ACCTG 5150 — Accounting Analytics · Summer 2026 · From Sean · Preliminary — based on the first 11 survey responses
This course is new, it is hard, and it is built to challenge you. You are learning SQL, Excel, data cleaning, and how to direct an AI. All in the same term, often in the same week. This change is actually happening in industry too, so you are in good company as most practicing accountants are updating their skill sets. You are not behind, as "normal" is a constantly moving target where new things become available.
I have admittedly made the class tough and am trying to overwhelm you with lots of information to make it impossible to avoid AI. With the pressure being added by this course, it is not my expectation that you should try to figure out something for 3 hours and come away feeling demoralized. If you feel stuck, and you cannot prompt your way out of it, please reach out.
The reason for the generous extension policy is to account for the wide range of AI skills that students are bringing into the class. AI lets you explore in an afternoon what used to take days or weeks to resolve. A rapid prototype that's mostly wrong still teaches you more than an evening of staring at a blank sheet. None of those moves are cheating; they are the job.
The skill being built here isn't memorizing syntax, it isn't being a software engineer, it is building confidence that your creative thinking + AI can take you quite far. As you all enter the workforce, you are unencumbered by the history of "how it was done" and uniquely positioned to be the first AI-native workforce that pushes things forward to "how it will be."
My job is to push you past what you thought you could do and to teach you how to leverage your unique superpower as accountants into creating durable solutions that balance risk and efficiency.
Question everything!
Eleven of you have filled out the mid-class survey. Thank you. Every response below shaped this page. This is what you told me, what I'm keeping, and the options I'm weighing for the back half of the course. Treat all of it as preliminary — eleven responses is a start, not a verdict, and this page gets revised as more of you weigh in. All numbers here are class-level aggregates from an anonymous survey; nothing on this page can be traced to any individual student, including by me.
Before I make any big changes to the course, I want to hear from more than half the class. Right now the survey is at 11 of 37. The median respondent finished in about 4 minutes. It is anonymous, ungraded, and it directly changes what I do next — this page exists because eleven people spent 4 minutes. Anonymous here means Canvas strips identities before I see anything: I get answers and counts, never who.
This round closes Sunday, June 14 at 11:59 PM (Mountain). I'll read everything submitted by then before deciding what changes.
Take the survey (about 4 minutes)The clearest signals from the survey, and what I'm doing about each: more of exactly that.
Here's what I'm considering in response. The survey hitting 19+ responses is what turns "considering" into "scheduling" — I want the changes to reflect the whole class, not just the eleven voices I've heard so far.
A few live sessions where you bring any AI problem or question — from this class or not — and we work on it together, live. Stuck prompts, weird errors, "why does it keep doing this," all fair game.
Message me on Canvas and we'll set up a time that works. This is available right now, not pending the survey. If you're losing hours to something, that's the signal to send the message.
A couple of you asked for quick videos explaining what each lab and homework is really asking for, and how to point your AI at it. Under consideration for the remaining weeks.
Seeing the full worked lab after it closes, so you can find exactly where your version went sideways. Under consideration, starting with the most recent labs.
A few aggregate numbers, shared in the same spirit as the webinar stats in the weekly announcements — anonymized, and never factored into grades.
"Reach out via Canvas" is only good advice if the inbox actually answers. Here is how that has gone so far this term:
Measured from the first message in each thread to my reply, across the whole term so far. More than half the class has already used this door. It is open to the rest of you too.
It takes about 4 minutes, it's anonymous and ungraded, and it decides what the back half of this course looks like. This round closes Sunday, June 14 at 11:59 PM (Mountain).
Take the mid-class survey