Beryl Pittman / 2015

Assignment 5: Draft Academic Report (20% of final grade)

Due: Dec 4, MyCourses
Purpose: So far, you have developed a business-related thesis, gathered and
evaluated sources, and analyzed the current state of scholarly knowledge
(youve been busy!). This assignment is a natural bridge between the work you
have done so far and your final deliverable: the persuasive report. Your goal is
to persuade your audience to agree with your position. Your report should be
cohesive, engaging, and academically rigorous. The purpose of this assignment
is:
1 To develop the skills necessary to write professional persuasive reports.
2 To prepare you for writing the required Aalto University Bachelors Thesis.
3 To demonstrate the evolutionary process of preparing a strong persuasive
report.
Content: As you know, your thesis should have relevance to a business,
management, or economic issue or process. It should be narrow enough in
scope to be fully developed enough about 10 pages to be persuasive. You
should assume that your audience is your classmates: also studying business;
interested but non-expert; enjoys lively debate; lots of cultural diversity. While
you are required to use 4-6 outside scholarly sources, you should develop your
analysis around your own ideas, using the outside sources as support only. And
beyond the required sources, you may certainly use other reputable sources,
such as The Guardian, The Economist, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
Pew Research, etc. No wikipedia. Period.
Your draft must be complete and polished; youre way past the outlining stage.
Youll need to be fully prepared for the in-class peer review to get full credit for
the assignment.
Length: ~ 10 pages, including Reference List; 2.0 line spacing; 11pt Arial.
Format, Citations, and References: Refer to the Aalto University Citation
and Reference Guide: The Harvard System. Use headings and sub-headings
that are consistent, useful, and visually appealing. Title page and table of
contents are optional for the draft. If you dont do a title page, write the title of
your paper on page 1, about 1/3 of the way down from the top edge of the
page. In the top left, flush left, write your name, my name, and the date on
three separate lines.
Conference with Instructor: Specific conference times will be scheduled
around the time that the draft is due. Come prepared to discuss up to three
areas relating to content development that youd like for me to pay special
attention to. We can also schedule a time to meet after youve received the
draft feedback.