Online Finance Degree

This course teaches students to think like sociologists, or, in other words, to see and understand the hidden rules, or norms, by which people live, and how they free or restrain behavior. Students will learn about socializing institutions, such as schools and families, as well as workplace organizations and governments. Participants will also learn how people deviate from the rules by challenging norms and how such behavior may result in social change, either on a large scale or within small groups.

In this course you will learn key critical thinking concepts and how to apply them in the analysis and evaluation of reasons and evidence. The course examines the basic components of an argument, the credibility of evidence sources, the impact of bias, and how to construct an argument that provides good support for a claim. The course consists of an introduction and four major sections. Each section includes learning opportunities through readings, videos, audio, and other relevant resources. Assessment activities with feedback also provide opportunities to check your learning, practice, and show how well you understand course content. Because the course is self-paced, you may move through the material as quickly or as slowly as you need to gain proficiency in the four competencies that will be covered in the final assessment. If you have no prior knowledge or experience, you can expect to spend 30-40 hours on the course content.

Applied Probability and Statistics is designed to help students develop competence in the fundamental concepts of basic statistics including: introductory algebra and graphing; descriptive statistics; regression and correlation; and probability. Statistical data and probability are often used in everyday life, science, business, information technology, and educational settings to make informed decisions about the validity of studies and the effect of data on decisions. This course discusses what constitutes sound research design and how to appropriately model phenomena using statistical data. Additionally, the content covers simple probability calculations, based on events that occur in the business and IT industries. No prerequisites are required for this course.

Welcome to Composition: Successful Self-Expression! In this course, you will focus on four main topics: professional writing for a cross-cultural audience, narrowing research topics and questions, researching for content to support a topic, and referencing research sources. Each section includes learning opportunities through readings, videos, audio, and other relevant resources. Assessment activities with feedback also provide opportunities to check your learning, practice, and show how well you understand course content. Because the course is self-paced, you may move through the material as quickly or as slowly as you need to gain proficiency in the seven competencies that will be covered in the final assessment. If you have no prior knowledge or experience, you can expect to spend 30-40 hours on the course content. You will demonstrate competency through a performance assessment. There is no prerequisite for this course and there is no specific technical knowledge needed.

​This course presents a broad survey of U.S. history from early colonization to the mid-twentieth century. The course explores how historical events and major themes in American history have affected diverse populations, influenced changes in policy an established the American definition of democracy.  This course consists of an introduction and five major sections. Each section includes learning opportunities through reading, images, videos, and other relevant resources. Assessment activities with feedback also provide opportunities to practice and check how well you understand the content. Because the course is self-paced, you may move through the material as quickly or as slowly as you need to, with the goal of demonstrating proficiency in the five competencies covered in the final assessment. If you have no prior knowledge of this material, you can expect to spend 30-40 hours on the course content.​ 

Applied Algebra is designed to help you develop competence in working with functions, the algebra of functions, and using some applied properties of functions. You will start learning about how we can apply different kinds of functions to relevant, real-life examples. From there, the algebra of several families of functions will be explored, including linear, polynomial, exponential, and logistic functions. You will also learn about relevant, applicable mathematical properties of each family of functions, including rate of change, concavity, maximizing/minimizing, and asymptotes. These properties will be used to solve problems related to your major and make sense of everyday living problems. Students should complete Applied Probability and Statistics or its equivalent prior to engaging in Applied Algebra.

Welcome to Introduction to Communication: Connecting with Others! It may seem like common knowledge that communication skills are important, and that communicating with others is inescapable in our everyday lives. While this may appear simplistic, the study of communication is actually complex, dynamic, and multifaceted. Strong communication skills are invaluable to strengthening a multitude of aspects of life. Specifically, this course will focus on communication in the professional setting, and present material from multiple vantage points, including communicating with others in a variety of contexts, across situations, and with diverse populations. Upon completion, you will have a deeper understanding of both your own and others’ communication behaviors, and a toolbox of effective behaviors to enhance your experience in the workplace.

Health, Fitness, and Wellness focuses on the importance and foundations of good health and physical fitness, particularly for children and adolescents. This course addresses health, nutrition, and fitness, and substance use and abuse.

This course provides students with an overview of the basic principles and unifying ideas of the physical sciences: physics, chemistry, and earth sciences. Course materials focus on scientific reasoning and practical, everyday applications of physical science concepts to help students integrate conceptual knowledge with practical skills.

