ACTG 315 – Intermediate Financial Accounting I
I teach Intermediate Financial Accounting I (ACTG-315) for undergraduate students at UIC each fall. Intermediate accounting is a significant step up in difficulty from the core accounting classes primarily because material increases in both the complexity and quantity relative to the core accounting courses.
Intermediate I is important because it prepares students for the financial accounting portions of the CPA exam and is the foundation for further study in accounting, especially Intermediate Accounting II, Advanced Accounting, and Auditing. Also, it provides the knowledge that helps students excel in their internships, which are often start just after the end of the term.
“Everything I have done so far [in my internship] has directly related to what I learned in your class, and my success here is all thanks to your amazing/challenging teaching methods.”
Student from Fall 2021
To help students learn the material, I have developed the course around three foundational principles:
- Learning accounting requires application through cases and problems
- In-person meetings are for identifying and filling gaps in knowledge
- We remember more of what we learn when we can connect concepts to a unifying framework
Learning accounting requires application through cases and problems
While some of us enjoy thinking about financial accounting in the abstract, it is generally difficult for undergraduate students to appreciate the process of accounting without concrete examples and cases. Accordingly, I try and make the reading and practice problem sets available to students simultaneously, so that students can go back and forth between the concepts presented in the reading and the application in the problem sets. Also, I focus my video lectures on the specific problems to further encourage students to not just memorize definitions and entries, but to think critically about how to apply what they know. This is an effort to help students prepare of the CPA exam.
In-person meetings are for identifying and filling gaps in knowledge
When we are in-person, we have each other to help us figure out what we know and don’t know. I use class time to do a short quiz, often in pairs, and to then step-by-step work through the problem and field questions and clarify understanding. This is when we can tackle the hardest problems and tie concepts together.
We remember more of what we learn when we can connect concepts to a unifying framework
Accounting problems can often be very specifically focused on a very particular type of transaction. To help students remember the important aspects of each of these, I like to challenge students to associate important problems with fundamentals in accounting. For example, I challenge students to consider how each transaction affects the income statement, balance sheet, or particular ratios, or whether management may be incentivized to bias estimates in the accounting process.
Teaching Evaluations
I calculate the statistics below as averages weighted by the number of respondents. I provide the full evaluations so you can also see the detailed feedback.
- Fall 2023: Overall Rating: 4.44/5.00, Difficulty 4.16/5.00, Response Rate 80%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
- Fall 2022: Overall Rating 4.74/5.00, Difficulty 4.23/5.00, Response Rate 93%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
- Fall 2021: Overall Rating 4.64/5.00, Difficulty 4.21/5.00, Response Rate 84%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
- Fall 2020: Overall Rating 4.10/5.00, Difficulty 4.61/5.00, Response Rate 93%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
- Fall 2019: Overall Rating 4.69/5.00, Difficulty 4.25/5.00, Response Rate 87%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
- Fall 2018: Overall Rating 4.69/5.00, Difficulty 4.37/5.00, Response Rate 94%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
- Fall 2017: Overall Rating 4.40/5.00, Difficulty 4.60/5.00, Response Rate 94%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3] [Eval 4]
- Fall 2016: Overall Rating 4.44/5.00, Difficulty 4.64/5.00, Response Rate 86%. [Eval 1] [Eval 2] [Eval 3]
Recent Teaching Posts
Major Presentation – Accounting
Not my most polished presentation, but I’m sharing in case it’s helpful for anyone asked to present the case for majoring in accounting as an undergraduate student.
ACTG-315 Syllabus Fall 2025
My syllabus for this fall. Includes some updates related to AI, and a little more detail on the pacing of the course.
AAA presentation: The risk relevance of restructuring
It was a pleasure to present my paper at the AAA Annual Meeting in Chicago this year.
AAA discussion: Reassessed earnings with capitalized intangibles
It was a privilege to discuss this paper by Aneel Iqbal, Anup Srivastava, Shivaram Rajgopal, and Elnaz Basirianmahabadi at the AAA Annual Meeting in Chicago.
AAA Discussion: Managerial Learning and Goodwill Impairments
I had the opportunity to discuss this paper, by Yanrong Jia, Yiwen Li, and Huihao Yan, at the AAA annual meeting in Chicago.
EAA Discussion: Talking about the future to address the legitimacy gap: data breaches and forward-looking performance disclosure
It is great to have the opportunity to discuss “Talking about the future to address the legitimacy gap: data breaches and forward-looking performance diclosure” by Yanlei Zhang, Wenping Zhang, and QiQi Jiang.
EAA 2025 Presentation
It’s an honor to be able to present “The Risk Relevance of Restructuring” at EAA. My slides are below.
Intermediate AI Project
I assigned this AI-related project to my Masters students this fall. It helps students develop an awareness of the possibilities and limitations of generative AI, and it also reinforces the skills needed to analyze real-world financial statements. Basically, I have Chat-GPT generate a ratio analysis, and then ask the students to analyze the output -…
Trueblood case project
I’ve written up a project for Masters students that I think is interesting. It uses the excellent Trueblood cases (this year’s were on revenue recognition, “Mesmerizing Marketers” and “Nailed-it”). The project involves peer review, so it helps build a skill that is likely valuable to potential employers.
The most recent version of “The risk relevance of restructuring”
The most recent revision provides a more balanced (less human capital-focused) treatment of restructuring. It also includes all new tables and a little more clarity overall.
Presentation at the 19th EIASM Interdisciplinary Conference on “Intangibles, Sustainability, and Value Creation – Reporting, Management, and Governance”
It was a pleasure to present my paper, “The risk relevance of restructuring” at the conference.
Syllabi 2024
I have two syllabi for 2024, one for ACTG-315 and one for ACTG-502 (Graduate level). They are relatively similar, with some changes for grading and context.
Discussion: Under the radar? Discretionary impairments of finite and indefinite intangible assets
It was a pleasure to discuss this paper, by Gopal Krishnan, Alexander Liss, Ulf Mohrmann, and Jan Riepe, at the Temple conference.
Temple conference presentation: The risk relevance of restructuring
A pleasure to have the chance to present my paper, “The risk relevance of restructuring.”
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Vivek Raval 