Accounting topic:
As for the others, we used to have a pre-workshop assignment, a team assignment during the workshop and a final exam (closed books).
The course book was a very good one: Accounting for Business by Scott. It is a very straight forward book, with lots of examples and easy to follow. All my colleagues praised this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Accounting-Business-Integrated-Online-Solution/dp/0199586535

Regarding the first assignment, it had two parts. One practical example to be solved, including a monthly cash flow statement development for a year?s time period, as well as the income statement and statement of final position for a fictive company. The detailed explanations and interpretation were required.
The second part was related to an essay where we had to explain the differences between a book value and a market value of a listed company through an accounting perspective, starting from the last published financial reports (mandatory IFRS standard reporting). We had to find a minimum of 4 such examples.
The support via Black Board (BB) was fairly good although for some questions we received vague answers. I remember that most of the people asked additional questions related to the 2nd part of the assignment and all the time we got the answer that it should be our own understanding based on a more carefully reading / understanding of the requirements. In some isolated cases, they were acknowledging sometimes if we are moving in a good direction or not but from this perspective I would say that I would have expected more support.
Coming to the marking and feedback of the 1st assignments, I remember it was a small revolution among the students on the BB. Although a clear statement mentioning that the correct understanding of the principles should prevail against some numerical lack alignments and that for the unclear given information we would not be heavily penalized as long as we clearly state our assumption and show the calculation , the results were the other way around. They have penalized us a lot without giving any explanation in the feedback sheet. They have claimed that they didn?t offer additional explanation since they have provided on BB the solution for the problem (although it was offered later than the feedbacks, as I remember).
I remember that many students exchanged their complete calculation excel files and challenged the marks, generating an official reaction of the head of the accounting course. Finally, nothing was changed since officially we are not allowed to challenge the marks.

For the 2nd part of the assignment, some vague explanations were given as well.
The workshop had nothing special. Some teaching activities and 2 presentations, the final one being marked. What is to be noticed is that the feedback for the workshop marking was very detailed and complete which is a strong positive point for them.
The exam was made out of 3 different subjects. The first one related to financial accounting ? 7 or 8 different points to be answered (ratio interpretation combined with some theoretical parts based on 8 or 9 IAS standards). The second and the 3rd subjects were Management Accounting ones.
The 2nd subject was based on a study case that had to be prepared (out of 2 available in advance). One of them was related to performance improvement based on ABC method vs. the cost absorption while the other was discussing the Balanced Score Card. The cases were available in advance but the requirements were more a synthesis ones, asking for comparisons and applicability of the study case principles to the company we work for. We were allowed to choose either of the 2 study cases for our answer.
The 3rd subject was related to solving a variations analysis problem (price, material, quantities workload, etc) and make some recommendations to the board of management.
Over all, with a good preparation these were very approachable topics but a very good time management is needed to finish everything in a 3 hours exam.

Overall a useful course with ups and downs where some of us got better or worse support during the workshops (as per the tutor?s style).

Regards,