B211 Assignment 1

Assignment 1 - Technology Report

Description

Report

You and a group of friends have decided to form a company to offer your skills as services, or to sell some special products you have developed. You have decided that an important export avenue is the Internet.

You have found an investor who is interested in funding your venture. The investor has asked for a business plan and a set of supplement documentations to demonstrate the viability of what you plan to do, and to show that your group knows what it is doing. Your task in this assignment is to produce one of the supplement documents: a report containing possibilities, analysis, price and recommendations on technical options to enable the company to connect to the Internet and make effective use of the World-Wide-Web. Your report should have a limit of 10 pages, and should include (but is not limited to) options for:

Internet access,

Software for employees

Software to link to customers and business partners

Your report should written at a technical level suitable to the potential investor. The potential investor is a sophisticated user of computers and the Internet, but have not much experience dealing with the background technical matters not relevant to a home/office user. The investor is, however, very interested in these technical matters.

You may write the report as a stand-alone report, or you may include references to other (imaginary) parts of the business plan. Regardless of which approach you take, you must state in your report the name and initial personnel of the company, the products/services you are offering, and where your company is located.

Self-Learning

Read the Self-Learning document, and complete the information in the two forms:

Plans.

Evaluation of plans and methods.

Deadlines

A copy of your plans (part II a) must be submitted directly to your tutor before or during week 4. Internal students must do so during your lab sessions.

The whole assignment (including your plans in part II a) is due at 4pm Tuesday 3rd September 2002 (week 6).

Submission Requirements

The following must be submitted to your tutor before or during week 4:

A copy of your plans (part II a) - keep the original and submit with the final submission as well.

The following must be submitted by 4pm Tuesday 3rd Sept 2002 (week 6). Internal students should submit to the assignment boxes. External students submit to External Studies Office as normal.

Printed report on Internet usage, as required in part I. You are not required to produce a full business plan, only the suplementary report on Internet usage.

Completed Self-Learning forms (part II a and b).

Printed and completed cover sheet. Internal students must use the internal cover sheet. External students must use the copies sent to you by the External Studies Office.

Some guides on working on this assignment:

Before starting the assignment, have a look at the assignment's marking scheme (get the password using the unit's password query system) for tutors. The tutors will be following this scheme precisely when they assess your submissions.

As you can see from the marking scheme, there is a considerable amount of marks just for understand and using the unit material (lectures and required readings). You should address some of the issues where the unit material already gives you some information on. These would include Internet connection technologies, use of web browsers, web servers, search engines, etc.

However, the lectures notes by themselves will not give you the full scope of what is possible with these technologies. That is where you will have to do extra research of your own. The more you understand the areas mentioned in the unit material, the more you will realise how they apply to an organization. If you have some doubts about your understanding, I recommend you ask for help from the discussion forum, from your tutor or from me. Students are allowed to post answers in the discussion forum related to the assignments, as long as they are to clarify misunderstandings or as guide on where to look, rather than direct solutions to the assignment tasks.

You may find some e-commerce start-up guides, such as the link mentioned in Topic 5 outline, to be useful. But remember the purpose of this report is technology report, not a novice user guide. Please focus on technical evaluation.

If in your research you gain an understanding that superceeds what is supplied in the unit material, you may choose to report using mostly your own researched material rather than the unit material. This shows independence and self-reliance, and is therefore strongly encouraged in this unit. As you can see from the marking scheme (Part I (3)), tutors are instructed to be generous with marks when encountering this situation. But when using your own material, please be reasonably sure your material and your understanding are correct. Many times in the past I have students go off on a tangent having been misled by false information, or information they do not have the capacity to notice suspicious content in. I encourage you to consult your tutors or me if you are unsure.

If you choose to report using mostly your own researched material rather than the unit material, you should include a short explanation justifying this, and demonstrating you do understand the unit material enough to ignore it. This is so that you are not disadvantaged with regards to the assessment guidelines.

Note the requirement states "...technical options to enable the company to connect to the Internet and make effective use of the World-Wide-Web." This report should not be a complete IT set-up report. It should only deal with the Internet and the Web, the subject area of this unit.

The products/services you choose to sell for your company is up to you. They do not need to even be related to computing. You do not have to actually be an expert in the particular product/service line for the purpose of this assignment, but you should pick an area you will be motivated to research on. The area you pick will have impact on what kinds of technologies you need to explore (although the basics of getting Internet connections, web browsers, web servers, etc will still be relatively similar).

As suggestions, some services areas you may choose are web-site implementation, graphic design and animation, web application development, market research services, games programming, etc. Some products you may consider are software (games, development tools, desktop productivity tools), computer hardware, online content (short films, animated movies, clip-arts, online gift cards, e-documents), etc.

Any information that is not stated on this assignment description, you may make reasonable assumptions on to complete the report. If unsure, consult the unit coordinator through the discussion forum.

Just because the page limit is 10, doesn't mean you have to write a full 10 pages. The high page count is to give you some flexibility in having good spacing and report layout. A common mistake for students is to try and cram as much text as possible into the pages. Keep in mind that a very well-written 5 page report can get you a High Distinction. On the other hand, a badly written report will fail regardless of how many pages you write.

Local internal students must locate their company in Western Australia. External and International students may locate their company in your own local area outside Western Australia. Please state the location in your report.

Read the assessment section of the study guide regarding referencing and honesty in asessment. All material which are not your own must be properly referenced. Also, in this unit, all submitted reports must be in the author's own words. Reports regurgitated from another source without change will not be assessed, no matter how well-referenced. Reports regurgitated from another source and not referenced will constitute plagiarism, and will be passed on to the Dean for disciplinary action.

A warning to those considering straying down the dark side: do not assume that just because there are so many documents out there that your tutor can't possibly find the ones you are using. If you can find it, so can we.

If you are not familiar with referencing formats, have a look at the Murdoch library's guide to citing references (http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/guides/cite.html). Any one of the 3 listed styles (Harvard, APA or MLA) is acceptable in this assignment.

Part II (a) is only a plan. You only need to think about how you will approach doing the tasks, without starting any extensive work. Just look at what resources is available to you, think about what you should do, and complete the form. It may turn out you make major adjustments in your methods as you are doing your work - that's OK. The adjustments can all be described in part II (b).

H.L. Hiew
Unit Coordinator