Get organized. This course covers a lot of territory, touching on every aspect of business. Make sure you have a system in place to take notes and study for exams, and schedule enough time for required readings, assignments, and team projects.

Focus on important themes and concepts. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed by the details of a topic, back up and revisit the introduction to that section. The accounting chapter, for example, presents a number of terms you might be unfamiliar with. If things get confusing, refresh your memory of the basic categories of assets versus liabilities and revenues versus costs.

Relate what you're learning to your own experience. As a consumer and an employee, you already know a lot about business, and one of the primary goals of this course is to help you leverage that knowledge by seeing business concepts from the other sidefrom the perspective of an owner or a manager. As you encounter each new concept, such as how companies set the prices of products, think about the question from both sides. In the case of pricing, for example, think about the value a product offers you as a consumer and about the costs that go into its production and distribution.

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