Assessment 1: Case Study Analysis Case Analysis Skills Activities (CASA1, CASA2, CASA3, CASA4) 4x5%= 20% This first assessment item is a series of activities to build your capabilities to do a scholarly business case analysis, and wil ensure you are equipped to do Assessment 2, The Report on a Management Problem. It will also give you a foundation to be successful in other higher education business and study endeavours as you will build both your business analysis and academic skills. Your completion of the activities will progress from Weeks 2-7 of the unit. In addition to completing the readings on the management theories and other information in your text and watching the lecturette videos each week, you must do the Case Analysis Skills Activity (CASA) for that week. Each CASA is worth 5 marks and described with appropriate links for completion/submission avialable below. Before you do them, there will also be CASA topic lecturettes in some weeks and each week will feature a live Collaborate tutorial session on the CASA topic during the preceding weekend, which will also be recorded. CASA1 is an online quiz. CASA 2,3 and 4 (submission via Turnitin) must be completed to the satisfaction of your tutor in order to receive a mark out of 5 for each CASA, or else be redone (if mark is 2 or less) and re-submitted (single opportunity). Late submissions will receive a 2 mark deduction. If you are asked to re-submit and do so satisfactorily according to the feedback given in your tutor's re-do request, there will be no penalties. To submit CASA 2, 3 and 4 via Turnitin (TiI), please see the links under the 'Submit Assignments here' option on the LHS of the course site to submit along with guides and help on submission. After your tutor has marked your submission, the mark will be posted in My Marks along with a report and feedback. If you receive 2 or less, you have the opportunity for a single resubmit on CASA 2, 3 and 4 that needs to be co-ordinated with your tutor to upload under the 'Submit Assignments here'. We strongly encourage you to resubmit sooner eg before the next CASA, as this will help you build on each one. All CASAs, including resubmissions are to be submitted by Week 8 to be awarded marks. CASA1: Information Literacy and Scholarly Sources Week 2 - CASA1: Information Literacy and Scholarly Sources 5% DUE by Monday Week 3 (15th December 2014) 11.59pm Brisbane time Study Smart Tutorials and Online Quiz Spend some time working through the Study Smart Tutorials before or during Week 2 to build up and /or brush up on your scholarly/academic skills, focusing particularly on any tutorials covering topics about which you are less confident. You may practice the quiz as many times as you like by taking it on the library start (the above link). Also, if there is anything in the tutorials and content that you may like to ask one of the teaching team about, there will be a live Collaborate session on Information Literacy and Scholarly Sources this week. When you are ready to take the quiz for your 5 marks for CASA1, click on the link below: Study Smart Online Quiz Marks: If submitted on time and you get 16 or more out of the possible 26 points for the quiz you will receive the full 5 marks or 3 marks for late submissions. Marks below 16 will receive a zero (late submissions included). CASA2: Identifying Management Problems Week 3 - CASA2: Identifying Management Problems 5% Exercise (100-200 words) submitted via Turnitin to your tutor 5% DUE by Monday Week 4 (22nd December 2014) 11.59pm Brisbane time The concepts being presented in this unit are important because they can equip you to identify and solve problems in order to reach managerial and organisational goals. So the first step is to identify the problem or problems in a particular situation. It seems they are always present. You may notice that in the weekly topic lecturettes in the Unit Content management problems are often referred to. CASA2 will require you to develop your understanding of what a management problem is, and to work at defining the problem into words, in a form sometimes called your problem statement. This week's Collaborate session will focus on how to home in on management problems and create problem statements, which are a key component of writing the report (Assessment 2) on a Management Problem, your second major assessment in this unit. For more background on what is meant by 'Management Problems' and how they are identified we suggest you look at the lecturette in the EchoCentre in the left menu panel and view the recording titled "Management Problems". It will be helpful if you view this prior to the Collaborate session for this week. A transcript of the recording can be downloaded here. Formulating a problem statement is an important academic skill in addition to being useful to managers. Scientists and other researchers also usally start with a problem statement and begin their write ups with a research problem statement. So your CASA2 task is to write a problem statement. It is a careful writing skill, and although you wont end up with many words, you want to capture an essential issue which needs a