Assessment Task

Your Sydney HQ is developing a new marketing team with team members located in New York, Beijing and Mumbai. This will necessitate the establishment of a virtual team spread over four different time zones to use both synchronous (real time) and asynchronous (not concurrent) communication. A number of the team have expressed concerns about how it will all work, and meetings might be scheduled when one part of the team is about to go to lunch, while the other part is asleep.

To help 'sell' the idea to the team, your boss, the Marketing Director, is planning a virtual meeting with all team members. She is aware of the concerns and knows how important the presentation will be in creating a favourable association with virtual teams, as well as a good opportunity to build engagement, trust and candour among the team members.

To prepare for the virtual meeting she has asked you to: (i) evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of synchronous and asynchronous communication, and (ii) develop recommendations on how to use both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, to not only be productive, but to maintain positive working relationships.

Note: Part 1 will be presented as a memo. Part 2 will be presented as five Powerpoint slides.

Persuasion aims to influence other people's behaviours and attitudes. Successful persuasion shows readers ‘what's in it for them'. Persuasive writing is one of the main types of academic writing. At work, some of the persuasive documents you might have to write are proposals, offers to clients, and memos suggesting alternative methods or new ways of doing particular tasks.

Persuasive writing has all the features of analytical writing (that is, information plus reorganising the information), with the addition of your own point of view. Most essays at university are persuasive, and there is a persuasive element in at least the discussion and conclusion of a research article. Points of view in academic writing can include an argument, a recommendation, interpretation of findings or evaluation of the work of others.

In persuasive writing, each claim you make needs to be supported by some evidence, for example a reference to research findings or published sources. The kinds of instructions for a persuasive assignment include: argue, evaluate, discuss, take a position.

Please follow these guidelines to complete the assessment:

1. To help reach your own point of view on the facts or ideas:

• read some other points of view on the topic. Who do you feel is the most convincing?

• look for patterns in the data or references. Where is the evidence strongest? ?

• list several different interpretations. What are the real-life implications of each one? Which ones are likely to be most useful or beneficial? Which ones have some problems?

• discuss the facts and ideas with someone else. Do you agree with their point of view?

2. To develop your argument:

• list the different reasons for your point of view.

• think about the different types and sources of evidence which you can use to support your point of view.

• consider different ways that your point of view is similar to, and different from, the points of view of other researchers.

• look for various ways to break your point of view into parts.

3. To present your argument, make sure:

• your text develops a coherent argument where all the individual claims work together to support your overall point of view.
• your reasoning for each claim is clear to the reader.
• your assumptions are valid.
• you have evidence for every claim you make.
• you use evidence that is convincing and directly relevant.

4. Use three to five secondary sources.

PRIOS/CDT brief (covered in lecture and tutorials) for Assessment 2:

a. Purpose: The purpose of this document is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools and persuade team members of the benefits and advantages of working as a virtual team.

b. Readers: Your boss (the Marketing Director of XYZ Company).

c. Information: Based on secondary sources.

d. Organisation: Direct order approach (start with you most significant criterion, etc.)

e. Style: Formal. Focus on being clear and concise, not flowery or overly-descriptive. Be sure to proofread carefully to ensure that there are no sentence-level errors such as spelling mistakes, wrong word choice, incorrect punctuation, etc.

f. Channel choice: Written document.

g. Document design: Part 1: Memo format. Part 2: Powerpoint slides.

h. Length: Total 750 words for both Part 1 and Part 2. A good target for each Powerpoint slide would be a three-word title plus a maximum of five bullet points of four words each.