Developing Skills & Knowledge through 4 Major Challenges

To develop a Google Sites e-portfolio as evidence of developing skills and knowledge through the participation in 4 major challenges.  The portfolio will summarise the business angle of each challenge and reflect on the personal skills developed and potential areas for continuous improvement

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 three 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 VLE 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?

The Challenges are as follows-:

Apprentice Challenge (during Induction Week)

Presentation Challenge

T-shirt Challenge

The Skills: 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.

Your work will be assessed on the extent to which it demonstrates your achievement of the stated learning outcomes for this assignment (see above) and against other key criteria, as defined in the University’s institutional grading descriptors. A proportion of your marks will also depend upon your use of the Harvard academic referencing conventions.

This assignment will be marked according to the grading descriptors for Level 4 with the grade breakdown as follows -:

You need to submit the “Submission form for e-portfolio” which is found on VLE under Assignment Brief information.  This document must include a link to your e-portfolio.  You must also have shared the folder permissions and e-portfolio with Sarah, Albert and Suzanne. (see Guide to create your portfolio for further information.)

·This submission form should be submitted electronically. Please use the relevant Turnitin submission point in the Submit your work area in your VLE module shell.

·Once you have submitted your work, you will receive a digital receipt as proof of submission, which will be sent to your forwarded e-mail address (provided you have set this up). Please keep this receipt for future reference, along with the original electronic copy of your assignment.