Assignment: Proposal and Annotated Bibliography for Final Business Report

Unit Learning Outcome(s) Reflects in assignment:

• Develop a research topic for a business report (CLO 2)
• Use proposal format (CLO 2)
• Identify and evaluate useful sources for potential projects (CLO 3)
• Use a citation format to correctly cite sources (CLO 3)

Introduction:

In this assignment, you will propose a topic for your final business and summarize and evaluate some sources that are relevant to your project.

Directions:

Prior to doing the final business report itself, you will write a proposal and bibliography in which you persuade your instructor that the project you have in mind is necessary/useful and to convince them that you are prepared to take on the project. To lay out your document, you can use the sample proposal in fig. 17.2 on pgs. 558-561. (You do not need to include all the parts included in figure 17.2, so long as you cover all the parts required by this prompt.)

You may find it helpful to review the assignment for the final business report that you looked at in Unit 1 before you write your proposal.

In your proposal, you should:

• Identify the organization you are writing for and explain your relationship with this organization.
• Describe the problem/situation you are trying to address and explain why it is important
• Explain who your primary (decision-making) audiences is, as well as other relevant audiences
• Discuss the questions you think you will need to answer to address the issue

At the proposal stage, you should not necessarily know what course of action you are going to recommend (after all, you haven't even done all your research yet!) You are simply convincing your instructor to approve your project by showing that you have chosen a topic that fits the assignment and is researchable and developable into a formal repot.

In the annotated bibliography, you should:

• List 3 sources that are relevant to your project (you must include at least 1 scholarly source) using an APA or MLA format citation (or other citation formats as approved by your instructor).

• Under each citation, write 2 paragraphs (this is the annotation)

o Paragraph 1 should summarize the source, as specifically as possible
o Paragraph 2 should evaluate the source for credibility and usefulness for the project

Note: You should write your own annotations; do not copy abstracts or other people's summaries of your sources; that counts as plagiarism. You are showing your instructor that you read and understood the source.

While the proposal requires a minimum of 3 sources to show that the project is researchable, you will need more than 3 to fully develop your final project. There is no magic number, of course, as all topics are different and require different sources to achieve their goals. As you continue working on your report over the next couple of units, keep examining sources and thinking about what material you need to fully develop your report and recommendations. You do not need to redo the proposal to add or change sources. It is fairly normal to refine your sources as you work on a project.