‘OBU Marker-Speak’ – What the Marker Feedback really meant…

@hamdi90 You need to be clear on the following points:

1. A good RAP needs a variety of sources so that is balanced.
2. All sources including the annual reports must be referenced (to either acknowledge where the idea came from and to add validity)
3. Copying means using a source word for word (e.g. using the copy & paste command and extracting passages from articles, websites etc)
4. You should not do too much of 3 – just short extracts and these must be in “quotation marks” to show they are not your original words and include a reference to show whose words they are
5. Where you read an article and express it in your own words you need to put in a reference (to comply with point 2)

So getting back to your passage above – you are NOT copying because the second version is using your own words (point 5) but it will need a reference in brackets at the end of the sentence to add validity (point 2 – this is basically to show that you are not making up facts)

It seems what the markers and moderator didn’t like previously was all your long passages taken straight from articles. So in your Resubmission statement you need to say that you have reviewed and updated your work and expressed many of the information sources used in your own words to demonstrate that you do understand them and have focused on the key points from these sources. You have also referenced them fully and appropriately and where you have used someone else’s words they are in quotation marks.

….and of course you need to ensure that this is the case in your actual work submitted

Is this clear now?

@shadoweyescat – Obviously I can only comment generally as I have not seen your work:

The marker wanted to see your results so that they could check them – raw data refers to the exact basic figures that underlie your work. In other words before they were turned into percentages . Without raw data how can the marker know that your calculations are correct? If your calculations are not correct then your findings would also be invalid. It is like with T8 where the marker needs to see the calculations behind the ratios and being able to compare these with the annual report. It students do not provide these workings then work invariably is failed. Note: Workings are part of the methodology (put them in the appendices) and are a protocol of good valid research. (ANOVA refers to ‘analysis of variances’).

There is a general problem with T6 RAPs because they normally depend on a survey and unfortunately surveys are usually badly conducted by students. (Personally I think T6 is not a good choice because the surveys are very rarely well done and the pass rate for T6 therefore is one of the lowest going – FACT. This is why I have tried to encourage students to consider T17 as long as they approach this in the right way as it does not require a survey).

With a T6 you must set out your methodology as clearly as possible e.g. how many people were surveyed, how they were chosen, the response rate to the questionnaire, how long the whole process took, any problems that came to light after conducting it (e.g. a question was found to be ambiguous). See Phil Clarke’s article in the Information Pack p.36 for further details on Primary research.

The comment for (4) would tend to indicate that you made too many direct citations from textbooks and/or articles. The problems here are twofold: (1) there is a danger of unintentional plagiarism e.g. you are not doing sufficient original work of your own and (2) just quoting other people does not demonstrate that you understand what you are writing (this can lead to a fail in section [1] of the assessment criteria ‘Understanding of accountancy/business models’ as there is a lack of direct evidence of your own actual ability). You say you used your own words but from the marker’s comment it looks like the electronic checking system identified passages as being virtually identical to something already published/ submitted. I am not saying that you did this but it is as well to know that just changing a few words here and there does not fool the system. It is a very clever program that examines patterns in the paragraph and will actually show the words that have been changed – I used this program when I had to submit my own work for my Masters degree and I know it uses colours to highlight copied text and the changed words remain in black (so it is very obvious to the reader exactly which bits have been changed where). Apparently some students try to change things using Google translate and the end result is often hilarious nonsense as the subtleties of English are not understood by those whose mother tongue is not English. The markers are aware of all the tricks and are not fooled for a moment.

All I can suggest is that you go back to your original sources and paraphrase and precis and then the similarities should be minimal. If you cannot provide the original data then you must go back to the drawing board – do not try to invent any – again this is obvious to markers.

shadoweyescat – maybe then there were just too many instances of this. Like I say they want to know that you understand what you are writing not just copy and pasting from books and articles… just bear it in mind.

@shadoweyescat – you need to list out your questions and show the frequency of the responses in a table e.g. Q1.[set out what the question was] 32 agreed, 15 disagreed and 3 were not sure , Q2.[again set out the question] 38 agreed, 5 disagreed and 7 were not sure and give this type of information for each question. If you cannot provide this level of detail then you would have to do another survey as the marker wants to see the figures behind it and and if you don’t provide them they will fail it again as they need to check it for themselves. (The expression ‘back to the drawing board’ means that you have to redesign something). The marker does not want to wade through 50 separate questionnaires but they want the information they contain in a user-friendly, easy to use form. So you need to provide a this table of the raw data as an appendix.

