Study Period 2 2019 Student ’ s Assignment Guide Assignment submissions Assignment submission for…
Study Period 2 2019
Student’s Assignment Guide
Assignment submissions
Assignment submission for Parts 1 and 2 is via LearnOnline. If you have problems submitting, keep proof of your submission attempt and email belinda.chiera@unisa.edu.au
Part 1 Proposal: (15% of your overall grade)
Electronically as Microsoft Word document (.docx) ONLY – zip and PDF files will not be accepted.
Part 2 Dashboard: (15% of your overall grade)
Submit a working Tableau dashboard by submitting a packaged Tableau file (.twbx) using the File Menu (See below). This combines your data and dashboard into one file. If the marker cannot open the dashboard in Tableau the assignment you will be given 0 marks for this part of the assignment.
Once submitted do not edit any electronic files of your work.
Assignments submitted late, without an extension being granted, will attract a penalty of 10 marks per each working day or any part thereof beyond the due date and time. Please refer to the Course Outline for the course policy regarding extensions.
An incorrectly or partially filled cover sheet will result in lost marks and delays in the marking and return of your assignment.
Plagiarism is a specific form of academic misconduct. We encourage and support working in groups and seeking help, however your final submission must always represent your individual work, opinions and recommendations.
If plagiarism is found, all parties involved will be penalised. You need to retain all your assignment computer files (Excel, Word, Tableau etc. ), which must remain unchanged after submission, for the purposes of checking, if required.
Plagiarism covers, but is not limited to, the following actions:
Direct copying of the work of other persons, from one or more source, without clearly indicating the origin;
Sending your files to another student for any reason whatsoever, even for the purposes of checking or comparing work;
Submitting another student’s work in whole or in part;
Submitting work that has been written by someone else on the student’s behalf;
Copying computer files without clearly indicating their origin;
Submitting work that has been derived, in whole or in part, from another student’s work by a process of mechanical transformation (e.g. changing variable names in computer files, paraphrasing);
All parties found to be involved in academic misconduct will incur, if appropriate, a penalty and a record in the University’s Academic Integrity Database (UniSA Assessment and Procedures Manual 2019, Section 9, Clause 9.2.3 i.).
If you are unsure about what constitutes Academic Integrity, you are always welcome to ask us for more information before submitting.
Aim of the assignment
Your assignment in this course consists of two parts:
Part 1 is a proposal to develop a dashboard for an organisation for the CEO.
Part 2 is the working dashboard proposed in Part 1, built using Tableau.
The proposal and the dashboard together will give you practice at what would be a real-world analytics project.
As a Business Intelligence (BI) consultant if your proposal (Part 1) were accepted, the organisation would pay you to do the work (Part 2). Otherwise you wouldn’t have a job.
This assignment also aims to develop:
Your knowledge and skills in using data that is specific to the degree you are doing.
Your ability to show how data is relevant and useful. Data (and so Business Intelligence) is used in all jobs, all organisations and all sectors, as well as complex areas such as climate change, personal relationships and organisational culture; and
Your ability to understand your reader’s perspective and needs, and being able to respond to those needs. Business intelligence provides a means to see and understand a business problem and when done well, reveals new solutions the organisation didn’t even consider.
We hope you enjoy the challenge of this assignment and look forward to seeing what you come up with!
As well as this guide we’ll also provide guidance and examples in the Workshops, Practicals and Online Forums.
Contents
Assignment submissions 2
Aim of the assignment 4
Presentation/structure 7
Marking criteria – Part 1 Proposal 10
Word limit – Part 1 Proposal 10
Finding Data 11
Marking criteria – Part 2 Dashboard 12
Referencing/Backing up your statements 13
Assignment Part 1: Report (due 26/03/2019 by 9:00am)
Part 1 is:
a written project proposal of about 2000 words (See Word Limit section below)…
for the CEO/Owner of the organisation you choose below…
to create a dashboard…
that will help them understand and plan for a key priority for their organisation…
that is relevant to your degree
For Part 1 the steps you need to complete are:
Choose your organisation; and
Choose your priority.
The details for each step are below.
1. Choose your organisation
First of all, choose one of the following organisations for your assignment:
Abbots and Kinney (coffee shop on City West Campus)
Government of South Australia
Samsung
Uber Eats
Uniting Communities: http://www.unitingcommunities.org
Virgin Australia
Wilderness Society Youi Insurance
2. Choose your priority
Next, do some research about your chosen organisation to find a single key priority that is relevant to your degree. This priority will be the focus of the proposal and dashboard you build. The priority should also be an area where you can obtain enough data from different sources to be able to construct your dashboard (don’t panic! See Finding my Data below).
Example: Apple Inc – One of Apple’s competitive advantages is manufacturing high -quality smartphones and despatching them to millions of customers across the globe. Some example priorities from different discipline perspectives are:
Accounting perspective: dealing with challenges of variability of cost of raw materials in different countries; deciding on the optimal set of transport options for each region taking into account cost, reliability and corporate environmental goals
HR perspective: minimising worker injury; ensuring quality of staff recruitment and training across a wide range of production centres
Law perspective: making sure production aligns with regulations specific to each region
Management perspective: ensuring alignment with delivery timelines across a wide range of geographic locations; managing multiple language groups
Marketing perspective: how to early detect and respond to bad news about manufacturing faults; how to capture first impressions of customers when the collect their new smartphone
Supply chain perspective: ensuring sustainable local distribution networks
For the purpose of this assignment, you can assume your client (the reader) knows a little about BI.
