ACCTMIS 7510—Assurance Services and Information Quality
COURSE DESCRIPTION
AUTUMN 2016
Instructor: Eric E. Spires
Office: 414 Fisher Hall Office hours: 4:30-5:00TuTh and by appointment
Telephone: 2924422 E-mail:
A. Course Objective: This course is designed to provide you with a basic understanding of the role of assurance services, in particular financial statement auditing, in enhancing the quality of information used for financial decision making. The course differs from traditional assurance-services courses in that we will sometimesview the information-quality issue from the perspective of the manager, rather than from the perspective of the auditor or accountant. You—a future auditor and/or accountant—will benefit from this approach because you will better understand the sources of value added by your services. We will spend time investigating information-quality monitoring procedures that can be used by internal and external assurance providers.
B. A tentative assignment sheet is distributed separately. I reserve the right to change the assignments as the course progresses.
C. The textbook is
Kinney, W. R., Jr., Information Quality Assurance and Internal Control for Management Decision Making (McGraw-Hill, 2000).
D. Grades will be assigned based on the following:
Descriptionpoints Reference Below
Final exam 90 1
Hand-in assignments 82 2
Contribution to class learning 38 3
210
1. Details on the final exam will be provided as the course progresses. Some or all of the final may be given outside of class.
2. The hand-in-assignment points are (tentatively) as follows:
Component points
a. Cases (7 @ 6 points each)42
b. Article exercises (4 @ 10 points each)40
82
a. Cases –Case write-ups will be collected as specified on the assignment sheet. To obtain credit for a case, your work must be neat and indicate that you made a valid attempt to solve the problem. Whether the solution is correct has little bearing on whether you receive credit. No late assignments will be accepted.
b. Article exercises – Several assurance-services research articles are assigned. These articles will help you broaden and deepen your understanding of assurance services (particularly auditing), as well as question some of the “conventional wisdom” in the profession. You are responsible for answering questions that I will provide about each article. Credit for article exercises is awarded on a similar basis to cases. No late assignments will be accepted.
3. Contribution to class learning – Although I will formally lecture occasionally, most of the class time will consist of discussions led by me. You are expected to participate in the discussions. Points will be awarded based on my evaluation of the quality of your contributions.