Course syllabus

Introduction to Business — Syllabus

Introduction to Business Free sample edition

Introduction to Business is a 3-unit, lower-division undergraduate course offered at [Institution] in [Term]. The class meets in person twice a week for about 75 minutes each time: [Meeting days/times].

This syllabus is the governing document for the course. It tells you what the course is, how your grade is built, what happens each week, and the policies you can count on. Weeks are numbered from Week 1 to Week 16; your instructor's course site gives the due date for each item.

Instructor and Contact

Instructor: [Instructor name]
Contact: [Contact info]
Office hours: [Office hours]

Bring something specific to office hours, such as a break-even that will not come out right, a SWOT entry you cannot place inside or outside, or a balance sheet whose two sides refuse to match, and reach out early: a question asked in the week it comes up is far easier to answer than one saved for exam week. Check the course announcements at the start of each week.

Course Description

This is the one-semester survey of business. It is the first business course for many business majors, a way to try the field for students still choosing a major, and a general-education course for everyone else, and it has no prerequisite. It touches every function of a firm once, lightly: the market a business sells into, its plan and its legal form, what it owes beyond the law, how it makes and prices its product, how it reaches customers, how it leads, hires, and motivates people, how it reads its year's numbers, how it pays for growth, and how it trades across borders. Above all it teaches the business way of looking: who has a stake in a decision, what it costs and what it earns, what the numbers say and what they leave out, and how to make a recommendation that weighs the other side.

The course follows one illustrative venture through its life: a mobile coffee cart, with no named owner and no named staff, from its first idea to its decision to sell beyond its home market. Each week's tool arrives at the moment the cart needs it. The cart begins as an idea scanned against the world around it (Week 1) and the market it sells into (Week 2). It becomes a business plan with an industry analysis and a funding plan (Week 3), and then chooses a legal form by asking who would owe its equipment loan if it failed (Week 4). Next come ethics and the question of what a corporation is for (Week 5), how the cart makes its product, with quality and information systems (Week 6), and who buys and at what price it breaks even (Week 7). Week 8 holds the midterm and poses the growth question that frames the second half: what changes when one cart becomes two? The second half takes up reaching more customers (Week 9), leading the work (Week 10), hiring within the law (Week 11), keeping people engaged (Week 12), reading a year of results in the financial statements (Week 13), and choosing how to pay for a second cart (Week 14). It closes with global business and the course synthesis, where you retell the cart's whole life and look at where a business career can start (Week 15).

Two habits carry the whole course. Every time you compute something, such as a break-even, a markup and a margin, or a ratio from a financial statement, you write each step out on its own line and end with one plain sentence about what the result means for the business. Every time you use a real figure, you give its source and year; every law comes with its name and year, and every theorist with a surname, a year, and the title of the work on first mention. The cart's numbers, and those in the other worked cases, are illustrative, built for this course and labelled that way wherever they appear. The examples range well beyond the cart: a community food bank, a farmers' market, a bike shop, a hospital kitchen, a ride-share driver, a city transit agency, and a campus bookstore. No real company appears as a hero, a villain, or a recommendation.

This is an introductory survey, not a course in economics, accounting, finance, or law. Supply and demand appear on one illustrative schedule that you read rather than model, and the economy's health indicators are named, never computed. The financial statements are read at the level of a statement reader and never built from transactions. Debt and equity, stocks and bonds are compared, never valued. Laws, ownership forms, and tax points are taught as general education: nothing in this course is legal, tax, or investment advice for a specific situation, and a question about your own situation belongs with the agency that administers the rule or a qualified professional.

A note on contested questions

Much of business is settled ground, and the course states it plainly: a law's year, a computed break-even, the fact that assets equal liabilities plus owners' equity, and the fact that the importer of record owes a tariff at the border. Several questions are argued by thoughtful people, though, and on those the course presents each position at full strength with its reasons, labels what is fact and what is judgment, and gives no verdict. No living politician appears anywhere in the course.

