A First Year Data Analytics Course for Accounting Students

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Abstract
We introduce a data analytics course that accounting students complete during the first semester of their undergraduate program at the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of Waterloo. The course positions analytics as equally important to their future professional success as financial accounting, basic business concepts, and economics. We offer our approach, which could be adopted by any business school that currently requires an introductory course in mathematics for business. Our choices regarding content and delivery method were driven by our aim to help students develop a data analytics mindset from the beginning and in parallel with building their accounting knowledge. We wanted to build on industry standard tools (i.e., spreadsheets) but at the same time to prepare students for a changing environment that is not hindered by data size or software capabilities and emphasize the importance of tool ambidexterity. This means the need to create future professionals who are versatile and capable to switch/leverage the most appropriate tool for each project.