assignment 4

BUS 303: Assignment 4

Persuasive Training Proposal and Annotated Bibliography

This assignment is worth 15% of your final grade.

Task: Imagine that your team of 4-5 people is attempting to get hired by a company to train its employees on a specific skill/competence related to leadership or professional development. Applying what you’ve learned in this class, develop a well-researched and engaging training program and write a proposal targeted at the imaginary “VP of Training” at your target company. Your goal is to show that you know a great deal about the training topic and that you can deliver a valuable training experience for a specific group of the company’s employees. Carefully choose the company and the group of employees who will benefit from learning about your topic.

Your deliverable will contain two parts: (1) a persuasive proposal designed to convince the VP of Training to hire you to lead a 15-minute training session and (2) an annotated bibliography showing the research you’ve done and the sources you’ve found.

Part 1: Persuasive Training Proposal

Applying the persuasion skills learned in this class, write a proposal to an imaginary VP of Training at a real company of your choice, asking him/her to hire you. Your proposal should include:

a. a target audience for the training (what type/level of employee is the training designed for?)a

b. an introduction to the training topic—supported by research—that shows that you have a solid understanding of the topic and its relevancy to the company and target audience

c. specific goals for the training session (i.e., what will employees learn?)

d. a convincing explanation of the benefits of the training (i.e., how will the company and its employees be better off after your training?)

e. an agenda for the training session, including a description of an interactive activity that will involve audience participation. Note: The agenda should outline the plan for your training, but not provide the actual content you will deliver; save that content for when you deliver this training for Assignment 5.

You should tailor the training’s content and interactive activity for your target audience and company. Remember, you only have 15 minutes, so your proposed training should be realistic and not overly-ambitious. If you use videos, they should be used to illustrate a point and not take up more than a few minutes of your training session. Your team is promising to deliver a professional and tailored training experience; you don’t want the training to consist of general information that someone could quickly look up on the Internet.

The proposal should be 2-3 pages, single-spaced. Use headings to encourage readability and make the content “skimmable.” Judicious use of bullet points is allowed. Overall, the proposal should be professional and persuasive.

Evaluation Criteria for Persuasive Training Proposal

· Does the proposal evince thoughtful analysis of purpose, audience, context, scope, medium, and tone appropriate to the situation?

· Is the training tailored to a specific audience, organization, and industry?

· Does the training workshop contain clearly defined goals?

· Does the training agenda include a clear description of a relevant, interactive activity?

· Does the proposal provide credible support for the benefits and value of the training?

· Does the proposal include 8-10 in-text citations that use APA format?

· Is the proposal clear, concise, well organized, polished, and professional?

· Is the proposal appropriately persuasive, and does it strongly encourage hiring the team?

Part 2: Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography is an organized list of sources such as books, articles, journals, web pages, videos, or other materials. Each source has an annotation, which is a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph that includes a summary of the source and notes about its credibility, quality, limitations, and usefulness for the writer. Your annotated bibliography must include five annotated sources per person, for a total of 20-25 sources per team. Instructions for creating an annotated bibliography are on the next page.

Using GMU library resources and this course’s InfoGuide, each team member will identify and annotate five sources on your training topic. Each person must have at least one scholarly journal article among his/her five sources. Once each team member has annotated five sources, consolidate all of the sources into one annotated bibliography that is properly alphabetized. Be sure to coordinate your research plans with your group to avoid duplication of sources.

Evaluation Criteria for Annotated Bibliography

The following page describes how to create an annotated bibliography. Annotations will be evaluated based on the quality of items 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the next page. Specific criteria are:

· Does the annotation provide a summary and evaluation of the source?

· Is the annotation clear and concise?

· Are there five annotations per team member?

· Is it clear which student authored which annotation?

· Is the bibliography in alphabetical order?

· Is the Annotated Bibliography in APA-style?

·

HOW TO CREATE AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basic Instructions

For each source you find, create an APA-style reference listing and write an annotation with these four parts:

1. Summarize the content of the source (based on your purpose)

2. Evaluate the source’s credibility and quality

3. Discuss any limitations of the source, such as timeliness or biased views

4. Describe the usefulness of the source to your research (using first person -- “I”)

Sample

Doheny-Farina, S. (1986). Writing in an emerging organization: an ethnographic study. Written Communication, 3(2). 158-185.

Stephen Doheny-Farina’s ethnography illustrates how to do an ethnographic study. He begins by doing a brief literature review and then finds an organization to study and constructs his interviews and completes his observations. His study looks at a company he calls Microware, Inc. that is on the verge of bankruptcy and is trying to write a new business plan to gain investor support. The study goes into detail about the controversy surrounding collaborative writing of the new plan, and Doheny-Farina discusses how writing processes shape the organizational structure of an emerging organization. The article is from a peer-reviewed scholarly journal and is written by a communications professor. It’s pretty old (1986) but I think the information is still useful and relevant. While the study itself is only partially related to my project, the methods Doheny-Farina used are very interesting and are applicable to my research project. In fact, based on what I learned about interviewing from this article I’ve decided to use open-ended interviews with a selected few key informants as well as to observe WAC Committee meetings in order to gather the information I need. 

How to Summarize the Content of a Source

· A summary is a restatement of the content of a source that aims to capture its main ideas. A good summary is brief, thorough, and objective. It devotes an appropriate amount of time to all the major points that support the text’s central idea. While it should be written in your own words, a good summary does not sacrifice accuracy or objectivity. Using third person is generally appropriate for summaries. Finally, a good summary employs quotations where appropriate (with quotation marks and proper APA formatting).

· Some written sources already include an abstract (introductory summary) or conclusion. If these are available, they can give you an overview of the material in the source. If these are not available, see the introduction (or introductory paragraphs) or last paragraph(s) to gain a better sense of the source’s purpose and main ideas. If an abstract or summary is available, you cannot simply copy it. You must summarize it in your own words and contextualize it in terms of your own research needs.

Suggested Resources

· BUS 303 Library InfoGuide: http://infoguides.gmu.edu/BUS303

· How to cite in APA format: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/07/ (Note: Your references and citations require APA formatting but your paper does not need APA elements such as a title page or abstract.)