Economic systems. The case for markets: prices carry information from countless everyday choices and reward new ideas and careful use of resources. Its critics answer that markets can leave people without basics and ignore harms to others, such as pollution. The case for more planning, or for government running key industries: resources can be steered toward shared goals and public need. Its critics answer that planners lack the information prices carry, rewards for new ideas weaken, and power gathers in government hands. Nearly every country runs a mixed economy, so the live argument is how much government, and where.
What a corporation is for. The shareholder position, Friedman (1970), "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits": within the law and ethical custom, a corporate executive's duty runs to the owners who employ them. The stakeholder position, Freeman (1984), Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach: a firm is managed for everyone who can affect it or is affected by it. You apply both to an illustrative plant weighing whether to automate a line.
Unions, right-to-work laws, and the minimum wage. Supporters of unions point to a group voice and a fair hearing through the grievance process; critics point to higher labor costs and less flexibility. Supporters of right-to-work laws argue that no worker should have to pay a union to keep a job; opponents argue that workers who pay nothing still share the contract the union bargained for. Supporters of a higher minimum wage argue that it raises pay for the lowest-paid workers; critics argue that it raises labor costs and may lead some employers to hire fewer people or cut hours.
Tariffs and trade. Supporters of freer trade cite comparative advantage, lower prices and wider choice for buyers, and bigger markets for exporters. Supporters of more protection cite jobs and industries at home, national security, and answering trade practices they judge unfair. How a tariff's cost is shared among importers, their buyers, and foreign sellers is an open question economists study, and the course teaches both readings of the evidence.

The course also asks you to weigh choices that have no single right answer, such as whether the cart should borrow or sell a share of itself to pay for a second cart. In every case your work is to state each side accurately, keep fact apart from judgment, and support what you conclude. Which side you take is your own.

Required Materials

You buy no textbook and pay nothing for course materials. Every reading and video is a link to an external resource, opened from the week's page so you always reach the version the course teaches from. Beyond a web browser, you need:

A free spreadsheet: the weekly Business Case Workshop runs in Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet, with the exact entries spelled out step by step, such as a table that sorts a case's facts, a break-even computed from its named inputs, or a balance sheet whose two sides you check. Pencil and paper work for every step as well, and each Workshop says how.
Free public pages: where a Workshop or a reading uses a real rule or a real figure, it links the government page that publishes it, such as the Small Business Administration's planning guides, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or the Securities and Exchange Commission's plain-language pages for investors. You open each one from its link; none costs anything or asks you to register.
A free account with one approved AI chatbot, from the list in the AI-Use Policy below. A free tier is enough for everything in this course, and every AI-based activity also has a route that needs no AI at all.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to:

Outcome A. Business analysis — analyze a business situation with the course's tools (a SWOT, a stakeholder map, an ownership-form comparison, an organization chart, a marketing mix, a break-even, a set of financial statements and ratios), compute what the case calls for, and state the result in plain words.
Outcome B. Business reasoning and integrity — make and defend a recommendation that weighs at least one stakeholder and the counter-case, separates fact from judgment, sources every real figure, and verifies AI output before relying on it.

The eight course objectives below build toward those two outcomes. Each week's Start Here page turns the week's objective into a short checklist of what you should be able to do by the end of the week.

Describe what a business is — profit, risk, and the not-for-profit contrast — its stakeholders, the factors of production, and the forces in its external environment, and explain how economic systems, supply and demand, market structures, and the economy's health indicators shape business decisions.
Explain how entrepreneurs turn an idea into a funded small business — a business-plan outline in the SBA's traditional format, an industry analysis with the five competitive forces, and a start-up funding plan — and compare the forms of business ownership, franchising, and mergers for that venture.
Evaluate business conduct with ethical reasoning and the corporate-social-responsibility frameworks, presenting the shareholder and stakeholder positions with their reasons and without a verdict, and distinguishing what is ethical from what is legal.
Analyze how a firm creates value through operations, quality management, and information systems, and through marketing — target markets, the marketing mix, the product life cycle, pricing and break-even, distribution, and promotion.
Apply the core organizational-structure concepts — the organization chart, line and staff, span of control, centralization, and tall vs. flat — and the four functions of management, the types of planning, the leadership styles, and the managerial skills to an organization at two sizes.
Explain how organizations recruit, select, develop, pay, and motivate people — including labor relations, the major federal employment statutes, and the classic and contemporary motivation theories in their order of publication — and diagnose a workplace situation with them.
Read a balance sheet, an income statement, and a statement of cash flows and compute the basic ratios; explain money, banks, deposit insurance, and the Federal Reserve; and compare debt and equity financing and the securities markets for a growth decision.
Explain why nations trade and how firms enter global markets — absolute and comparative advantage computed from an opportunity-cost table, the barriers to trade, the trade institutions and blocs, and the entry ladder from exporting to direct investment — with contested trade-policy questions presented as positions, and connect the course's skills to business careers.

