everyone and welcome to this uh briefing for assignment one or assessment one for the BSS 0443 international business management unit um so assignment one is uh a 3,000 word written report uh it is worth 40% of the unit grade uh the remaining 60% will be um part of a end of unit exam uh but this is due in week eight so the end of unit week8 and what we're going to do in this video uh is look at six uh major questions uh to hopefully get everyone comfortable with the assignment task uh to understand how to approach the assignment uh and also uh very importantly to understand the assignment timeline uh so there's quite a few checkpoints uh opportunities for help and support uh so we want to make it clear what the assignment timeline for the next uh 8 weeks is going to be so if we start with just the assignment task so if you look at the assessment brief uh it asks you to apply your understanding of international business Market selection and entry modes to a specific company and recommend a new market to enter the optimal entry mode uh and any other relevant particulars uh so there is some additional elements that are strongly recommended as well so giving you an idea of what we want you guys to look at and that includes political risk risks legal risks culture uh and so on as well but if we just break down what the assessment is asking you to do it's fundamentally about constructing and presenting an argument for company X to enter a particular country using a particular entry mode uh so you're going to be arguing uh that you know whether it's Tesla or any other given company uh should enter a new National Market so a new country they're not currently operating in uh using a specific entry mode or a way of entering that new National Market that's going to be the core of what you're doing in this assessment so don't think of it as um some kind of general or or isolated uh analysis report or any other kind of task it's it's fundamentally an argument that you're making uh so that argument has to be constructed of a number of different elements and there's loads of things uh that would go into making a strong persuasive argument uh for a a country sorry a company to enter into a new country uh so we have things like you know the economic reward for doing so making sure the risk is manageable uh surveying the political legal cultural landscapes and the cultural gaps uh thinking about practical operational matters like currency exchange and Supply chains looking at the uh domestic Market uh and the competition of the new market under consideration or the new country under consideration so there's lots of things uh that would go into making a strong argument for this as well as that we have some uh required elements uh that that we need to include in the finished assessment as well so it has to be formed uh into a formal report structure uh the company itself that you use uh has to either have been agreed uh with the tutor the unit coordinator and that's going to be through a company proposal checkpoint uh or if you choose not to uh to select a company or propose a company for you to use uh then you'll be assigned one um as well as that there has to be two appendices so appendix a is a process log and there is a template available on Brio under the assessment and feedback folder um and that's a process log which I'm sure you've done quite a few of these uh in your assessments for other units as well so it's a process log tracking uh and and self assessing uh yourself as you go through the the assignment the assessment preparation process and appendix B is a reflection using a a reflective model uh I know that um you guys would have done Gibbs and C's uh reflective models on previous units so those are are the two that are recommended um but essentially you have to have those two appendices as part of the report and they are weighed on the mark scheme as well so if that's what we're doing for the task we're constructing this argument uh to uh to try and persuade the reader that company X should enter a specific New National Market using a particular entry mode um the next thing that we need to consider is what unit Concepts or theories should I be using uh in order to support my argument and to make it as strong as possible uh well two things that I really want to make sure everyone understands number one is please don't rely on SWAT pestel or Portis fire forces those are the three uh standard kind of tools uh that we see a lot on this assignment when students don't necessarily follow the guidance or understand what the purpose of the assignment is um SWAT and pestel you know they have their place uh they're very useful analy iCal tools for particular tasks but this particular assessment is an assessment for BSS 44 D international business management you're uh demonstrating your understanding of international business tools and techniques um so we cover a lot of different excuse me tools and techniques on the unit those are what you should be using uh not relying on on on SWAT and pastel or other fairly generic and and standard uh Concepts and theories so if we go back and and sorry we we cover a huge amount of tools and techniques uh on the unit so just in the first seven weeks which will be the the seven content blocks which are are directly relevant um and needed for for the assessment there's a lot of different elements covered so if we go back to our argument what we should be doing is looking at our argument looking at the the blocks of our argument uh which are are necessary to kind of you know persuade the reader uh for our recommendations and considering which unit Concepts and tools are are going to be most useful for them and there's there are