This is a Global Arts and Humanities course that contains three modules with corresponding lessons. This course is an invitation to see the world through the humanities, examine the humanities during the Information Age, and explore the global origins of music—essentially questioning what makes us human, and how people are connected across culture and time. Each module includes learning opportunities through readings, videos, audio, and other relevant resources. Assessment activities with feedback also provide opportunities to practice and check learning. With no prior knowledge or experience, a learner can expect to spend 30-40 hours on the course content.

Success in today’s workplace requires more than technical skill. It depends on emotional awareness, cultural understanding, and ethical decision-making. This course will help you strengthen your ability to communicate effectively, connect across differences, and lead with empathy. These are not soft skills. They are the professional capabilities employers value most and the human qualities that technology can never replace.

Principles of Financial and Managerial Accounting provides students with an introduction to the discipline of accounting and its context within the business environment. In this course, students will learn to differentiate between financial, cost, and managerial accounting and where these accounting types fit into the business environment. This course will help students gain a fundamental knowledge of the budgeting process, how to analyze basic financial statements, and how to use spreadsheets to analyze data. This course provides students with a business generalist overview of the field of accounting and acts as a preview course for the accounting major.

This course covers an important part of being a business professional: the knowledge and skills used in building and implementing business strategy. The course helps students build on previously acquired competencies in the areas of management, innovative thinking, and risk management while introducing them to the concepts and theories underpinning business strategy as a general business perspective. The course will help students gain skills in analyzing different business environments and in using quantitative literacy and data analysis in business strategy development and implementation. This course helps to provide students with a generalist overview of the area of business strategy.

Fundamentals of Spreadsheets and Data Presentations offers learners an overview of the use of spreadsheet functions and methods for presenting data within spreadsheets. Learners will have the opportunity to explore features and uses of MS Excel and apply the tools to situations they may encounter while studying in their program. They will also be introduced to real world uses and tools to collect, organize and present data.

Business Environment Applications 1 provides students with a generalist overview of the business environment and a deeper look at a number of topics that make up the non-discipline areas of business which are required for a business person to be successful within any business environment. The first part of the course focuses on knowledge about organizations and how people operate within organizations, including the areas of organizational theory, structure, and effectiveness. The course then looks at business from a legal perspective with an overview of the legal environment of business. The course will prepare the student to consider specific legal situations and to make legal and ethical decisions related to those situations.

This course provides students with an introductory look at the discipline of finance and its context within the business environment. Students gain the knowledge to differentiate between personal and business finance and how they may overlap in a business environment. Students also gain a fundamental knowledge of financial forecasting and budgeting, statement analysis, and decision making. This course provides the student a business generalist overview of the field of finance and builds on previous acquired competencies related to using spreadsheets.

Principles of Management provides students with an introductory look at the discipline of management and its context within the business environment. Students of this course build on previously mastered competencies by taking a more in-depth look at management as a discipline and how it differs from leadership while further exploring the importance of communication within business. This course provides students with a business generalist overview in the areas of strategic planning, total quality, entrepreneurship, conflict and change, human resource management, diversity, and organizational structure.

Information Technology Management Essentials includes topics such as information systems analysis, database resource management, spreadsheet literacy, and computer literacy concepts. This course will help students understand the importance of information technology in an organization and apply databases to solve business problems.

Business Environment II: Logistics, Process, and Operations provides students with a generalist overview of the business environment as they explore themes of ethics, problem-solving, and innovative thinking. This course adds to the students’ business skills and knowledge in a number of professional areas. The first part of the course uncovers a series of business processes like project and risk management. The second part gives an introductory-level look at the specialized areas of operations management, supply chains, and logistics. The course finishes with models of change management and how to use them to overcome barriers in organizations.

Concepts in Marketing, Sales, and Customer Contact introduces students to the discipline of marketing and its role within the strategic and operational environments of a business. This course covers fundamental knowledge in the area of marketing planning, including the marketing mix, while also describing basic concepts of brand management, digital marketing, customer relationship management, and personal selling and negotiating. All of this helps students identify the role of marketing within an organization. This course provides students with a business generalist overview of the field of marketing and an exploration of the marketing major.

