthew Notbohm. Not only is Dr. Notbohm the program director, but also an associate professor who teaches one of the courses we’ll take a sneak peek at today. He is a certified professional accountant who spent nearly 20 years as an accounting educator. Dr. Notbohm is passionate about teaching future accountants the skills needed for success in the industry.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – Slide 3, Program Overview: UND’s online Master of Accountancy is a competitive part-time graduate program that offers a hundred percent online asynchronous coursework through a platform called Blackboard which we will learn more about today. The 30-credit program is designed to be flexible for busy professionals who don’t have a bachelor’s degree in accounting nor professional accounting experience. Unlike most accounting masters programs that accept non accounting majors, our program does not require any bridge courses or accounting pre-requisites, so students dive head first into the fundamentals of accounting and complete the entire online program in as few as five semesters or 20 months.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – Slide 4, Curriculum Overview: Our 30-credit curriculum prepares students to sit for the CPA exam, and is taught by industry experts who are passionate about the success of future accountants. Each 15-week semester, students take two back-to-back seven-week courses that cover topics ranging from taxation of business to business law for accountants, and from accounting systems to audit and assurance services.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – In Blackboard Learning Platform: All courses are hosted on Blackboard which is a user-friendly online software. Students in our online programs use Blackboard daily to access coursework, exams, lectures, assignments, resources, group discussions, and grades. It also has links to important information like announcements, orientation materials, a 24/7 help desk and more. When you visit blackboard.und.edu, you’ll land on this login screen. Once you log in, you can navigate to the courses tab where you will find the student resource center, your program courses, and an orientation course.
We’ll start by taking a quick look at the student resource center. Here, you’ll find important information that you might not access daily, but will definitely find helpful. There are tabs for announcements about courses and the program, information about UND, details about policies, academic calendars, registration, degree plans, and links to tools, articles, and events.
Two sections I want to point out are the announcements tab and the networking and employment tab. The program director, Dr. Notbohm is dedicated to providing abundant opportunities for students to access career and networking resources so he personally keeps the resource center very active and regularly updated. Let’s quickly check out the new student orientation. Once you’re enrolled in the program, the orientation is one of the first things you’ll access in Blackboard. It’s designed to mirror what a program course will look like so as you navigate through the orientation, you’ll get comfortable with the setup you’ll be using daily. At the bottom of this menu and individual course menus, you’ll see links to a 24/7 help desk, Blackboard help, tools, libraries, tech resources, and UND tech support.
Now let’s jump into a course. This is where you’ll spend the majority of your time in Blackboard. First, we’ll explore Accounting 509, accounting information for decision and control. This course is taught by Dr. Notbohm, the director for our online Master of Accountancy Program. The menu for this course is laid out nearly identically to the orientation course we just looked at and you’ll find this consistency throughout each course you take. At the top of the menu, you can access core specific announcements, information about the faculty member who teaches the course, and the syllabus and required textbooks. Below that is course content which holds the links to resources you’ll need in the class. Below course content, you’ll finally [wills 00:05:55] for each week of the course followed by relevant course information like exams, grades, and discussions. If we click into a specific week, let’s try week three, you’ll find resources and timelines related to assignments due that week, as well as lectures to watch, modules to complete, and group discussions to participate in. Each week also features an introduction video from the professor that provides an overview of the topics you’ll be covering that week.
Dr. Matthew Notbohm, Welcome Video: Welcome to week three of Accounting 509. Last week we discussed the agency problem, general types of policies that limit the agency problem, and responsibility accounting, all in chapters four and five. This week, we will discuss chapters six and seven. Chapter six focuses on budgets including assembly of budget schedules, computation of budget variances, uses of budgets, and addressing problems created by certain types of budgets.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – In Blackboard Learning Platform: Now let’s jump into a lecture from Dr. Notbohm. Professors pre-record lectures to align with the topic skill learned that week which allows for asynchronous coursework.
Dr. Matthew Notbohm, Lecture Preview: Greetings. Welcome to our first narrated PowerPoint video presentation or week three. This is video 3.1 entitled Purposes and Development of Master Budgets. So let’s just review where we’ve been and where we’re going in this chapter. So we’re about to start our discussion of chapter six. Just a couple of chapters ago, last week, we discussed chapter four. In chapter four, we discussed what the agency problem was, the relevant parties to the agency problem, and discuss this concept of organizational architecture. Now, recall, organizational architecture relates to how we evaluate each agent’s performance, how we reward each agent’s performance and, of course, tying those rewards back to how the agent performed in terms of their performance evaluation.
All right, so let’s start with a good definition of what a budget is. So a budget is nothing more than a plan for the future, a projection, a forecast of what we think that whatever the organization is, our organization, what do we think the operations of that organization are going to look like at some point in the future? So maybe a little bit more of a rigorous definition would be management’s formal financial quantification of the plan for operations for the organization for some future period.
So essentially what we mean by that is managements, the board of directors, possibly the owners of the company, any of those people, top people in the organization, and people who are in the know about what’s going to be expected to happen in the future, what’s going to be happening in the future. They form their expectation, write it down on paper, it’s going to involve financial numbers.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – In Blackboard Learning Platform: I hope you all enjoy this little snippet from Dr. Notbohm. He’s a great professor, and you can tell he’s passionate about what he teaches. I’d also like to remind you to keep in mind that just because you can’t ask questions in a live lecture doesn’t mean you don’t have access to support from your professors and myself when you need it. Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask questions about what you’re learning or get clarification on the topic at any time.
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – In Sample Course Module: Now let’s jump into Accounting 501 which is seminar in accounting issues. Here’s an example of a module that you may have to walk through. You’ll read the material and answer questions based on what you’ve read. Each week will vary in the number of modules, assignments, or lectures you’ll need to finish depending on that week’s topics. (Clicks through different tabs and navigation items in the module.)
Felicia, Student Support Specialist – Closing Slide: Well, that’s going to wrap it up for this overview of the online Blackboard learning portal. I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions about our online Master of Accountancy Program, please contact our enrollment team. They are a wealth of information and would love to help you get started on your journey towards earning your masters. Thank you for watching and have a great day.