Documentation:Learning Activities/Business

Discussion Activity: Trial Balance

Once you have worked through the case from your textbook, post a note to your team members and a PDF of the trial balance in the Lesson 8 discussion topic. A deadline will be provided early in the week for when you need to post the trial balance. 
Review your team members’ postings; and as a group, discuss any differences that you may have found, ask for the appropriate reports to be posted (i.e., general ledgers of specific accounts, where differences occur, and/or specific journal entries), and resolve within your group the perceived correct application. On Sunday, the correct trial balance will be posted for your team to do a final review. If you noted any areas where you had insights or problems and want to share any hints or tricks with your fellow learners, post this in the “Hints” topic in the discussions area. In addition to the trial balance matching activity, your Open Learning Faculty Member will post a discussion topic, small case, or problem for you to do as a team.

Note Your participation in the group activities will be monitored and is part of the course evaluation. You may review the criteria for evaluating your contributions to the discussions on the main course page under “Assessments”.

Top Ten List for your Management Accountant “Tool Bag”

• Consider what tools, techniques, and skills are needed in the Tool Bag in order to play a valuable role in business organizations, and compile a top seven list for a management accountant’s Tool Bag. Share your list with another person in the class and work with that person to come up with a final top ten list that you are both happy with. Share your list under “Discussions” (put both your names on your top ten list so everyone will know who worked on which posted list) and a summary of any important discussions that took place. Your completed post should not exceed 250 words.
• Please remember to read and respond to other students’ posts by Sunday midnight of the week 1 of the course. Once all the lists are posted, you are encouraged to keep communicating with each other during the second week of the course to come up with a top ten list as a class. Remember, the more you engage in collaboration and discussions with each other, the greater will be your learning.

Discussion Activity: Viewpoints on Strategy

To complete the activity, post your thoughts on the viewpoints expressed in the following statements to the online Discussions area for this topic. The optional readings above may be useful in completing this activity.

• Strategic planning is like a crapshoot; you lose more times than you win.
• Corporate executives should ignore their gut feeling when formulating strategy.
• Strategic planning is most likely to succeed where there is a single business focus and fail when the company has multiple business activities.
• Luck is always a factor in a successful strategy.
• Intended strategy always will produce better results than an emergent strategy.

Illustrate your views with examples drawn from the optional readings or from experience.