How this course works

Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so you can choose how to take it in. Each module's lecture page carries the week's explanation as one spoken-style walk-through as well.

A typical week runs in this order:

Start Here. Open the week's module overview. It lists the week's items in order with time estimates and names the week's checkpoint, the one thing you should be able to do by the end of the week.
Chapter (about 35 to 50 minutes). The week's primary reading. Read it first.
Lecture page and slide deck (about 15 to 20 minutes for the lecture, plus time with the deck). The same ideas, explained aloud and in slides.
Readings and videos. An optional go-deeper menu; every video has captions.
Lecture tutorial (60 to 90 minutes). A one-on-one session with your chatbot that teaches, gives practice, and ends with a summary you submit.
Practice set (about 20 minutes). Ungraded practice with a coach, at your own pace.
Business Case Workshop (about 90 minutes). A short illustrative case worked end to end: you apply the week's tool step by step in a spreadsheet, compute what the case calls for, make a recommendation that weighs a stakeholder or the counter-case, consult your chatbot and recompute its numbers before trusting them, and then catch and correct a mistake the chatbot makes on the same case.
Discussion (about 45 minutes) and assignment (60 to 90 minutes). Where you put the week's ideas to work on an arguable, applied question.
Quiz. A short auto-graded check of what you now know, taken on your own.

Week 8 is lighter: the chapter (about 40 minutes), lecture, slides, readings, practice set, and discussion, then the study guide, exam-prep tutorial, practice exam, and midterm. It reviews Weeks 1 to 7 by the one tool or the one distinction each topic asks for, and its one piece of new material is organizational structure: the organization chart, line and staff positions, span of control, centralization and decentralization, and tall and flat structures, drawn for the cart at one cart and at two. Week 16 has no new module; it holds the final exam and its study guide, practice exam, and exam-prep tutorial.

Grading

Your course grade is the weighted average of the six groups below. The weights sum to 100%.

Grading weight by assessment group
Component	Weight
Tutorials & Practice	10%
Quizzes	10%
Workshops	20%
Assignments	25%
Discussions	15%
Exams	20%
Total	100%

What each group holds

Tutorials & Practice: the 14 weekly lecture tutorials, 5 points each. The practice sets sit beside them and are ungraded.
Quizzes: 14 weekly quizzes, 10 points each, in every module except Week 8.
Workshops: the 14 weekly Business Case Workshops, 50 points each, in every module except Week 8. Each is scored on a rubric that rewards the right tool applied to the case, numbers shown and checked, a recommendation that weighs a stakeholder or the counter-case, and a chatbot mistake caught and corrected, never the polish of the presentation.
Assignments: 14 weekly assignments, 100 points each, in every module except Week 8.
Discussions: 15 weekly discussions, 10 points each, one in every module from Week 1 to Week 15.
Exams: the midterm in Week 8 (50 points) and the cumulative final in Week 16 (100 points).

Each week's discussion and assignment ship in two versions. The adaptive version is published and graded by default. A traditional version that uses no AI is also in the module, unpublished; your instructor may publish it instead. An unpublished version does not appear to you and does not count. A published traditional version takes the adaptive one's place in the same group, for the same points.

Letter grades follow the standard scheme:

Letter grade by final course percentage
Letter	Percentage range
A	90–100
B	80–89
C	70–79
D	60–69
F	below 60

Weekly Schedule

The course runs for sixteen weeks: fifteen weeks of modules and a finals week. Every module from Week 1 to Week 15 holds the same materials: the Start Here page, the chapter, the lecture page (titled "Lecture:" followed by the module's title), the slide deck, the readings and videos page, and the practice set. Every module also ships both an adaptive discussion and a traditional no-AI alternative, and every module except Week 8 ships both an adaptive assignment and a traditional no-AI alternative. The adaptive versions are graded and published; the traditional alternatives are unpublished by default and count only if your instructor publishes them instead.

