COMM 2010

I won't ramble. Here's what you need to know: Difficult subject matter. No partial credit. Ghost professor (it's online, after all). Exam content is extremely different from general coursework content. Sassy/angry emails from professor. This class will eat up your weekends and completely dictate your schedule.
Good luck, friends.

Not bad. Could have been better.

Roger Martin does not care about his students. He is the laziest teacher at UVA, evidenced by him making accounting an online course, so he doesn't have to do anything. We take our tests through an online proctor, which gave me technical difficulties on two occasions, interrupting my tests for hours. Of course I told Mr. Martin, and he didn't care. This guy rakes in over $200K every year to do absolutely nothing but repost old instructional videos. I am in Comm 2020 now (the next course taught by Mr. Martin), and two of our chapters were recycled from Comm 2010. To no one's surprise, Roger didn't even change the label on them from "2010" to "2020." If someone asked me how to actively ruin the great product of UVA curriculum, I would respond, "Hire Roger Martin!"

Not an introduction to financial accounting course like the course title and syllabus denote. Be prepared for much more specialized problems. Would not recommend to anyone.

okay okay, this class wasn't the worst thing ever. The content, like the basics of accounting, is useful, but only if you are actually going to try to learn from the online material. And I think I tried pretty hard. The readings weren't exactly interesting, but I got through them. The homeworks were fine if you did them in groups. The exams on the other hand were disastrous. Our average for the second test was like a 70%, which the professor said was better than normal. That kinda speaks for itself. I am in e-school and took this class to get ahead on the business minor, but with the GPA tank this course is going to give me, I might not even bother applying. Take it if you have to. Accept that it's gonna be rough, and good luck.

This is going to get a ton of down arrows but its the truth. People just take this class thinking it's an online class and they can manage their time and have one less class to go to during the week. Most of these people wait until the last second to do the assigned work and take absolutely zero notes when reading the chapter. You need to have a specific time during the week(NOT THE WEEKEND) to get the work done and you need to pretty much take notes on everything from each chapter except the stuff the online textbook doesn't have highlighted. You should be spending about 15 hours a week on each chapter otherwise you will not do well. For all these people saying the exams have material nothing like we did you are so wrong. About 25% of each of the exams was copied and pasted questions from homework or practice problem questions and another 50% was homework or practice questions but with different numbers. That other 25% was homework or practice questions but asking for something different. If you take good notes each week and redo the homework and practice problems a couple of times before each exam you will do well. I'm an E-School student trying to get the business minor, I knew absolutely nothing about anything business before this class and still finished with an A without the curve.

Most of the people that come on here will complain about them failing the class. Don't be dissuaded by their testimony. Unlike what everyone will tell you as they make excuse after excuse, the class is not impossibly difficult...the questions are all fair game and don't come out of nowhere. If you take copious notes and take the time to understand the practice and homework you will do fine.

Yes, Roger Martin sucks. He just does and if you ever send him an email he'll give you a snarky response, but that doesn't matter. The class is online and you get out of it what you put in.

At least the course content is useful unlike classes like COMM 1800

I think that for people that are able to teach themselves material, this class is fair. However, most of us enrolled in UVA for in person lectures and some students simply can’t learn through a computer screen. I can’t even say that if you stay up to date with all the work and go to office hours you will be okay, I pretty much always had the practice problems/ homework done at least 3 days in advance of the due date, went to TAs, wrote up outlines... pretty much everything you could think of. Still ended up with a subpar grade because, in my mind, I was missing a key part of the class- a professor. Overall, I think it really depends on your style of learning.

This class truly caused me so much unneeded stress and anxiety. For people saying you'll be fine if you do the work, I have to disagree. I worked on the chapters throughout the entire week, never waiting until the last minute. I even felt like I had a good understanding of concepts, but the exams did not show this. I actually did very well on the first exam, but I was completely destroyed by the second midterm and final. I felt like I studied a lot for the second midterm, but I decided to put in 10x that effort for the final, only to do poorly again. If this were an in-person class, I think it would be exponentially easier and just better overall. This class made me feel so stupid even when I was putting in the work.

This course is a weed out prerequisite for the comm school and doesn't try to hide it. Made it out with an A+, and here's what you need to know to be successful.

Be prepared to spend a LOT of time independently reading and doing practice problems to really get the concepts down, as Martin and the TAs are good for reviewing material but not great at actually concepts. The Connect problems that Martin has you do with each chapter are actually useful, so whenever you get one wrong pay attention to the answer explanation. There are more multiple choice questions in the book itself at the end of each chapter, do those as well.

For the weekly homework and practice problems: try to spread out your work if you can. Some weeks this won't be possible, but it definitely helps. The practice problems come with unlimited attempts and an example solution with a nearly identical problem, so take advantage of those - the practice should be easy points. The homework is where things can get tricky. They don't count a lot individually, but if you keep making stupid mistakes they'll rack up and bring down your average. If you're confused on a problem, look through the practice and try to find one like it or reread the concept in the book.

The tests are hard. If you already do well on the practice and homework that's half the battle. Martin sends out review problems (taken from old practice and homework sets) and a mock exam. I advise doing the review problems first, making sure you've got all the concepts down there. Move on to the practice exam after that, and if you do well on that you're (usually) well-prepared for the exam (I thought the practice and actual exams were pretty similar). If not, you need to go to the problems you missed and have those down for the actual exam, since you're working under time pressure and accounting isn't something you can just figure out while you're taking the test. Double check everything you do: the exams are actually pretty short and there are a lot of multiple choice questions. A few dumb mistakes can knock you down to a C easily even if you know the material.

Overall, I'd say that this course was effective in introducing me to accounting. Did I enjoy it? Not really, but accounting is also a really useful skill. Wouldn't recommend for anyone outside people who are serious about going to the comm school, as otherwise you're subjecting yourself to unnecessary harm and stress.