solution. Your CASA2 problem statement should be based on the Australian banks in Asia(2).pdf case study. CASA3: Critical Evaluation Week 4 - CASA3: Critical Evaluation with Authority 5% Critical Writing Exercise (150-250 words) submitted via Turnitin to your tutor (under 'Submit your Assignment Here') DUE by Monday Week 6 (5th January 2015) 11.59pm Brisbane time Critical evaluation with authority? What does that mean? Most problems aren't new, they have usually been considered before by very smart people. Indeed, for an academic researcher in any field, finding a new problem that hasn't already been much analysed is like finding a needle in the haystack. But times and contexts do change, and also problems compound by combining with other problems at the same time. So there are, in fact, always problems that need looking at through our current vision. As we do so, it makes sense to acknowledge the thinking of those respected thinkers who have gone before and developed many useful theories with concepts that may or may not apply to the current problem in the new time and context. This is where scholarship comes in. Good scholarship combines your original impressions and thoughts about a problem situation with critical reflection on what experts have already written about the same or similar problems. To critique is to ask and discuss answers to questions about things like: Does this theory apply here in this situation? Is this theory more useful than that theory? Does the theory need to be modified to allow for newer contexts? You don't need to come up with new theories to do well in the assessments in this unit, but searching for ones that apply to the problem you identify in business cases will make you familiar with the range of theories that are out there and learning to find, cite and reference them will help you to produce authoritative opinions which back your judgement with appropriate support when you present them in a written report. That is one reason why writing critical evaluation is also an important academic skill. CASA3 will require you to take some categories of problems with the expert and scholarly research sources already provided, and to practice this writing which combines your own insights with citations and references to the work of established authorities in management disciplines. Examples will be work-shopped in this week's Collaborate session and problems and sources to consider will be supplied. In preparation, you should look at an example presented online in EchoCentre titled "Critical Evaluation". For CASA 3 you are to provide a Critical Evaluation (with Authority) on the Management Problem Statement that you wrote on the Australian Banks Case Study (CASA 2) CASA4: Draft Problem Statement for Report with Preliminary Scholarly Sources List Attached Files: File Roar case study.pdf (646.238 KB) Week 5 - CASA4: Draft problem statement for report with preliminary scholarly sources list 5% Exercise (approx 200 words) submitted via Turnitin to your tutor (under 'Submit your Assignment Here') DUE by Monday Week 7 (12th January 2015) 11.59pm Brisbane time To facilitate recording of your marks make sure you put your student number and CASA4 on the submission (no need for a cover page). At this point we hope that you will be ready to start putting together some of the main skills from the first three CASAs with an eye ahead on the particulars of your next assessment; the Report on a Management Problem concerning the case study on Roar (p.473 of the textbook - Can business managment learn from the management of an elite sporting team), also available here Roar case study.pdf and in the Assessment 2 folder. CASA 4 requires you to put together your impressions of potential problems for the Roar case into a problem statement. Having defined a problem, often in terms of one of the functions of management, which you should also be now familiar from your text readings and the Unit Content lecturettes. You should go to the literature and find at least 5 scholarly (peer reviewed) sources that are appropriate and relevant to your managment problem which have potential to create the critcal evaluation for your report/Ass2. So your submission for CASA4 will be your draft problem statement (you are free to improve it for the report and after receiving CASA4 feedback). In CASA4 these references will not necessarily be used but are to be presented as a reference list (to ensure you are heading in the right direction for Ass2). These references must clearly relate to the problem statement. Ensure your references are scholarly, apppropriate and relevant eg base on managment literature (see tips re possible journal articles etc). If unsure of the quality of the research you are doing please contact your tutor through Yammer to run ideas by them. This week's Collaborate session will focus not on writing a problem statement, but your own original ideas for the management problem or potential management problem. However, we will look at a number of problems and discuss these through the demonstration of which theories might apply and which authors might have already discussed similar problems.