Welcome. It is great to have you in our unit, ACCT11059 Accounting, Learning and Online Communication.

Would you believe, many people (but not all) start our unit fearful and worried about studying accounting. People can worry they will find studying accounting difficult and boring.

You may be afraid it will involve numbers and maths, and you may have had some bad experiences with maths at school in the past. Also, you may be worried you will find studying accounting boring and not interesting to you, and so you may be worried you may have trouble getting motivated and so may fail the subject.

If you feel this way, do not worry. You will not be alone. Many people do feel this way when studying accounting in first year at university.

And there is no need to be fearful about studying accounting. Our unit is only introductory accounting, after all. So it is not difficult. And if you come with me on the journey of this unit, and work steadily each week with me and others in our unit, then I find everyone is able to pass just fine.

Sure, there are some numbers in accounting, but we will do little more than simply add and subtract numbers, and often not even that. OK, OK … in our ASS#2 will we do a few Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) calculations using Excel. But that is about it! And that is toward the end of our unit, so more about that much later.

So, I encourage you to ‘come aboard’ on our subject as we together explore the (possibly) exciting world of accounting. And a key word is together. You will have the opportunity to interact and work with others in our unit – wherever we are studying, throughout Australia (and sometimes elsewhere), as well as with our teaching staff – as we together explore and face the challenges of discovering aspects of the world of accounting and its role in business.

I look forward to working with you this term.

Martin Turner

Unit Coordinator