Ag Econ 76

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Objectives of the Course

The course is designed to give the student an acquaintance with key Office applications, particularly Excel in order to enhance farm and firm management capabilities. Emphasis will be placed on enhancing the student's understanding of that which is required in order to meet industry standards as measured by the Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS) proficiencies A detailed course objective may be reviewed in an outline of course objectives available for viewing and printing with Microsoft Word. A week-by-week course time line should also be reviewed by downloading the course schedule. Specific goals are (1) Provide a basic understanding of the Windows operating system and its interface with Office 2000 (2) Familiarize students with the Microsoft Office User's Specialist (MOUS) objectives, requirements and standards for Microsoft Word©, Excel© and Power Point© (3) Provide practical experience in using the Office software in "typical" agricultural problems, with particular emphasis on Excel applications (4) Explore Internet based information systems and how they are used in agricultural applications, and (5) Make students aware of the understanding which is required in order to meet industry standards as measured by the Microsoft Office User Specialist (MOUS) proficiencies

What is Covered in the Course?

About one-eighth of the course is spent in developing an ability to build technical documents using Microsoft Word©. About three-fourths of the semester will be spent using Microsoft Excel©, to build spreadsheets for intermediate and advanced agricultural analysis, including enterprise budgeting, cash flow analysis, partial budgeting, data base analysis, retrieving and manipulating data from the Internet, graphics manipulation and data exchange with other members of the Office Suite. The remaining time will be spent building technical presentations using Powerpoint

Self Paced Instruction

Instruction is accomplished using modules designed to meet the MOUS testing standards administered by Microsoft. Students may challenge all or part of the course base on their ability to complete the proficiency modules outlined in Courter and Marquis, Office 2000: User Specialist Study Guide, SYBEX Network Press, l999. The challenge exam will be administered as an individual timed exercise using a random selection of exercises from the Courter and Marquis CD.

How Much Emphasis on the Use of the Computer?

This course is exercise and project intensive. Gaining computer proficiencies sufficient for advanced computer analysis in business and industry is the standard. At a minimum students should expect to gain computer proficiencies necessary for completing upper division projects in their respective major. Some of the problems are quite complex and emphasis is also placed on the economic and technical meaning of results and "what-if" situations rather than pure programming. Students with computer skills and an interest in Production, Farm Management, Marketing and Finance will gain the ability to modify instructional templates for their own use in business or other classes

Exams and Quizzes

One mid-term and one or two announced quizzes are part of the course regimen. Two computer based quizzes and one-midterm will be given during the course of the semester. Approximate release dates and availability are noted below. Homework and quiz due dates are printed on the quizzes.

Download Quiz761.doc 10/10 (20 KB)

Assignments and Schedule

While the course is listed as a lecture-lab course, in reality, it is a lab intensive experience. A lab project will periodically be assigned. The approximate release date for each assignment is listed in the download description. The actual release date for assignments will be announced in class. Due dates for each of the assignments are listed in the problem documentation. Be sure and check the site frequently. This page will be periodically changed to reflect new or changing future assignments.

Downloading Assignments

Documentation, approximate release dates and assignments are listed below. Preceding each is a brief description. Complete description of the assignment is available in the documentation. Best Option: use the "Save this program to disk" option if prompted and save to a course folder you have created on your hard disk rather than opening from the site. This provides a permanent copy and you can then open from your appropriate folder using either Word or Excel. If it opens directly, then you should save to your hard disk using the "File:Save" option from the program menu

Word: Document Preparation for Research and Projects

Download Scie_solprob.doc 9/10 (85 KB)

Download SatScore.eps 9/10 (605 KB)

Download Scie_sol.pdf 9/10 (242 KB)

Excel: Math, finance and conditional statements.

Download Cashbudget.doc 9/20 (24 KB)

Download Cashbudget.xls 9/20 (94.2 KB)

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E-Mail jamesco@csufresno.edu