Developing Business Skills through Challenges and Reflection

This assignment has been designed to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your achievement of the following module learning outcomes:

Work effectively in a team

Develop business skills, including presentation skills, emotional intelligence, meeting skills and use of spreadsheets

The module will be organised around four compulsory challenges to help develop your skills required for success at university.  You must attend and get actively involved in each challenge.

You are required to populate an individual Google Sites e-portfolio to evidence your participation in the Challenges and to reflect on what you have learned through your involvement.  Please see document on Blackboard for how to create this Google Sites e-portfolio and a separate document on what to include in the e-portfolio.

The design of the e-portfolio is individual and the more creative the better with use of visuals and photos highly advisable to add interest. The e-portfolio must include coverage of the following -

The Challenges:  An analysis of each challenge which focuses on the business angle eg branding, finance, operations. What knowledge did you learn about how businesses actually work?

Presentation Challenge

T-shirt Challenge

Debate Challenge

Hotel Challenge

A reflection on the skills you have demonstrated during the challenges to include the following -

Communication Skills/ Emotional Intelligence

Teamwork

Time Management and meeting skills

Business skills and competencies developed e.g. presentation skills, use of Excel etc.

Action Plan: An action plan on how you will develop these skills over the next 3 years at university.

The portfolio is a reflective piece but still requires you to demonstrate an evidence based approach to the coverage and consequently there is a need to support the discussion of both the challenges and the skills with reference to core module materials covered in seminar sessions and with additional external research.

The research will represent not only materials covered on the Graduate Challenge module itself but also from other level 4 modules eg coverage of branding from marketing lectures, the inclusion of teamwork in from Introduction to People Management, business analysis skills from Global Business Environment or Financial Accounting.

As the e portfolio is a reflective piece you do not need to worry about formal style, you can write in terms of “I”, “my” etc.

The creation of the e-portfolio on the module will be only the start of the process and it can be developed further over your time at university as a useful tool for gathering evidence of your developing skills and will be useful when applying for jobs and internships.