CAS 170: Beginning Excel

Credits 3
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Introduces the basic features of Microsoft Excel and spreadsheet concepts to design and create accurate professional worksheets for use in business and industry, and academic environments. Includes entering data; creating formulas; professional formatting; creating charts; creating, sorting, and filtering tables; creating and using templates; and working with functions. Focuses on ways to ensure accuracy including proofreading techniques and critical thinking to determine what data to present and how to present it. Introduction of pivot tables to summarize data.

Addendum to Course Description

A major goal is to develop better computation skills. Improved critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills will also be emphasized.

Course Outcomes
  • Create, view, and open a new or existing workbook, enter text and numeric data into cells, manage rows and columns, copy and fill data, define workbook rows, columns, and page orientation for printing.
  • Demonstrate the use of fill colors, number formatting, borders, cell styles, conditional formatting, and headers and footers.
  • Demonstrate the use of formula constants, calculated values, relative and absolute referencing, date functions, logical functions, and What-If analysis.
  • Create pie charts, bar charts, column charts, sparklines and data bars within worksheets, modify chart legends, axes, and chart titles.
  • Create and manage pivot tables and charts, and sort and filter Excel databases.
  • Demonstrate the ability to work with grouped worksheets, link external 3D references in multiple workbooks, create workbook templates.
  • Demonstrate the ability to use Named Cells and Ranges, use defined names in formulas, use and define Data Validation rules, insert comments into cells.
  • Demonstrate the use of Logical Functions and structured references, use various Lookup Functions, Count Functions, and Average Functions.
  • Create Excel Power BI Database Queries, Trendlines, Forecast Sheets, Manage Data in Power Query, Power Map, and Power View format.
Grading Options
Letter Grades