going to be quite a few uh so if we just consider one so one block of our argument may be that there's uh fairly limited currency exchange risk so the currency exchange is favorable and stable and and you know not prone to to Major fluctuations that's quite an important persuasive element for our recommendation uh what we can do is go on to the unit uh and and just consider what's available there so for this this will be week five sorry week six currency exchange and Forex where we look at the foreign exchange markets Forex uh and we look at the Practical realities of of operating um you know in multiple currencies as as all or many Multinational Enterprises do uh so we have uh a set of slides on on Forex generally that give us an understanding of international finance uh but there's a specific set of slides looking at currency exchange risks um that's going to give us the most direct usage in our assessment so we have uh in those slides and and what we're going to cover in week six of the talk classes as well uh looking at transaction risk translation risk and economic risk uh so three types of risk um relating to currency exchange uh and that's the kind of unit Concepts and theories and tools uh that will be fantastically useful for the assessment So within the assessment we can apply this concept uh we can derive or or we can evaluate the specific trans uh transaction risk uh for our recommendation the translation risk and the economic risk for a recommendation um and it will make our argument very strong uh but it will also get lots of marks uh for the academic content of the assessment and you can go through the entire unit and and you can you'll find lots of of different uh elements to use uh sometimes there will be multiple Concepts and theories uh that we can apply from each week so if you look at another plank of of what was probably going to be in everyone's um argument or at least in every strong ARG argument at least a consideration of the political and legal environment and making sure it is a stable uh or at least a you know of limited risk uh to the the company we're we're making our recommendations to uh and we can see that there's three major content blocks in week two uh we can see under political systems and political risk in particular uh there's four types of political risk systemic procedural distributive and catastrophic political risk we apply this concept we evaluate uh the level of risk for each of these four categories um and that's a really strong part of our um our our argument as well uh with legal systems we've also got uh a Content block or a set of slides for legal systems that we can apply uh to understand the legal environment of the recommendation that we're making but this is where your specific recommendation and your specific company uh should guide you on deciding exactly which Concepts tools and techniques to use because there are a lot of different concepts and tools that we cover on the unit not all of them are going to be relevant and useful to uh everyone uh because it does depend on your exact argument you're making the exact company that you have chosen or being assigned um and the exact recommendation that you have as well so if you are um writing your your assessment based uh on a company that only deals on physical Goods um you're not really going to have any use for intellectual property because your your company is not dealing primarily in intellectual property um however if your company is selling primarily services and heavily depends on intellectual property then the section of the slides or or the the concepts also covered in week two around intellectual property and looking at Trade Secrets copyright trademarks uh and patents uh and particularly the protection for intellectual property within the legal environment of the uh country that you're recommending uh to enter as a new National Market that becomes quite important so you have to be contextual about your argument you have to look at what your argument is you have to look at the company uh that you're you're writing about and and crucially the recommendations that you're making uh and make a informed decision on which unit Concepts models and and theories and so on best support your argument that's part of what we're marking you on in terms of your ability to to evaluate and and make those decisions about which uh theories are are best suited for what you're doing in your assessment um right so moving on to the information you should be using uh well as as pretty much for most of your reports there's going to be a mix of academic and uh non-academic citations in your your reports um so we're looking at a lot of different uh international business Concepts theories and models so there should be lots of strong academic citations to support these uh discussions and the applications of these Concepts theories and models as well but because you are surveying you know the current landscape uh uh particularly when it comes to um the the external environment in the new National Market you're recommending there's going to be a lot of nonacademic citations uh as well to support this discussion and demonstrate your research ability those non-academic citations should be from credible sites um so the sites that we often see on assignments that are either very poor or to be honest mostly fail are things like Wikipedia Investopedia business balls and dictionary.com these are not credible websites they you know especially uh with you guys in your final year not just a final year this is the final uh written assignment of your uh of your University degrees in fact it should be really obvious that these are not sites that you should be using for any academic