Top Tips for the RAP + Marking Criteria - Read before starting your RAP

Hi, Everyone, I felt that there is confusion over how Research Analysis Projects (RAPs) are marked as many students fail to understand its marking in same way they understood for ACCA Exams. Before you write 1st word in RAP, you need to make clear yourself that assessment criteria of RAP include material you studied in ACCA but there are additional skills required. Further, there is no rule of ACHIEVING 50% & PASS. RAP is marked based on predetermined assessment criteria of OBU and pass or fail is opinion based justified by markers & moderators in their comments. For RAP assessment, there are 7 skills related to Research Report, References & Appendices and 2 skills for Skills & Learning Statement & Presentation. In summary: 1. Research Report (RR) – Require 7 Skills 2. Skills & Learning Statement (SLS) – Require 2 Skills As I already said that there is no numerical marking as for ACCA exams, hence you cannot pass RAP if you demonstrate 4 skills in RR & 1 skill in SLS. What it means is that you need to demonstrate your competence in all 9 skills that marker will assess under set criteria of OBU. Please mark my words for whole RAP: ---------------- YOU NEED TO PRODUCE A BALANCED REPORT------------------ What I want to emphasis here is, you should cover all aspects of assessment criteria. You cannot pass RAP if for topic 20 you cover assessment of organisation’s corporate social responsibility policies, business ethics, and their impact on business practice but forget to cover impact on key stake holders. Also remember the word BALANCED mean: - While selecting a framework for RAP, highlighting strengths of framework, why did you select it? and its limitations (covering both pros & cons) - While evaluating organization’s performance, highlighting both financial & non-financial aspects and positive & negative characteristics of performance - Demonstrating competence in all 9 skills (see below) By failing any skill of RR, OBU will fail whole RR and by failing any skill of SLS, OBU will fail whole SLS. If you fail either RR or SLS you will get fail for whole RAP. What markers are looking for is a reasonable RAP not a best one and a reasonable RAP is the one which cover all skills that are required to be demonstrated not the one best in any particular area. For topic 15, you cannot pass if you do best in analysis and evaluation of management of organisation’s working capital but do poor in analyzing its impact on organisation funding strategies. Skills To Be Demonstrate – Research Report (RR) - 7,500: There are total 7 skills related to RR for which OBU require your reasonable competence. These are divided as: 1. Technical and Professional Skills 2. Graduate Skills Grading of RAP: Remember there is no grading A, B or C for SLS and Graduate Skills. Whole grading of RAP depend on Technical and Professional Skills and achieving pass in Graduate Skills and SLS. If you want to obtain A grade for RAP then you need to work harder in demonstrating 4 Technical and Professional Skills and obtaining pass grade in SLS & graduate skills. 1 Technical and Professional Skills: SKILL 1: Understanding of accountancy / business models: Before selecting any model/framework for RAP, you need to ensure that you understand the model, its strengths, its limitations and why you have selected it? You must ensure that you make clear to te marker that you understand everything you are doing in your RAP. Choice of model must be relevant to topic, RAP objective(s) and situation of organisation. There should be evidence of wider reading which will demonstrate to marker that framework(s) are chosen after thorough research & thinking. If you choose best and relevant model(s) depending on topic & circumstances of company, provide evidence of wider reading and that you have done thorough research, making everything clear in RAP to the marker and ensuring that everything written is relevant to objective and title of RAP then it is likely that you will achieve A grade in this skill that will help you achieving A grade for RAP. SKILL 2: Application of accountancy / business models to the project topic: This requires insightful & critical application of models you have selected. Insightful application requires you to have deep & accurate application of frameworks. A good example can be for topic 8, if you choose to do ratio analysis then you will be required to select some ratios. Selection of ratios should be done carefully, based on trend in performance and financial situation of company. If a company has interest cover of 16, 20 and 9 in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively, then I will not recommend to select interest cover ratio as no matter it goes up or down, if it is above 1 in all years there is no risk for company and due to limitation of word count, I will recommend student to select any other ratio such as brief Cash-Flow Statement analysis. Critical analysis requires you to analyse strengths & weaknesses, pros & cons, merits & faults and positives & negatives. These can be for company as a whole or for each model or even for each ratio