Principles of Economics introduces students to foundational economic theories on markets and market behavior. This information is valuable to students pursuing careers involving decision making and is applicable to any industry. This course has three competencies: The Economic Way of Thinking, Microeconomics, and Macroeconomics. In the first, economics is defined, and fundamental economic principles are introduced. Microeconomics develops the supply and demand model and demonstrates how it is used to understand business interactions and to make public policy decisions. The competency includes supply, demand, elasticity, efficiency, market failure, costs, production, and market structure. Macroeconomics focuses on the measurement and performance of the nation economy. The competency includes macroeconomic variables, aggregate supply, aggregate demand, money, monetary policy, fiscal policy, and international trade.

Managing in a Global Business Environment provides students with a generalist overview of business from a global perspective, while also developing basic skills and knowledge to help them make strategic decisions, communicate, and develop personal relationships in a global environment. Business today is by its very nature a global environment, and individuals working in business will experience the global nature of business as they progress through their careers. This course builds on previously acquired competencies by providing an overview of U.S. federal laws in relation to doing business in a global environment.

This course ties together all the skills and knowledge covered in the business courses and allows the student to prove their mastery of the competencies by applying them in a simulated business environment. This course will help take the student's knowledge and skills from the theoretical to applicable.

Operations and Supply Chain Management provides a streamlined introduction to how organizations efficiently produce goods and services, determine supply chain management strategies, and measure performance. Emphasis is placed on integrative topics essential for managers in all disciplines, such as supply chain management, product development, and capacity planning. This course guides students in analyzing processes, managing quality for both services and products, and measuring performance while creating value along the supply chain in a global environment. Topics include forecasting, product and service design, process design and location analysis, capacity planning, management of quality and quality control, inventory management, scheduling, supply chain management, and performance measurement.

Quantitative Analysis for Business explores various decision-making models, including expected value models, linear programming models, and inventory models. This course helps student learn to analyze data by using a variety of analytic tools and techniques to make better business decisions. In addition, it covers developing project schedules using the Critical Path Method. Other topics include calculating and evaluating formulas, measures of uncertainty, crash costs, and visual representation of decision-making models using electronic spreadsheets and graphs. This course has no prerequisites.

Project Management prepares you to manage projects from start to finish within any organization structure. The course represents a view into different project-management methods and delves into topics such as project profiling and phases, constraints, building the project team, scheduling, and risk. You will be able to grasp the full scope of projects you may work with on in the future, and apply proper management approaches to complete a project. The course features practice in each of the project phases as you learn how to strategically apply project-management tools and techniques to help organizations achieve their goals.

Business Ethics is designed to enable students to identify the ethical and socially responsible courses of action available through the exploration of various scenarios in business. Students will also learn to develop appropriate ethics guidelines for a business. This course has no prerequisites.

Values-Based Leadership guides students to learn by reflection, design, and scenario planning. Through a combination of theory, reflection, value alignment, and practice, the course helps students examine and understand values-based leadership and explore foundations in creating a culture of care. In this course, students are given the opportunity to identify and define their personal values through an assessment and reflection process. Students then evaluate business cases to practice mapping the influence of values on their own leadership. In this course, students also participate in scenario planning, where they can practice implementing their values in their daily routine (i.e., behaviors) and then in a leadership setting. The course illustrates how values-driven leadership is used in goal setting as well as problem-solving at an organizational level. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Organizational Behavior and Leadership explores how to lead and manage effectively in diverse business environments. Students are asked to demonstrate the ability to apply organizational leadership theories and management strategies in a series of scenario-based problems.

Innovation in Finance provides students with an introduction to the technologies and product solutions that have disrupted the financial services industry. In this course, students will learn about the emerging financial technologies contributing to the evolution of lending, payments, wealth management, financial planning, and the insurance industry. This course will examine the role financial technology (FinTech) firms serve as financial disruptors and how these organizations are developed and supported, from start-up to scale. Throughout the course, students will identify the impact emerging technologies and FinTechs have on businesses, individuals, and society as a whole. Topics include emerging technology products and services, incubators, accelerator programs, FinTech ecosystems, and technologies that enable and facilitate disruption by emerging technologies. This course provides students with a general overview of financial innovation and serves as an integral component of the finance major. D076: Principles of Finance is a prerequisite for this course.