piece of work or any credible piece of work um there are lots of credible sources uh that will help you uh that we strongly recommend so this things that I'm sure you've used in the past Harvard Business Review uh the conversation.com is a fantastic site as well the conversation.com is essentially a website for academics to present their research in uh to a non-academic audience so I think of it as a website which takes technical Journal articles academic Journal articles and presents the findings um in the form of a uh a general purpose or a general audience article uh so much easier to read really useful quite quick to survey um the different types of of research Trends and and findings which are are are coming um and and a really useful resource as well as well is that because we're considering lots of economic political and and social kind of Trends in our uh in our recommendations and in our reports uh the World Bank un and IMF uh all have significant large and and very helpful data sites as well where you get lots and lots of raw data uh that can directly help and and be really quite useful for you uh new sites are are useful particularly when we're looking at political risk and other areas like that um and if you are going to look at Wikipedia for a quick uh quick understanding of new Concepts which is absolutely fine don't reference Wikipedia uh good quality Wikipedia articles will have a long list of citations at the bottom follow up those citations if those citations come from credible websites then reference those uh and use those instead all right so now we're going to move on to the assessment timeline so we've said that this is um is not a difficult assignment necessarily but it is a a big complex assignment in the sense that you're being asked to uh to construct an argument yourself you're being asked to uh to propose a company and so on so we do have an assessment timeline for you excuse me um so with what we are where we are now at the moment this is week one of the unit so you're watching this assignment briefing video uh hopefully you're going to go and and read the assignment brief you're going to go through the unit materials on the Brio shell and you're going to start thinking about what you want to do for the assignment what kind of company you want to choose uh and start doing some background reading and research uh using discover or or online sources as well so the process of starting to think and plan um and brainstorm uh your assignment really does start now uh on week three there is going to be an online uh assessment session um which actually one of three uh uh assessment sessions online assessment sessions uh in week three week five and week seven uh and all of them have specific purposes uh and goals uh so there's they're not repeated sessions um they are sessions aimed at specific uh achieving specific things uh obviously whatever questions come up in the assessment sessions I am going to answer as best as I can uh but nonetheless there is a a general pattern um that we're going to follow so in week three which is going to be the first of the three sessions what we want to do is make sure everyone has uh a good understanding of the assessment task of what you need to do in the assessment uh check your understanding of the assignment brief the assessment brief and all the required elements as well and generally make sure that everyone is uh approaching the assignment in the correct way we have started the process of brainstorming and developing your ideas for your recommendation so you're not necessarily getting anything written at this stage you probably shouldn't be writing anything in uh in week three of an 8 we process but you should be brainstorming you should be thinking uh and you should uh you should make make sure that your understanding is is correct and strong week five so the second of the three online sessions is going to be focused on finding information making you know Finding resources uh to support your argument and help with the research process uh as well as checking and And discussing uh the suitability of various academic models Concepts theories and tools and so on from the unit uh being applied to your uh uh to your arguments uh so that's going to be the focus of the second of the three sessions uh and in the last of the three sessions in week seven uh we're going to focus on the final report structure so producing the final report making sure it's formatted correctly how you're presenting your work uh as well as help with the uh reflection and the process log which are required elements as well and just ultimately polishing up and uh and finishing up your your actual argument for the recommendations making sure everything is is uh as strong as it possibly can be um in terms of how you access those online sessions well if you haven't already the handbook is is really key to the whole unit please do go through it um each location has a a different handbook the information in there is is all the same obviously but the specific details of your classes dates room numbers and so on are all all different uh and relate to to whatever location you're studying at um it will however be on everyone's Brio shell in the same place which is under the welcome and orientation folder which is the the first folder on the shell right so if that was our first online session in week three which is going to be midway through the week at the end of week three is going to be your company proposal submission so we've said before that um you will be assigned a company if you choose not to propose a company or if your company proposal isn't accepted either but you will have an opportunity or a checkpoint to propose a