Overview of the Assignment—Reflection (20%)

This task is aimed at developing a deeper awareness, appreciation and empathy with the wider strategic business planning and plan development processes. It is also aimed at developing skills and capability in this area of business management.

 

After having researched and produced a strategic enterprise plan this task asks you to review and reflect on the many aspects of the overall process. There are many issues, etc. that you might like to reflect on, and these will be both generic and very personal.

 

Some of the key issues, etc. that you might want to include in this reflection include:

 

• Key challenges experienced at various levels, from research to plan development/implementation maps;
• Key advantages and disadvantages of strategic business planning;
• Limitations of business planning—does its relevance and applicability differ across contexts and situations?
• Conflicting priorities and expectations of key stakeholders—managing group inputs and outputs;
• Issues relating to access to core/key data;
• Issues and challenges of making decisions in a world of uncertainty;
• Skills and capabilities created/consolidated by your involvement in this course/strategic process; and
• What would I do differently if I had a similar task?

 

The above is not a complete list—remember, this is your reflection. More direction may be provided by the lecturer.

 

Useful Website

 

You may have limited experiences at writing a reflective paper so to help ensure students adopt a similar approach please see the following website that will help with formatting, possible topics, etc.

 

https://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/complete-guide-to-writing-a-reflective-essay/

 

Word Limit

 

Circa 1,500 words. Assignments less than the required length will risk not covering the topic adequately and may result in a fail. Do not include the Title page in the word count.

 

Note: While a Reflective Journal will mainly comprise of your own thoughts and reflections written in ‘your own words’, Federation University Australia rules relating to referencing, citation and acknowledgement must be complied with for any content from other sources.

 

General Formatting Requirements for the Report

 

They are to satisfy the following requirements.

• Use a report Title page making sure you have all the required details—course code and name, assignment title, your name and ID, submission date/time, lecturer’s name.
• An Executive Summary and Table of Contents ARE NOT
• Page numbering. The Title page is not numbered. The body of the report starting with the Introduction is numbered 1, 2, 3, etc.
• Write in the first person.
• Proof-read at least three times for spelling, grammatical and logic errors.
• Font—any San Serif font, e.g. Arial.
• Size—11.
• Paragraphs—fully justified.
• Paragraph spacing—one space before and after.
• Line spacing—single.
• Tables and diagrams DO NOTusually appear in a reflective paper but if you do include these, then all tables and diagrams should be labelled—they do not form part of the word count. Check APA 6^th Manual as tables are labelled differently to diagrams.
• APA reference style. http://federation.edu.au/current-students/learning-and-study/online-help-with/referencing
• Use Australian English, e.g. organisation NOT organization. You only use American English when you are quoting an American source. To assist you please visithttp://www.tysto.com/uk-us-spelling-list.html. Further, make sure you set your language in WORD as English (Australia).
• Students should download the free version of Grammarlywhich helps in spotting many of the errors that students tend to make, e.g. incorrect use of apostrophes, spelling, and the like.

 

Turnitin

 

For the individual assignment you are required to submit your report via the Turnitin tab in the course’s Moodle shell. Turnitin is an electronic text matching system that compares text in a student assignment against a database of sources. The database contains copies of electronic text on the Internet, in published works, on commercial databases, and in assignments previously submitted to Turnitin by students in universities all over the world, including assignments obtained from Internet sites that sell student papers. This will help you identify where your referencing requires attention so that you can minimise plagiarism occurrences.

 

For more on plagiarism see:

 

http://federation.edu.au/current-students/learning-and-study/online-help-with/plagiarism

http://policy.federation.edu.au/university/student plagiarism/ch02.php

 

ONLY submit your report—DO NOT submit the School’s cover sheet where you state that you have complied with the University’s referencing rules and DO NOT attach the assignment’s Assessment Criteria Sheet (ACS) to the report as this will also affect the Turnitin score. The ACS is at the end of this document—please submit this via the designated submission icon in Moodle.