Personal Finance provides learners with an introduction to the discipline of finance from the perspective of the person, or family, rather than from the viewpoint of a business. In this course, learners will gain an understanding of financial literacy concepts, including personal budgeting and how to apply financial principles to achieve personal financial goals. Learners will identify various strategies to manage risks, to enhance postretirement income, and to accumulate and transfer wealth. Topics include record keeping, credit principles, cash flow, investment philosophy, monetary asset management, housing, and estate planning. This course provides learners with a general overview of personal finance and acts as a preview course for the finance major. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Corporate Finance is about business structures that set the environment for the day-to-day operations of a business. This course teaches learners about the common forms of business structures, the factors that business owners consider when they choose which structure to use, and the roles of shareholders and stakeholders. This course also teaches that managing the financial function involves capitalizing the company and evaluating capital budget techniques, including those that use the time value of money. Through this course, learners will learn how to calculate the cost to finance a business using the weighted average cost of capital, how to value stocks and bonds, and how to determine the value of the firm. The prerequisites for this course include Principles of Financial and Managerial Accounting, Finance Skills for Managers, Applied Probability and Statistics, Principles of Economics, and Financial Statement Analysis.

Financial Statement Analysis discusses the concepts and provides tools for financial analysts to evaluate the financial elements of the firm as well as external factors to ultimately arrive at a valuation. You will learn a process to analyze data and the concepts where you can determine the quality of that data. This process provides a structure where ratios and company results are not looked at individually but as a whole in determining the worth of an enterprise, leading to an analysis-based valuation of the firm.

This course covers basic financial management principles primarily targeted to the operations part of a business. The learner gains an understanding about the basic finance organization in an enterprise in support of the company's primary goal to increase corporate value for shareholders in an ethical way. Tools a finance professional might use in managing the cash and current assets are discussed along with cash budgeting and financial strategic planning. The Dupont equation is reviewed as the basis for analyzing and improving the performance of the enterprise to improve value. The learner will acquire knowledge about how forecasting models and financial instruments are used to optimize the working capital investment portfolio. Prerequisite for Financial Management I is Corporate Finance.

This course covers capital budgeting and long-term funding strategies. The course will delve into more advanced financial management principles primarily targeted toward corporate investment and capital planning. This course also explores an enterprise’s capital structure and how equity and long-term debt are used to finance and sustain long-term fixed asset projects. Decision methods, such as net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period, are discussed as techniques a finance professional might use in identifying and structuring the optimal capital budget. The learner will gain an understanding about equity capital, will assess financial markets, and will examine the differences in shareholder classifications and bonds. The course will teach how the dividend policy is devised and discover how the organization uses its corporate investment strategy to increase not only shareholder value but also corporate value for the shareholder. Prerequisites for Financial Management II are D196, Principles of Financial and Managerial Accounting; D076, Finance Skills for Managers; D363, Personal Finance; D362, Corporate Finance; D364, Financial Management I; and D366, Financial Statement Analysis.

Enterprise Risk Management provides learners with an introduction to the discipline of risk management from the perspective of an organization rather than from the viewpoint of a person. In this course, learners will learn risk management concepts, including risk tolerance, risk appetite, and how to utilize governance and compliance resources to achieve an effective risk management strategy. Throughout this course, learners will determine various strategies to identify, assess, monitor, and control risks and other threats to an organization. Topics include approaches to risk mitigation, generally accepted frameworks and standards adopted to manage risk, current environmental, societal, and governance matters of risk interest to an organization, disaster recovery plans, and insurance products.

This course is designed as a synthesis of the knowledge learners have acquired throughout the program. The course culminates in a performance assessment that requires learners to apply the competencies gained throughout the finance program. In this course, learners will draw upon the concepts and techniques introduced in the undergraduate finance program to perform a comprehensive financial analysis of an enterprise. In completing the course, learners will perform analyses with spreadsheet software to simulate a real-world experience of a finance career professional.

Human resource management is where strategy and people come together. This course introduces you to the full scope of HR functions, including workforce planning, talent acquisition, compensation, employee development, labor relations, and workplace safety. By understanding how these functions work together, you will see how HR professionals influence both business results and the employee experience.

Employment and labor law provides the framework that protects employees and guides employers. This course equips you to interpret and apply the legal requirements that shape every stage of the employment relationship. You will learn how to identify risks, ensure compliance, and establish fair practices that protect both organizational interests and employee rights.

Business Law for Accountants is designed to provide the advanced accounting student an understanding of the legal environment and issues encountered in the profession. Topics include the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), contracts, securities regulation, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, legal entities, ethics, agency, and bankruptcy. The prerequisite to this course is Financial Accounting.