company to use so here you'll see under the assessment and feedback folder there's a another folder labeled company proposal and in here you can find the company proposal template that you need to use uh and a uh a submission link as well so you need to make sure you submit your proposal by the end of uh end of week three so there's a due date on the link as well um and then you'll you'll get a response for that so this is not an assessed uh submission link is simply a proposal for what company you want to use uh you will be randomly assigned a company if you choose not to use it um generally speaking almost all the proposals will be accepted as long as they bear in mind two key elements number one you need to demonstrate your research ability you need to be able to apply the unit Concepts and theories and models uh to your argument so if there is a company which is a very small company a micro or hyper Local Company um or there's a company where there's simply not much information available online that's likely to be rejected because you're going to struggle to pass the assessment uh if you are not able to demonstrate your research ability or you're not able to properly apply the the full range of tools to and techniques and and theories and so on on the unit uh so a company that's too small which doesn't have information available from public sources is a problem we've had in the past people saying well this is my own company so I can I know all the information that I need to know about it or is a company I'm currently working at or there a company where I know the owners so I can get access to the information that's not publicly accessible information that's not something you can demonstrate your research ability that's not something you can put references or citations in for so that would not be appropriate uh this isn't a primary research assessment you guys don't have ethical approval to do primary research for this assessment so it has to be publicly accessible information and the other reason that you need to uh bear in mind you may get rejected or your company proposal may be rejected for uh is if the company is just simply too big and there are no reasonable recommendations you can make uh so I if You' have chosen for example Coca-Cola that's not going to be approved uh because you can't make any reasonable recommendation for a new National market for Coke to enter uh I mean Koch doesn't operate in uh North Korea but you'd struggle to make a strong argument for North Korea to be an appropriate new country for Coca-Cola to enter um and the same goes for other massively global companies which are already in pretty much every National Market it makes sense for them to be in um something which comes up every year and I just want to highlight this um apple is in a huge number of markets uh I've had you know many students over the years kind of try to claim that oh Apple are only in 14 or 15 markets and what's happening is that they're looking up the location of Apple Stores uh and that's absolutely correct uh Apple stores are not in that many countries um so you know there's there's already I can't remember between 50 and 25 Apple uh store uh locations in different countries around the world however Apple are operating in a huge number of countries very very large number of countries again there's a few countries they're not operating in uh like Iran but there's legal barriers that prevent them from entering markets like Iran so again that wouldn't be an appropriate recommendation for apple to make uh for you to make for Apple uh you're looking at where the countries operating in uh not something you know where they offering or where do they have specific types of stores uh so just bear those two things in mind if the company is too small or the company is way too large uh then the proposal won't be accepted all of the companies that will be assigned randomly uh will fit the criteria for the assessment uh and and you know you can write a very good assessment using them so if you're really stuck on what company to choose or to propose then you can simply wait uh until the end of week three and then you you'll just be given or you'll be assigned a company via email instead so moving on from week three then we have our second uh assignment session online session in week five uh and then week F uh sorry in week five uh also in week five uh there is going to be a checkpoint presentation uh so this is the second of the two checkpoints the first checkpoint is the company proposal submission and the the the second one is is going to be a present I say a presentation it's an informal presentation uh it's better to think of it as a as a pitch um relatively short it's only going to be about five or 10 minutes depending on the class size um the exact brief of the pitch is going to be something like what you can see on the screen now but it may not be this exact document um the the the purpose of the pitch is for you to present your argument um not you know full of citations you're not presenting any written work uh you're just making an oral pitch an oral presentation uh for your argument so you're summarizing uh your recommendations in order to get feedback uh so the class tutor in this case will give you immediate direct feedback um there may be some key things youve missed so if your um if your company is dealing in a cultural product in clothing or food and your argument doesn't contain any mention of cultural distance well that's going to be an immediate feedback of what food and culture sorry food and clothing are cultural products they're heavily culturally dependent there needs to be a consideration of cultural distance otherwise your argument is