Description

Assignment context

 The task focuses on developing your practical knowledge and skills to analyse accounting information in the financial statements of an ASX listed company. You will need to prepare a group report on the company’s financial performance and financial position trend over a period of three years.

Assignment objective

 Part 1: This group assignment requires the completion and submission of a business report of approximately 2000 words that includes calculations and analysis of all relevant ratios for a three- year period 2018-2020 (if 2021 report of your company is available, then the period of 2019-2021) with the purpose of establishing the company’s:

• profitability
• operating efficiency
• liquidity and solvency and
• market performance

Part 2: Team self-evaluation and reflection (Approximately 500 words).

Assignment Group Formation and Registration

 This is a group assignment. All groups must consist of 3 members (group of 2 members might be allowed with the approval of the unit chair).

 You must REGISTER your group in the Cloud Deakin site for Assignment 2A (Business Report). Under the tab ‘Tools’ you will find Groups, click on this and it takes you to the Group folders where you will self-enrol in a numbered box with your group members.

Students will self-select their groups. Where possible, Cloud students may wish to group with other Cloud students, and on campus with on campus (or a mix) but this is up to yourselves. Students will

be allocated the company on which their report is to be based once you have formed your groups and you have enrolled yourselves into a group online. You will be advised of your company via your Cloud Deakin group discussion forum.

A student is not able to withdraw from the team if they have been allocated to in CloudDeakin unless the student decides to withdraw from the unit. In that case, the withdrawing student must, as a courtesy, inform the unit chair so the team impacted by the withdrawal can be informed.

Managing Teamwork

 Team-work spirit - Important

Each group member is expected to contribute equally, and the assessment panel reserves the right to have a peer performance review as part of grading of this task, should any group request it, based on group interpretation of individual performance. Each group must submit an integrated report rather than an assignment with disjointed pieces written by different group members. The group as a whole must ensure all the fonts, tables, space between paragraphs and reference list are presented in a consistent manner and the discussion in the report is presented in a logical flow.

The marking rubrics for the group written report will be uploaded to CloudDeakin. Please read them and understand how your assignment will be marked. Should you need further clarification on internal assessments, feel free to post your queries online.

To make your teamwork visible and to effectively manage your team’s tasks, communication, milestones, files and progress, you have access to Microsoft Teams. Please use Microsoft Teams Student Support webpage to familiarise yourself with the platform and make the most out of this feature-rich platform designed to support online team collaboration. Additional resources to help you with using MS Teams have been provided in the Unit Assessment folder.

Using MS Teams will also allow you to fully and constructively capture the evidence of how you ‘collaborated with peers to present and defend financial information and decisions’. This evidence is crucial in supporting your evaluation and reflection part of this task.

Important:

Please make sure to read Assignment 2A brief and check Assignment 2A rubric in conjunction with Assignment 2B brief and rubric. To generate sufficient quality evidence for Assignment 2A Part 2, all critical team processes, MS Teams and Planner setup, communication, collaboration, planning, allocation of team roles/responsibilities/tasks, goal setting, file management, etc. must be discussed by all team members, carefully considered and put in place BEFORE your team starts working on Assignment 2A. A list of useful resources to help you effectively manage your team project has been provided in the Unit Assessment Folder. Please study the resources thoroughly before starting on the task.

When you create teams for your Questions 2, please ensure:

1. Appropriate naming conventions: eg MPA702 T2 2021 Assignment 2 Group 1
2. You add your Unit Chair (Ali Yaftian). Please assign his role as ‘owner’.

Tasks

Part 1 Business Report Step 1: preparation

Review chapter 10 of the prescribed textbook and make sure you can:

1. Calculate financial ratios
2. Interpret the meaning of each financial ratio; and
3. Use financial ratios to assess a company’s financial performance, financial position and market

Step 2: financial analysis

1. Calculate and analyse all relevant ratios for a three- year period 2018- 2020. Each group member must calculate one year of ratios (ensuring the same formulas are used) and evidence of this participation must be included in your group discussion on MS
2. Analyse the changes in the following ratios of the company based on your three-year calculations:

• profitability
• operating efficiency
• liquidity and solvency
• market performance

Note:

To enable a comprehensive analysis of your company, you will need to include additional relevant information in relation to the performance of, and existence of competitors and regulatory and/or environmental factors influencing your company/industry. When undertaking your company research, you must utilise current financial press (such as The Age, Financial Review, The Australian, or appropriate relevant on-line business sites*). A minimum of four articles relevant to your company (or industry sector) over the period of analysis must be incorporated into your report discussion. You are encouraged to use more than four to support your discussion where required.

* Appropriate business sites do not include sources such as Wikipedia, Investopedia, MyAccountingCourse or similar. These sites are not regarded as appropriate academic sources.

Step 3: write the group report and include all references (please find the information about the report structure, formatting requirements and word count in a separate document located in the Assessment Folder)

Note: For the report structure and formatting requirements, please see MPA702 Task 2A Report Structure document in your Assessment Folder.

Part 2 Teamwork Review and Self-Evaluation

 Step 1: please use the Teamwork Review and Self-Evaluation Template to discuss and reflect on the team effort to complete the task

Step 2: collectively address the criteria on the template

Step 3: copy and paste the filled template into the document with your group report (Part 2A)

Step 4: submit your document for assessment

Note: Overall word count for your collective response (Teamwork Review & self-Evaluation) should be around 500 words.

Learning Outcomes

This task allows you to demonstrate achievement towards the unit learning outcomes. The ULOs are aligned with specific graduate learning outcomes – that is, the skills and knowledge graduates are expected to have upon completion of their studies – and this assessment task is an important tool in determining achievement of those outcomes.

If you do not demonstrate achievement of the unit learning outcomes, you will not be successful in this unit.

It is good practice to familiarise yourself with the ULOs and GLOs as they provide guidance on the knowledge, understanding and skills you’re expected to demonstrate upon completion of the unit. In this way they can be used to guide your study.

Submission

The written report which includes Team Member’s Collective Statements on the template must be submitted electronically by the due date as a Word uploading it to the Dropbox in CloudDeakin. Each group must nominate one member to upload the report. When uploading your report, give the document a name using the following syntax: <Group number XX_MPA702.doc (or ‘.docx’), for example, ‘Group 1_MPA702.doc’. Submitting a hard copy of this report is not required.

Plagiarism

Please review the section on ‘Plagiarism’ in the Unit Guide. You need to check that your report does not contain plagiarism. This is done automatically when submitting your report tothe ‘Dropbox’, using Turnitin, which checks your report for plagiarism and generates an originality report that you can use to be confident that your report does not contain plagiarism.Turnitin will tell us (but tell you

first) the extent to which your work has copied material from others without appropriate recognition through referencing. If this is excessive you will lose marks or you may not receive any marks, or you may have some form of disciplinary action taken if the issue is severe. Take appropriate action to amend your report to avoid this from happening. Note that uploading your report to Turnitin via the prescribed link in CloudDeakinfor this unit constitutes submission to this unit AND also constitutes a declaration regarding the contents of the report being all your own work, except where appropriate references to the work of others has been acknowledged. You can upload your report to Dropbox as manytimes as you like up to the due date. In order to avoid a late submission penalty, you must upload your report to Dropbox by the due date. Reports that are submitted after the due datecan still be uploaded to the Dropbox. However, a penalty will be imposed where reports aresubmitted past the due date.

Group/s that require a time extension in relation to this report should discuss this with the UnitChair, supported by documentation (eg medical certificate). Students are also reminded thatextensions will only be given for exceptional and unusual circumstances outside the students’control and should be arranged with the Unit Chair prior to submission date.