Asignment: Professional Communication Skills

Purpose: The purpose of this assessment is to build on the research and evaluation skills and techniques developed, and the critical thinking skills discussed and practiced in class, to develop a literature review of the Trimester topic. This assessment will help also students to develop and improve writing and information literacy skills, and begin developing their teamwork skills. This assessment contributes specifically to Learning Outcomes a, c, d and e.

Topic: A Literature Review on the Trimester topic - topic is the same as the topic for Assessment your Annotated Bibliography - this has been provided in class and via Moodle.

Task Details: The literature review gives students the opportunity to study an assigned topic in depth. It requires students to find relevant sources of information that will enable them to write a comparative analysis from an informed point of view. This will help students to develop writing and information literacy skills.

The assessment will require students to identify 2 or 3 main points of interest about the Trimester Topic. Students should find a minimum of 2 sources per group member (4 for a group of 2, 6 for a group of 3, 8 for a group of 4), at least some of which must be peer reviewed articles, relating to the points they have identified about the Trimester Topic.

Using their sources which may agree and/or disagree with those points, students should compare and contrast what the different sources say about the points and draw conclusions. A brief evaluation of the sources should be included in the discussion.

Using the annotated bibliography may be a good place to start finding the additional sources. However, this assessment is to be developed into a short report - NOT another Annotated Bibliography - you need to present arguments and use evidence supported analysis to arrive at conclusions / recommendations as appropriate.

It is important to note that the purpose of this assignment is to review what different authors say about the topic/points of interest. More detail about the assessment will be provided in class and via Moodle.

Presentation: The review needs to be submitted as follows:

• 1000 - 1500 + 10% word academic style report
• Font: Arial 10pt, Calibri 11pt or Times New Roman 12pt.
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction, analysis discussion and conclusion using suitable headings and sub- headings
• Reference List

Suggestions to approach your discussion:

The topic for this assessment is "What do consumers believe more - company advertising or online reviews?"

This is quite a broad topic so groups need to identify the scope / focus / theme of their assessment. This should be explained in the introduction.

Some possibilities include (but are not limited to):

• Identifying research which indicated that online reviews are becoming more important than company advertising to many consumers - using this as your claim or your position on the question (you will need to develop this into a claim or topic sentence). The report could then discuss any of the following as your scope/focus/theme:

o Does your claim apply to (you should only choose 1)

- Different age groups (under 25's, 25-55, over 56)

- Different product categories e.g. cars, holidays, restaurants, baby products, grocery shops, grocery items, education, clothing, computers or other electronics (or any other product category your group would like to discuss)

- Different genders - male / female

- The Business to Business market and the Consumer market (in overall terms)

- Geographic customers - city based customers / rural based customers

• Comparing and contrasting what different research says about the overall topic - you will need to explain what the different research says about the topic (benefits and drawbacks) and draw some specific conclusions about what your analysis of the research means for either business in general or for different types of businesses (small businesses against large corporations) or businesses in different product categories.

• Assume that your group has been asked by a single new business (any sort you like) to make recommendations on how to maximise their new customer growth - you need to review the benefits and drawbacks of both company advertising and online reviews for this type of business and make specific recommendations.

• Identifying research which indicated that company adverting is still more relevant to are becoming more important than company advertising to many consumers - using this as your claim or your position on the question (you will need to develop this into a claim or topic sentence).

o Discussing the drawbacks (disadvantages) of this trend for either or both consumers and marketers

o Make recommendations for marketers to manage the most serious of these disadvantages

Points to remember:

You only need to write 1000 - 1500 words + 10%.

This means your groups needs to be fairly specific about the approach you take and the alternatives you discuss and evaluate - so limit your scope/focus.

You need to develop the contributions by different members into a single coherent report - this means the group will need to do some considerable editing to make the report flow well. Coherence is worth 14% of the marks so may mean the difference between a Pass and Credit etc.

If you want a higher grade your group needs to use more than the minimum research e.g.

• Pass = minimum number of sources
• Credit = minimum + 2 additional sources
• Distinction = minimum + 5 additional sources
• High Distinction = minimum + 8 additional sources.

Attachment:- Annotated_Bibliography.rar