going to be massively lacking uh or for example your company is dealing with uh some kind of say networking Telecom technology uh which is regulated and and heavily dependent on political circumstances so remember what happened with WWE and the 5G network uh in the UK uh a few years ago uh and your 5 minute or 10 minute recommendations pitch doesn't mention political risk or political factors again that's going to be immediate feedback that you know if you're dealing with this company you need to discuss political risk you need to consider the political environment and the political relationship between the two countries um so is an opportunity to test out your argument to uh to get feedback on whether there's any major issues or problems with your argument if there's anything missing and so on so it's really strongly recommend it is not marked it doesn't form part of your grade whatsoever uh but it is really an important part of the assessment process itself so that would be in in week five uh week seven is the third of the three um online assessment sessions um which are going to be recorded incidentally and made available afterwards but please do try to attend because the questions that you need answered may not be asked um but then week eight sees our final submission so the end of week eight will be your uh assessment submission deadline so that's our uh our assignment headline uh uh timeline or assessment timeline um moving on to the next question of what structure should you use uh well at this point remember we have a week uh five seven uh online session uh where we're going to go into much more detail about the structure the formatting the presentation uh we really don't want to focus on the end product at this stage uh so you shouldn't be worrying about uh the sections or the subsections of your final report uh what really we want to focus on is the actual argument because the structure follows the argument no one's going to have the same structure everyone's going to have different companies you're all going to have different arguments you're going to be considering different factors um and therefore the structure that you use should be following the argument that you have um so we'll we'll we'll look at that more uh in more detail uh later on in the unit but as a general piece of advice focus on the argument once your argument is in place you know what you're going to be arguing uh you know uh you know what the the supporting evidence uh and the the supporting theories and tools for your argument are then you can start developing a structure to present that argument in the best light the very last thing we're going to cover on this video uh are uh tools like grammar leag quot and chat GPT or um AI tools more generally so please do go through the handbook I know I've said it in several videos uh now uh is really important it covers a huge amount of things so it's not written um you know like a um full of technical jargon and so on it's it's it's literally just a set of common questions with direct straightforward answers uh written in in you know as a straightforward language as I could uh so please do take a look through it uh what we're particularly interested in now uh is looking at section three so plagiarism chat GPT and AI tools so I'm just going to quickly run through each section uh section by section just to make sure that we're all on the same page when it comes to plagiarism and and and AI tools so the question that we get a lot is what turn it in score are we allowed for our assessments well that turn it in score or that turn it in percentage is provid provided by the tentin service uh but is not you know used by the university to make decisions on plagiarism uh simply put there is no acceptable level of plagiarism there's no oh you've got 4% turn in score so you're fine but someone else has got 6% turn it in score so they're going to get in trouble um that's nonsense um the score is provided by turn it in and and we can't do anything about that uh but what the university does and what this course team and this unit team in particular will do is make decisions on on plagiarism based on the written work uh so for some students their score is going to be a certain amount because turntin has picked up uh the you know parts of the reference list and thinks that's plagiarism we're not going to do you know that's not plagiarism that's just heard it in mistakenly identifying something uh however if you have included key sentences you've included key passages uh which are clearly plagiar or my favorite where youve you know a student has copied and pasted a chunk of text but changed every third word or used a academic practice is is in line with what's needed um what should happen or what's happening if I get given a grade of one uh and the feedback tells me to wait for contact uh that's because there's concerns about the originality of your work so it could be um concerns over over direct plagiarism or it could be concerns over the authenticity the the authorship of the work itself if it's authorship um then that will almost certainly trigger a which is an interview where you get asked some relatively straightforward questions about your work um this may happen even if you have absolutely written the work yourself there's a number of reasons why you could be called to a vior when you haven't you know done anything wrong um in that case please don't worry you you know you turn up to the vior you'll be ask some relatively straightforward questions uh and then we'll tell you you know you've passed a wver everything's fine and we're going to mark your work like normal um the questions are very easy to answer if you if you written your work