The midterm in Week 8 covers Weeks 1 to 7, which is Objectives 1 to 3 and the parts of Objective 4 taught in Weeks 6 and 7: operations, quality, information systems, marketing, and pricing. The final in Week 16 is cumulative and draws on every course objective: what a business is, its stakeholders and environment, and the market it sells into (Objective 1); entrepreneurship, the business plan, the five forces, the funding plan, and the forms of ownership (Objective 2); ethics, social responsibility, and the shareholder and stakeholder positions (Objective 3); operations, quality, information systems, marketing, pricing and break-even, distribution, and promotion (Objective 4); organizational structure, the functions of management, planning, leadership, and managerial skills (Objective 5); human resources, labor relations, the employment statutes, and the motivation theories (Objective 6); the financial statements, the ratios, money, banking, deposit insurance, the Federal Reserve, and financing a growth decision (Objective 7); and trade, comparative advantage, the barriers to trade, global entry, and business careers (Objective 8). Both exams come with a study guide, a practice exam, and an exam-prep tutorial you work with your chatbot.

Attendance and Participation

This course meets in person twice a week. Come to class having opened the week's Start Here page and read the chapter, because class time builds on that reading with worked cases, short calculations, and questions. Your participation also shows in your weekly work: the tutorial, the Business Case Workshop, the discussion, the assignment, and the quiz. Each week builds on the weeks before it (the break-even uses the costs you met in operations, and the financing choice reads the statements from the week before it), so falling a week behind is the most common reason a grade slips; keep to the weekly rhythm and talk to your instructor the moment you feel lost. If you must miss class, follow the week's module from its Start Here page so you stay on pace.

Late Work

Late work loses 10% of the item's points for each day it is late. If something serious comes up, such as an illness or a family emergency, contact your instructor before the due date whenever you can so the two of you can agree on a fair plan. The penalty exists to keep the course moving, not to punish genuine hardship.

Academic Integrity

The work you submit must be your own, and you are bound by your institution's academic integrity standard. Do not copy another student's work, do not submit work you did not do, and do not misrepresent how a piece of work was produced. In a business course, integrity also means honest numbers and honest sources: every figure in a Workshop or an assignment must be one the case supplied, one you computed and showed, or a real figure whose source and year you give, and every claim about a real company must come from that company's own public filing. Three violations matter most in this course: presenting an invented statistic, market size, or company fact as real, including one a chatbot supplied; fabricating or doctoring a chatbot conversation or its share link; and using AI on the quizzes, the midterm, or the final. Violations are handled under your institution's academic integrity process and may result in no credit for the item.

Accessibility and Disability

This course is designed to reflect universal-design principles and offers multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression. If you have a disability and need an accommodation, contact your institution's disability services office to arrange it, and let your instructor know so it can be put in place promptly. If any material is hard to use with your assistive technology, tell your instructor and an equivalent version will be provided. Every schedule, statement, or chart that a page or a question refers to is described in words as well as shown, and every formula is written on one line in words a screen reader can speak. This course is not yet accessibility-certified, and your feedback helps improve it. The course page Accessibility & Inclusion in Module 0 explains how the course offers multiple modes, how to turn on captions, and how to request an accommodation.

AI-Use Policy

This course uses an AI chatbot as a pair consultant, and then asks you to check its work against the case and your own numbers. Use any one of the approved chatbots: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, or Microsoft Copilot. Your instructor may edit this list. Free tiers are fine, and Copilot is often included with a campus Microsoft 365 account.

AI may be used on these activities:

Lecture tutorials (completed with a chatbot). Each week you work the tutorial in a conversation with an approved chatbot, then submit the conversation share link and your completion summary.
Practice sets (ungraded). You work the practice exercises with a chatbot coach.
Adaptive discussions (completed with a chatbot). You hold a real-time dialogue with an approved chatbot, then post the AI's summary with the conversation share link. This version does not require replies to classmates.
Adaptive assignments (AI-coached). You work the problems with a chatbot coach that scores your work against the assignment's rubric, then submit the self-scored report and the conversation share link.
Business Case Workshops (a pair-consult step and a required AI-critique step). After your own work, you consult your chatbot on the same case and recompute every number it offers before you trust it. Then you catch, explain, and correct a mistake in its answer by hand, such as a statistic or a market-size figure with no source, a real company's history or numbers misstated, a break-even or a ratio computed wrong, a balance sheet that does not balance, an outside opportunity filed as an inside strength, confident legal or tax advice for a specific situation, a one-sided recommendation that ignores a stakeholder or the counter-case, a plan padded with boilerplate that ignores the case's own facts, or revenue presented as profit or profit as cash.
Exam-prep tutorials and studying. Use AI freely to review, to check your understanding, and to prepare for the exams.