@shadoweyescat – Most journals require you to be affiliated to a college or university that has taken out a group paid subscription (and then bona fide students are able to use their college login to access and download the relevant articles). At OT we are unfortunately not able to provide this kind of service. I suggest that you go on to google scholar and use a few key words to see if any articles are available that suit your purpose – look for those articles that indicate on the right of their listing that there is a pdf version available as these normally can be downloaded free of charge (this is usually because the author(s) have chosen to allow access to any interested individuals).

However Emerald Insight, Springer, Jstor and Taylor-Francis invariably charge a significant amount for each article if you try to access via their websites. The trick here is once you have discovered the authors’ full name(s) and the title of the article is to feed it into a search engine to see if the full version is available FOC elsewhere. (However this is time-consuming and not always successful). Of course if you have a friend or relative who does benefit from a group University/college subscription then you could try to ask them to help out! 🙂

PS Don’t yo mean relationship between Students’ attitudes and employees’ motivation (rather than v.v.?)

@syedazmat – well the good news here is that both the marker and moderator thought that your RAP showed some good work. The moderator (senior marker) actually says: “it should not be too difficult to bring it up to the pass grade. A main weakness in your work is the comparator analysis….. you have made a good attempt at explaining many of the ratios in connection with Honda, your analysis with respect to Toyota is fairly superficial. You should also try to expand your SWOT and PEST…. Applying the models in the business context to your company is a critical part of doing a SWOT /PEST analysis ”

What I take from this is that in your resubmission you must not rely just on numbers to explain the differences in the two companies’ performances. Instead you need to look at some of the PEST factors (they will normally have affected both companies) and see how the companies have dealt with these. Also look at the way management have tried to use the SWOT factors to their advantage by trying to build on the strengths and turn some of them where possible into market opportunities and minimize the weaknesses. Although you are not expected to so a SWOT and PEST for both companies (just the main company) it may be a good idea to do one for the comparator (load this as an appendix) and see if you can then see what the main factors that account for significant differences in their performances are.

I would suggest that unless something is really significant that you do NOT just bring in lots of numbers. Let your graphs do ‘the talking’ – ensure they are clear and then the marker will be able to see the position for himself/herself. What they want are your explanations not lots of figures (as I explain in my article on Evaluation) as anyone can calculate ratios. Focus on sales, gross profit and net profit, and investor ratio explanations as these are the important ones and sort out your understanding on inventory and its impact on other liquidity ratios. Do that adequately (Business Recorder often has some useful up-to-date information you can draw on) and you should overcome the deficiencies that the marker and moderator noted and as long as you update to include the latest financial statements and reference adequately you should be successful. Good luck 😀

@syedadmat- It would appear that your referencing was fine as neither the marker nor moderator made any comment to the contrary. It seems it really was the comparator analysis that let you down. So read my article on the Resubmission Statement and as mentioned, focus on improving the depth of drawing comparisons as your next marker will be focusing on this.

I haven’t used a software program for referencing (did it the hard way myself for my MSc) but one of our contributors, SalahUddin has referred to this (think it is probably on the Harvard Referencing Forum) so take a look there. Or possibly send him a private message to get more details as I don’t know if he looks at the OBU Forum much now as he has the degree (click on his name icon and it should bring up the facility to enable you to contact him)

@shadoweyescat – normally the SLS fails on lack of self-reflection so it is important than you do an assessment of your whole learning and development experience while doing the RAP. Whether you include just the original meetings or include your subsequent meeting(s) too is not the real issue, it is looking at what you learned especially about your own strengths and weaknesses you need to focus on – so do not worry about which actual meetings you include – it is their significance that matters. Rather than saying you did this or that, or the mentor said this or that is not important – it is HOW this affected you and how it might be important to you in your career or the life lesson learned from it which is what they will be looking for.

I think from past experience you may need to load the Presentation just in order to be able to submit – but don’t bother doing anything other than just loading the Presentation file. You have passed and that is the end of the matter. Good luck 🙂