BUS100 Professional Communication Skill Assignment

In academia, as in business, good reports demonstrate the ability to research and identify relevant material to be used as the basis for considering a question, supporting argument and arriving at justified conclusions or recommendations. While there may be many sources relating to any given topic or question, some will be far more suitable than others.
1. Good relevant supporting material will be:

• Relevant
• Recent (unless considered a seminal or classic article/book)
• Credible

2. Using the topic given, students need to research and identify 5 different sources which would be relevant if preparing an analysis report for the topic given. Included in the bibliography should be:

• At least 1 peer reviewed article
• At least 1 website
• At least 1 magazine or newspaper article
• At least 1 of the sources reviewed must fail to meet the some or all of the 3 criteria of good supporting material - relevant, recent and credible i.e. be a source you have viewed but decided it would not be appropriate to use - explain why it is not appropriate.

3. Wiki anything and About.com MUST NOT be included in your sources - good or otherwise. For each source, pairs are to:
a. Cite the material correctly using Harvard (Anglia) referencing style
b. Briefly summarise the main findings or arguments of the source
c. Briefly critique (evaluate) the source's usefulness, reliability, objectivity or bias, assessing its strengths and/or weaknesses as if you were writing a research paper on the topic given.

• At least 1 magazine or newspaper article - either print or electronic can be used - the article source could be an independent newspaper such as the Sydney Morning Herald or Telegraph, an industry or organisational magazine, any online ezine
  • A range media articles from 2016 (i.e. fits the recency criteria) can be found on the Diversity Council of Australia website under News & Publications
• At least 1 of the sources reviewed must fail to meet the some or all of the 3 criteria of good supporting material - relevant, recent and credible i.e. be a source you have viewed but decided it would not be appropriate to use - explain why it is not appropriate. This source can be any of the above types, but is less likely to be a peer-reviewed article.
  Also refer to the Annotated Bibliography Help sheet for more assistance and information.

Presentation
Assessments should be formatted as follows:

• Word .doc or .docx
• Font - Arial 10pt, Calibri 11pt or Times New Roman 12pt
• Title page
• A 1 line space between each of: heading, citation, summary paragraph, evaluation paragraph
• Each source identified by a heading made up by the Title in italics and the source type.

Things to think about when finding and evaluating your sources

Evaluating a source:

Good relevant supporting material will be:

• Relevant is the source on a similar topic e.g.
  • an article about accounting practices in Botswana, Russia or China are not likely to have much relevance to accounting practices in Australia,
  • an article about organisational structures in multinational Australian companies is unlikely to be relevant for an assignment about structuring a café business in Australia
  • an article about business management practices in the USA or UK is probably going to have relevance for an assignment about business management practices in Australia (provided the organisations are reasonably similar in size and industry)
• Recent (unless considered a seminal or classic article/book) - usually the more recent the better for business management and accounting studies
  • If using older articles consider:
    • How has the world or the situation changed since the article was written e.g. if you are writing about the financial growth opportunities, anything pre 2007- 2008 (the Global Financial Crisis) is less likely to be relevant
    • If discussing successful car brands, articles about the success of the Volkswagen brand written before 2015 (emissions scandal) are probably out of date
  • The exception is original thinking which forms the basis of most current thinking e.g. Henry Fayol (1841-1925) developed 14 General Principles of Managerial Effectiveness, many of which are still considered the basis of good management, however given the changes in the business environment of today, may not be completely relevant to a given set of business circumstances. Using such a source to support your theories would need careful discussion of how it still applies.
• Credible - very important if using websites, or really anything to support your point of view. To determine credibility you need to consider the accuracy, authority, coverage, currency and objectivity of the source.
  • A website created by Sarah Coates for a project for her LIS 5503: Information Literacy and Instruction class, offered by the University of Oklahoma's School of Library and Information Studies in the Spring of 2011 is an excellent resource to help students find and evaluate credible sources
    https://sites.google.com/site/evaluatingsourcecredibility/home
  • For both sides of the credibility argument over a piece of published research used to support a current marketing campaign, try googling A2 milk research credibility - you will find many articles, websites and arguments for both sides of the argument - also an interesting exercise on possible bias in research outcomes.