Our most popular exercises are a Horizontal Financial Statement exercise typically assigned to Introduction to Financial Accounting students, as well as a Cash Flow Budget exercise assigned to Introduction to Managerial Accounting students.
Each student is assigned a unique 4-digit spreadsheet ID that is reference several places in the exercise. Sometimes students use their ID to calculate an amount, in other cases they may include the ID when assigning a name within various Excel features.
The grading process is completely hands-off for instructors. Students upload the spreadsheets to our online portal. Our automated tool makes a first pass at the grading. We then hand check any items a student gets marked wrong to determine if they accomplished the step correctly in a manner that we’re not yet checking.
We give instructors a spreadsheet that has two scores for every student:
- Completion: We indicate if students completed or attempted every step.
- Accuracy: We give half-credit for a step if the student attempted the work but did not complete it correctly.
Instructors then determine how much credit to grant to each student for the exercise. In some cases, our exercises are part of class curriculum. In other cases, instructors try out our materials as extra-credit projects for the students.
Our exercises are typically $9.95, which is paid by the students, much like a text book. Our Data Analytics exercise is more comprehensive and costs $39.95.
David H. Ringstrom, CPA can draft custom exercises to complement your in-class teaching. He is an author and teaches over 200 live webinars on Excel each year. Contact David at david@studentsxl.com or 404-784-0275.
We offer a 50 item Excel competency test that can be used to measure your students’ current abilities in Microsoft Excel. This exercise is $9.95.