Business 4350 Assignment 4

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Writing for GENB 4350 Introduction (0:22) Welcome to You Improved, Writing for GENB 4350. In this presentation you will learn how to improve your business writing, and improve your grade in this course. Overview (0:47) Not only is this presentation important to your performance in this class, but it is also important to your career as a business professional. First, this presentation will guide you through an introduction through the course and its written assignments. Second, the presentation will provide four tips of improvement for the writing assignments. Mastering business writing will help you get better grades, and ultimately more successful in your careers. At the end, you will take the self-quiz to test how well you understand these concepts. I also suggest you go through these slides in order. You can always come back and review. So, let begin. The Writing Assignments There are five assignments in this course, each with a different purpose. Some are intended to assess only your critical thinking and writing skills. While others are intended to assess your critical thinking, writing, and your understanding of the course content. Lets go over these in more detail. Select the first tab on the right side of the notebook. (1:36) Assignment 1 requires you to describe an ethical dilemma you recently encountered. You will need to describe the dilemma and how you analyzed the situation. Some things to consider:

§ What made it an ethical dilemma? For example, some ethical decisions might force you to decide between one value, such as trust, over another value, such as honesty.

§ What were your reasons for your decision? In other words, how did you decide?

The purpose of this assignment is to provide you an opportunity to reflect on ethics in your personal or professional life. And to demonstrate your critical thinking and writing skills. You don’t need any special knowledge to begin. Finally you must think about this issue deeply. You should spend about one-third of the paper explaining the event, and about two-thirds of the paper explaining the reasons for your decision. If your paper is about 500 words, then you probably analyzed the situation deeply enough. However, points will not be deducted for papers over or under 500 words, this is merely a guide.

(1:36-2:49) Assignment 2 asks you to apply two ethical theories to a case. This assignment will require you to apply your understanding of the concepts studied in the course, as well as your understanding of what constitutes good critical thinking and writing style for this course. The depth of thought for this assignment should be significant. Therefore, you should aim for writing 500 to 700 words. Again, points are not being deducted for being over or under; this is just a guide for your convenience. One of the complaints I often receive from students about the suggested word guide is they feel they have to leave out important arguments in order to fit in this range. But when I read the papers, I see that students could have included the arguments, but edited much more, and ended up with the same number of words. So, the suggested word guide is really to force you to engage in several editing processes, so that you end up with a version that contains only the most important information. Assignment 3 will ask you to do the same thing as assignment 2, except that you will use two different theories. (2:49-3:39) Assignment 4 is your opportunity to practice revising. This assignment is weighted more heavily than the others because it is your final paper. This should represent your best effort and take into account the feedback provided in prior assignments, as well as any other necessary changes. One question students often ask is that, “I scored well on assignments 2 and 3. Does that mean I can just add the papers together and I should score well on assignment 4?” Well the answer is not so simple. When you combine the assignment 2 and 3, you will need to consider all four arguments together. This means, that your conclusion may change because you are now seeing the case from four different perspectives. (3:39-3:50) Ah, assignment 5. Assignment 5 should be a fun one because now you have the opportunity to apply what you’ve learned in the semester by re-writing your experience told in assignment 1 into another assignment using any two of the ethical theories we studied during the semester. Submission, Feedback, and Grading Submitting Assignments

• Save with a proper file name (0:44) o It is extremely important for you to save your word doc with the proper

title. Doing so will help the course operate as smoothly as possible. o For each assignment, you will save your document as the following

format: First name SPACE last name SPACE Peoplesoft Number UNDERSCORE A and the number of the assignment. For example A1.

o If you forget to save your paper with the proper name, points will be deducted from your paper.

• Upload properly into Turn it In (0:45-1:21) o You will submit your papers to TurnItIn.com within Blackboard

o Each submission link is located under the appropriate week under course content.

o The most important part to know is that you must click twice when uploading your paper.

o And when you have properly submitted your paper, you will see a Paper ID number. Write this number down. Without it you will not earn credit for your paper even if you completed it.

o A practice TurnItIn submission link is provided under Week 1 in case you would like to practice this process.

Feedback • How to access feedback

o You can access on your paper by going to the feedback TurnItIn Link under the course content in which you submitted your assignment.

o For example, if you submit your assignment in Week 3, your feedback will show up in Week 3 under a folder called Assignment 3 Feedback.

o Feedback is usually available about a week after the late due date for the paper. This applies to assignment 1, 2, and 3.

o Feedback might come a little later for assignment 4 because it is longer and for assignment 5 because it is the last assignment.

o To view your feedback in the proper format, be sure to click on the paper icon when going into TurnItIn.

o You will see your paper with added comments at the end and also throughout the paper.

• Purpose of feedback o It is important to distinguish feedback versus editing. o Feedback consists of noting some areas within your paper that may

represent thinking and or writing problems. o Feedback is designed on how to provoke your own thoughts on how to

improve your own thinking and writing o You are both the writer and the editor. o The person providing feedback, this is your instructor, TA or writing

center, should only be considered a guide on your journey to improve your own critical thinking and writing. You should expect the person providing feedback to provide comments on only parts of your paper. However, the best papers take note of feedback and apply those principles throughout the paper.

o Finally, feedback is not designed to be comprehensive, whereas the purpose of editing service is to provide comprehensive and detailed recommendations for improvement.

o And, in this class you are both the writer and the editor and are solely responsible for writing clearly, concisely, and directly with professional tone and no grammatical errors.

