Today's session (8 August 2016)

Hi everyone

Today I started by talking a bit about Assignment 1 and giving you some feedback on the first week’s work.

On the whole, we got off to a good start. No one ‘failed’ and some people got off to an excellent start and really showed me that they understood how the assignment works. Most people have the ability to push their marks a bit higher and I have provided students with a few pointers to help with this. The main things are to make sure that you are doing a bit of work on this each day (study habits) and to make sure that you understand the difference between analysis (describing what you learned) and application (showing me how you could use it in practice).

We then had a brief look at Assignment 2. This assignment is due in about five weeks’ time so it is important to start planning it now. If you wait until (say) two weeks before it is due then you just won’t have enough time to do the research, analysis and reflection required in this sort of assignment.

Assignment 2 is the only major piece of academic writing that you will be doing for this paper. This means that you need to make sure that you show off your skills in this area and put in a really good result.

The assignment consists of two parts: A business proposal / report and a presentation to the class. You will need to find a common business problem, research it, apply a PSDM model, decide on solutions and recommend a course of action. This means finding sources, analysing different points-of-view and evaluating your findings. There is a Marking Schedule to help you (see the Course Outline) so make sure that you use it.

Don’t look for short-cuts. If you just try to give me your opinions (as opposed to facts and evidence-supported conclusions) then I won’t be able to see your use of source material.

Next week we will start looking at some examples of business problems. In the meantime, I suggest that you look around for a few problems which you could use and them by me to see if they are suitable for this assignment. If I approve your choice then don’t automatically assume that this means that there is a lot of material available! It is part of your job to hunt down whatever you need.

As part of your preparation for this we have been running sessions with the library staff around topics such as search skills and using library resources and databases. We continued with this in the second part of the session by returning to the library for a session on database searches and keywords in databases, with Audrey. We also registered students for ATHENS so that they can use the catalogue off-campus.

Audrey also gave us a quick refresher on using Safari to find ebooks, before handing over to Suzanne who talked about academic writing skills. I have loaded a copy of the library’s APA Referencing Guide to Moodle under Session 3.

In other matters, I have updated the Resource Book with a couple of short news clips on Auckland building construction luring people away from the Christchurch re-build and on the push to make supermarket wages uniform across New Zealand. There is also a very interesting video clip on why we make bad decisions.

Remember to get your next update to me at the end of the week and please make a start on Assignment 2.

Cheers

Phil