AI may not be used on the quizzes, the midterm, and the final. These are closed to AI and must be entirely your own work, because they confirm that you personally can name a concept, read a schedule or a statement, and compute a break-even, a ratio, or an opportunity cost.

A chatbot is not a source. It can explain a term or quiz you on a tool, but it routinely puts the price where the per-unit margin belongs in a break-even, files good news from outside the business as a strength, treats revenue as profit, and states a market size, a survey result, or a company's figures that no one ever published. It also gives confident legal and tax answers that are not advice you can rely on. Every number, real figure, and company fact you submit must trace to your own shown work, the case you were given, or a source you name with its year, checked by you.

If your instructor publishes a traditional alternative. A traditional discussion is your own post and your own replies to classmates; a traditional assignment is your own submitted work, graded by your instructor. AI may help you think, but you write and submit the work yourself.

Disclosure. The share link documents your AI use on the AI-based activities, so they need no separate note. For any other graded work where AI help is allowed, add one line naming the tool and how you used it.

Bring your own AI: access, cost, and privacy

Equity and a non-AI route. You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to complete this course or to reach any grade in it. Every AI-based activity in this course carries an Equivalent route (no AI required) on its own page. It assesses the same objectives, for the same points, against the same rubric. Take it whenever you like, for any reason or none; you do not have to ask permission, explain, or arrange it in advance.
Cost. A free tier of any approved chatbot covers everything in this course. No graded work depends on a paid subscription.
Privacy. Before you start, read what your chosen chatbot keeps of your conversations and how it uses them. Never paste personal information you would not want stored, such as your own pay, debts, tax details, or account numbers when a case reminds you of your own finances, or private details about a workplace or the people in it, and remember that a share link lets anyone who has it read that conversation.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com

Week	Focus	Lecture page	Graded and published	Traditional alternative (unpublished)
1	The Idea and Its Environment	Lecture: The Idea and Its Environment	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
2	The Market It Sells Into: Economics for Business	Lecture: The Market It Sells Into: Economics for Business	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
3	From Idea to Plan: Entrepreneurship, Small Business & the Business Plan	Lecture: From Idea to Plan: Entrepreneurship, Small Business & the Business Plan	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
4	Choosing a Legal Form: Ownership, Franchising & Mergers	Lecture: Choosing a Legal Form: Ownership, Franchising & Mergers	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
5	What the Business Owes: Ethics & Social Responsibility	Lecture: What the Business Owes: Ethics & Social Responsibility	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
6	Making the Product: Operations, Quality & Information Systems	Lecture: Making the Product: Operations, Quality & Information Systems	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
7	Who Buys and at What Price: Marketing, Products & Pricing	Lecture: Who Buys and at What Price: Marketing, Products & Pricing	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
8	Midterm Review & the Growth Question	Lecture: Midterm Review & the Growth Question	Adaptive discussion, midterm exam	Discussion
9	Reaching More Customers: Distribution, Promotion & Digital Commerce	Lecture: Reaching More Customers: Distribution, Promotion & Digital Commerce	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
10	Leading the Work: Management & Leadership	Lecture: Leading the Work: Management & Leadership	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
11	Hiring and the Law: Human Resources & Labor Relations	Lecture: Hiring and the Law: Human Resources & Labor Relations	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
12	Keeping People Engaged: Motivation	Lecture: Keeping People Engaged: Motivation	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
13	Keeping Score: Accounting & Financial Statements	Lecture: Keeping Score: Accounting & Financial Statements	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
14	Paying for Growth: Money, Banking & Financial Management	Lecture: Paying for Growth: Money, Banking & Financial Management	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
15	Growing Beyond Borders: Global Business & the Course Synthesis	Lecture: Growing Beyond Borders: Global Business & the Course Synthesis	Tutorial, Business Case Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
16	Finals week (no module)	None	Final exam	None