Grading • How grades are determined

o Your grade on each paper is determined solely on the grading rubric for each assignment. So you should review each of those rubrics as you prepare the assignments.

o Grades are determined by the course administrator, and not by the writing center, the person providing feedback, or any other person.

• Grade disputes o Grade disputes are handled by the course administrator. o Now, before considering brining a grade dispute, you should review the

feedback that you received on your paper along with the grading rubric provided in the assignment instructions. Nine times out of ten, when students review this they realize and understand a little better how they earned their grade.

o Refer to the syllabus for proper procedures and timeline because there is a deadline for submitting grade disputes for your writing assignments, as well as for your exams.

o And finally, note that grade disputes may result in an increase or a decrease of your grade. Depending on the application of the grading rubric.

4 Tips to Improve Performance

• Tip 1 o The first, and perhaps the most important, tip is to fully understand the

writing subject and the assignment instructions. o Every reading assignment or item assigned to watch online is important to

the assignments. Additionally, coming to class each week is often overlooked, but critical part to completing these assignments.

o You should also understand how you will be assessed on each assignment. You will find a grading rubric or grading chart in each assignment. Review these before starting your assignment. They will tell you what is required for an A, B, or C-level paper.

o And finally, there is a wealth of resources posted on the homepage, under a folder called “writing resources.” You’ll even find a sample paper with feedback and a revised version of the paper showing you how to incorporate feedback for improvement.

• Tip 2 o The second tip is to understand what critical thinking means for GENB

4350. o In a nutshell, critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-

monitored, and self-corrective thinking. Notice that all of these descriptions relate to the self. The reason for this is because it is the self that attempts to convey the ideas, so it is the self that needs to be directed, disciplined, monitored, and corrected.

o Now here are some other descriptions of what is critical thinking. And these come from the miniature guide to critical thinking concepts and tools by Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder in association with the foundation for critical thinking on page 2.

§ Number 1: You raise relevant questions to the problem and describe the question clearly and precisely. For this class, it means CLEARLY stating the ethical issue and describing why it is an ethical issue (and not just a regular business decision).

§ Number 2: You assess the relevant information using alternative ethical theories, recognizing and assessing, as needed, the assumptions, implications, and practical consequences and criticisms of the different theories. You think open-mindedly and without bias during this process.

§ Number 3: You provide a solution that is supported by your analysis. For this class, your final decision must make sense. It must be based on consideration of all of the theories you analyzed.

o For examples of different levels of critical thinking, please view the Critical Thinking presentation posted on the course website.

• Tip 3 o The third tip is to convey your ideas with effective written

communication. o Improvement in this are comes with practice, which is one of the reasons

we have multiple writing assignments and the reason for the relatively low stakes of the grades on the first few assignments.

o My experience teaching this course is that most student writing would benefit from better organization and/or writing more clearly and concisely.

o First, let’s talk about the organization issue. By far the best way to improve your organization is to create an outline while you are researching and thinking about the paper. The outline serves two purposes:

§ One is to help you organize your thoughts in a logical manner, and § The second is to help ensure that you have discussed all of the

issues and points necessary in the paper. o Outlining is the hardest part of writing because it is the thinking part.

Writing is the communicating part. Although thinking and writing are intertwined, it is really difficult to write well if your thoughts are not rational. So before you start to communicate by writing, be sure that you have thought deeply enough about the situation and that your thoughts are represented in your outline.

o Second, let’s talk about writing clearly and concisely. One of the most difficult aspects of writing (at least for some) is knowing that our writing is not clear. I know what I am trying to say, but I need to make sure everyone else knows that too.

o The best way I know to help ensure that my writing is clear is to put the paper aside for a while and then come back to it. Distance from the issues seems to help clear my mind which then helps me write more clearly. Of course, this requires setting aside ample time to think and write before the due date. Waiting until the last minute to start the assignment almost never results in an A paper.

o And writing concisely requires that during your editing process you ask yourself whether each paragraph, sentence, and word is absolutely

necessary to your argument. If it is not, delete it. Doing so makes your ideas come across even more clearly.

• Tip 4 o The last tip is to understand who is responsible for your writing

improvement and grades on assignments. o Ultimately, it is your responsibility to take charge of your own writing

improvement process. Improvement only occurs with thoughtful, self- directed practice.

o When I reflect on the ways I improved my writing during my educational and professional careers, I realize that the person who helped me the most by far was me! I taught myself how to write more clearly because I spent lots of time thinking about my own writing and whether I was conveying the ideas I wanted to convey. So take responsibility for your improvement.

o That said, there are several resources to help you improve your writing. § First, your instructors are here to help you better understand the

content. If you don’t understand a particular theory, please ask for clarification.

§ Second, the feedback you receive on your papers is designed to help you better understand where your writing is not clear, where you may miss key arguments, or when you might benefit from better organization or grammar, for example.

§ Third, the UH writing center is always there as a resource for you (for any of your classes). The consultants are students who have good writing skills who have been trained to help you address some of the written communication concerns you might have on your papers. Just remember that the consultants are not subject matter experts, and therefore, may not understand what represents good critical thinking on these assignments.

o One final note, the course administrator is solely responsible for issuing grades on the assignments (not the person providing you feedback and initial assessment, not the UH writing center, or your TA).