uh and there is really honestly no reason to be worried or concerned um it happens unfortunately because there is a a wider issue in Academia around the prevalence of AI tools and so on um can you use chat gbt your AI tools uh well if you're including any text generated by AI in your work that is an academic offense and that's a simple principle you're you know you're supposed to be submitting your assignment in order to demonstrate that you have met the learning outcomes and you have the knowledge and the skills that the university is saying that you have by giving you a degree um and if you haven't written those uh uh those assignments yourself then we can't actually say that you know you have achieved you know the the learning outcomes uh and therefore you can't demonstrate that you've achieved the learning and the knowledge that you need in order to be awarded a degree so if you're submitting work generated by ai ai that's a straightforward academic offense um however you are permitted and and and to a degree I honestly think you should be encouraged to use AI tools for researching and structuring um this is not for submitting text or generating text in your assignment but to help you identify useful resources to help you brainstorm to help you understand a topic those are really helpful areas that AI tools can help you with uh you do have to reference and acknowledge them so you know writing about your use of AI tools in the process log and in the reflection and making sure you have uh reference your use of AI tools as required uh in the University guidelines um in terms of helping you develop the skills to use AI tools for researching and structuring what the research notebooks are really aimed at this so if you go through the week by week seminars uh activities in the research notebooks uh you'll see that each of the research notebooks has a section on suggested AI prompts and has guidance on how to use AI uh to help you in your work but the thing which is not permitted uh is actually submitting text uh which has been generated by AI tools are you allowed to use homework Help Services uh those are you know they call all kinds of things essay Mills homework help or or you know just straightforward essays for purchase um no that's not your work uh that will trigger a vior and that is an academic offense uh are you allowed to use grammar Le Corb and other writing Help Services so this isn't someone rewriting your work or AI writing your work from scratch but rather rewriting Services which often do depend on AI well the first thing to bear in mind is that it will trigger a vior because we do use an AI checking tool and these are AI tools um and and they they almost always do trigger uh our AI checking Tool uh if you understand your work completely then that's not a problem you'll be called to the vior uh you'll be ask some questions about your work and you'll be able to answer them and everything's fine uh so the principle here is is that if you do use grammarly or quillbot uh to to rewrite sections of your of your report because you want to improve the grammar you want to prove the language or the expression uh it can't be improved to the point that you don't understand it you have to you you you should be using grammarly and cool board or whatever else in order to improve your own uh language skills you shouldn't be using them to replace your language skills so uh by improving language skills means well I've I've written uh you know a couple of sentences I think they sound quite bad the English expression isn't very good I'll use grammarly to improve the English expression but I understand it I've developed my language skills I'm going to try and use that form of expression from now on that's fine uh but using it to to rewrite big sections of your report to the point that you don't actually understand the language used in the the Rewritten sections is is not uh is not acceptable uh the other thing which is really important to bear in mind if you use these tools to check your work you have to keep the original draft without the changes uh so you can demonstrate uh you know the development of the work you can show well this is what I wrote myself and then I put it into grammar and and and this is what came out uh if you don't do that that that's potentially going down the lines of of being referred to the ACP the academic under panel and it being treated as an academic offense uh so just keep that that absolutely in mind excuse me uh and lastly are you allowed to use Google Translate and other translation services um well if it's for large parts or all of your assignment the answer is no it's an English language degree you're studying at an English language University um so if you're translating massive chunks of your assignment um then that's not that doesn't meet the learning outcomes um you need to be able to understand what has come out as well so same thing uh as as using grammarly um if you have translated a few phrases or words and you understand what's come out I.E you've used it as a learning Tool uh then that's not a problem uh if you have translated things and you simply cannot understand or explain it in English that's a problem um if you've chosen for whatever reason to write the entire work in your own first language or native language uh then you must translate it yourself um but just be be wary of that as well and the same thing applies as grammarly as well uh if you have uh used uh used an app to translate large chunks of your work you must keep the original graphs as well to demonstrate the development of your work all right brilliant uh hopefully that's been of help uh and I'll see you guys uh soon in the first online session