You should also assume they don’t have any BI dashboards in the area that you are proposing, but obviously would have data.
Don’t spend time researching what they currently have in BI dashboards – it’s not a research assignment, it’s a providing-a-new-solution assignment.
Presentation/structure
The structure should be in a logical format that flows well – it is like telling a story. An explanation of the word limit is given in the Word Limit section further along in this document. The report should contain the sections below covering the points described:
Section
Explanation
Assignment Cover Page
•
Standard UniSA cover page.
Title Page
•
The title page is separate to the assignment cover page
•
See Microsoft Word templates for examples.
Table of Contents
•
Section headings with page numbers.
•
You can create this manually or to save time make use of the Heading Styles and an automatic Table of Contents in Microsoft Word (in the References menu).
Executive Summary
•
Executive Summaries are designed for busy readers who may not have time to read a whole report.
•
It is a summary of the whole assignment including recommendations.
•
No more than 200 words.
Introduction
•
Explanation of what you will be covering in the assignment (or ‘what this story will be about’).
Overview of Selected Key Priority
•
To demonstrate to your intended audience (the CEO/Owner) that you understand their organisation and their needs provide an overview of what you have selected and show the CEO that you have done your research about the organisation and the priority.
•
This overview should be enough for someone who doesn’t know the organisation or the priority at all to have a new understanding by the end of reading – so if what you have written is not much more than what
Section
Explanation
most people would know about the organisation and the priority you haven’t delved into it enough. • The priority should be (understood) and explained well enough so that once the dashboard provides Answers to the Questions (next section) it will enable the CEO/Owner to help them understand and plan for this priority.
Questions to be Answered by Dashboard
Following the process we are using with the weekly Case Studies, come up with at least 5 and no more than 10 questions the proposed dashboard will be able to answer that the CEO/Owner can’t answer now or can’t answer easily (because this is the value you would be providing). There are no set right questions, but there are certainly better questions than others. Check: by providing Answers to these Questions, will the CEO/Owner be able to help them understand and plan for the Priority?
Data and Data Sources (which data you aim to use)
Provide a table or some other way of letting the CEO/Owner know which data you plan to use in you dashboard, including: o Data item o Data source o Description (if necessary) You must identify at least 3 data sources that are publicly available (so you can use them in your dashboard). (See Finding my Data below) Use reliable, good quality data sources. Tip: use fewer data sources well, rather than more data sources not well Check: will the data you propose allow you to answer the Questions you have come up with? Data Note: when you build the dashboard (Part 2) it is OK if you have added to or changed some of the data sources. You may find once you get into the detail that the data isn’t what you expected. Having to change the data for Part 2 will not result in loss of marks. Revising concepts due to data availability is how the business world works (unfortunately) and we will accommodate for this when we mark.
Sample Dashboard
• Search on the web for images of a dashboard to include in the proposal to give the CEO/Owner an idea of what you would be building.
Section
Explanation
•
Alternatively, mock one up using hand drawing/Word/Paint/Powerpoint to include in the proposal
•
Also include some captions and explanation of the dashboard
•
Do not build the dashboard to include here. You’ll do this in Part 2.
•
The purpose of this section is to further convince the CEO/Owner of the value of the dashboard, so demonstrate your understanding of good and bad dashboard design as well.
Potential Challenges and Issues
•
Explain to the CEO/Owner the potential challenges and issues you may encounter such as o Data quality o Ethics Consent Data availability and reliability
•
The weekly Case Studies will be examples of this
Conclusion/Summary
•
A wrap up of the key points and why and how your proposed dashboard would be a good solution for them to pursue.
•
By the end of the proposal the CEO/Owner should have also gained an understanding of BI and the relevance and usefulness of BI.
Reference List
•
Follow UniSA standards for all referencing
Since this is proposal for a business audience, it should be presented in a professional format making it easy to read. The use of diagrams and graphs, particularly to show figures will earn more marks. All figures and tables should be captioned and referenced by label in text (e.g. Table 1 contains …, Figure 1 shows … ). An efficient layout is important but don’t spend too much time on making it look good and not enough time on the content. Microsoft Word has many sample templates that can be used.
Using bullet points are OK occasionally but you’ll need sentences for each point (ie. just a bullet point list with no explanation isn’t suitable).
Do not write in the first person (“I”)
Important: Whenever you use technical terms, explain them using non-technical wording. Loss of marks will apply here.
Marking criteria – Part 1 Proposal
The proposal will be marked on how well you cover each of the points:
Area
Weighting
Description and explanation of your chosen key priority
10%
The questions the dashboard will be designed to provide answers for
20%
Data and data sources
20%
Sample dashboard
10%
Potential challenges and issues with building the dashboard
10%
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