Posted: April 28th, 2015

Business & Employment Skills

Business & Employment Skills

Learning Outcomes
This assignment assesses the following learning outcomes identified in your unit descriptor:

Knowledge and Understanding
K1      Summarise data both graphically and numerically;
K2     Understand general communications theory and use different channels of communication in business;

Cognitive skills
C2    Research, read, think critically and synthesise ideas;

Practical and Professional skills
P1    Use and process information gathered from research to make rational judgements;

Transferable and Key skills
T1     Work effectively, individually and collaboratively through the use of appropriate and relevant methods of communication.

Assessment – Overall Objectives:

The portfolio will offer scope for a variety of formative development and reflective review on the part of the students, directing articulation between performance in the unit and in the assessment.  The portfolio assessment is designed to encourage students to develop and demonstrate a range of employability skills as well as academic skills (needed in order to manage and succeed with the different styles of assessment students will encounter in HE etc).

Students will be required to submit a Portfolio which includes the following evidence:
Section 1:    Essay Structure
Section 2:    Annotated Bibliography
Section 3:    Management Report (based on the Statistics Business Scenario)

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Section 1:     Essay Structure
This section will require you to provide a proposed essay structure for the following topic:
“Social Media marketing increases brand awareness” Discuss.
You are not required to write an essay, but to provide enough evidence to demonstrate what your key essay points would be.  For example, what would the key points in your introduction be?  What would your thesis statement say?  What would key points would you be trying to get across in relation to the overall topic?  Based on the structure provided, would the reader be able to understand the potential arguments that you would be trying to make?

You are also required to identify the research that you would use to back up your potential key areas/points.  This can just be in the form of bullet points, as you will be expanding on these sources in Section 2 below.
Please note:  Students will benefit from completing the in-class activities and formative assessments relating to this element of the assessment!

This section should not be longer than 500 words.

* * * * * * * * *
Section 2:    Annotated Bibliography
An annotated bibliography summarises the research that you have identified you will use for your proposed essay.  It is a listing of sources that summarises/reviews the arguments made in each of the identified sources and provides an overall ‘review’ of the relevance of each source to your topic.

As such, this element of the portfolio requires you to provide a summary of the research that you have identified you could use if you were to write an essay based on the topic identified in Section 1.

When writing your Annotated Bibliography, you may want to consider:
•    the pros & cons of potentially using that source (ie how the source could be used to enhance the argument/point of your essay)
•    whether the source was reliable/credible (and how you determined this)
•    which elements of the source you would use and why
•    any other comments you have relating to the source and why

How you structure your Annotated Bibliography is up to you.  For example, you may find it useful to structure it around the key points/themes of the arguments you wish to make.

Your sources of relevant research could come from books, journals and websites.  However, you are advised to use current and credible sources (which would mean that we would not expect to see an over-abundance of websites!).

When providing your Annotated Bibliography, you should ensure that each source is listed separately (in accordance with the Harvard Method of Referencing), with the summary of your ‘review’ of the relevance of the source listed below in paragraph form.

Please note:  Students will benefit from completing the in-class activities and formative assessments relating to this element of the assessment!

This section should be approximately 1000 words.

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Section 3:  Management Report

You have been provided with data regarding the performance of retail operation (data used in Statistics test and available on MyCourse once the statistics test has taken place in March 2015).
You are to write a management report for your Sales Director so that he can forward it to the Board (with minimal intervention or additional interpretation prior to submitting it to the Board).
Your Sales Director would expect your report to contain (at a minimum) analysis relating to the following areas:
•    Interpretation of sales results
•    Analysis of Profitability
•    Potential issues facing the company
•    Recommendations

Please note:  Students will benefit from completing the in-class activities and formative assessments, as well as reviewing their personal results from the Statistics test.

Your report should be approximately 1000 words (excluding graphs or appendices).