in my above example. Overall, you need to ensure that you effectively apply theory of model to a practical organisation and you will not be able to do this if you lack skill of understanding of accountancy / business models. If you do deep analysis using your selected framework(s) which contain an unbiased analysis highlighting both risks & benefits as per the topic then you will likely to get A grade in this skill. SKILL 3: Evaluation of information, analysis and conclusions: Being a professional accountant, you are required to be extremely thorough and careful in evaluating information, analysis and conclusion. Evaluation literally means highlighting pros and cons of something. So, you must highlight benefits and risks or limitations of information you are using in RAP, models you have selected and any bottlenecks to your research. Your RAP must have balanced evaluation as per topic and flow from your objective to a critical and rigorously approached analysis to final conclusion. There should be clear links between different areas of RAP supporting each other to reach final conclusion and recommendations. If you want to achieve A Grade in this skill, then you need to have high level of critical thought shown in the analysis and a rigorous approach to the evaluation of information, analysis and conclusion. SKILL 4: Presentation of project findings: This skill mainly relate to presentation of findings in your RR. OBU require your report to engage reader in coherent manner. This emphasis on having an appropriate structure that is presented in logical and consistent manner. It shouldn’t be like for example, for topic 5, you evaluate use of 1 short-term Islamic financial instrument in a section and its impact on financial statements of an organisation in another section. You need to make sure you clearly explain to the marker about which evaluation relates to a particular financial instrument and what their impacts are. Similarly, for topic 8, you need to make sure that in financial analysis you clearly state reasons for movement in ratios and make obvious what reasons relate to which years and whether reasons are for inter temporal comparison or competitor analysis? Your report must be written in professional manner with a flow from reason for selecting topic to objective to analysis to conclusion & recommendations. You will be able to achieve A Grade in this skill if you can engage reader in a professional manner and produce a relevant and coherent project report with appropriate structure. 2 Graduate Skills: Grade of your RAP just relate to above 4 Technical and Professional Skills of RR and for Graduate Skills you need just to be competent in them. You will either be competent or non-competent in these skills and you will get either pass or fail for these skills. SKILL 5: Communication: Language for your research report must be fluent, your grammar must be reasonable and your spellings should be correct. Remember this communication skill is different from communication skill of SLS which mainly relate to your PowerPoint presentation. SKILL 6: Information gathering and referencing: These relate to evidence of range of relevant information sources in your RR. You must use different sources to have an unbiased report of balanced sources. You must try and corroborate all information from different sources and refer them to your report using Harvard Referencing System. I recommend that your list of references should comprise some books, articles, magazines and newspapers. SKILL 7: Information technology: This skill require you to provide reasonable evidence of having accessed online information sources, use of spread sheets and other software such as MS Office, Skype etc. in preparing project report. Skills To Be Demonstrate – Skills & Learning Statements (SLS) - 2,000: There are total 2 skills related to SLS for which OBU require your reasonable competence and you will just get pass or fail in these skills. Hence, you are required to be competent in them: SKILL 1: Self-reflection: This is a skill which 99% students lack if they fail in SLS. This skill requires you to reflect on judgments made and actions taken in answering 4 questions of SLS. You should write your experiences, strengths, weaknesses, what you learnt from meetings with mentor? How was your experience of presentation? Here you should also ensure that you write your experiences rather than focusing on mentor that what your mentor told you, what he/she said, what you did in the meetings. Don’t provide a to do list in answer of questions to the marker. It is highly recommended to focus on yourself and your experiences. SKILL 2: Communication: This skill requires you to present a professional presentation to your mentor and attach a copy of it to OBU while submitting your documents. Your presentation must be clearly linked to report and must have appropriate structure. Presentation must be brief, to the point which becomes basis of discussion. Don’t copy paste your report in presentation, use bullet points and brief sentences. Ethics: In my opinion ethics is another area for which markers want some evidence in RAP and you should also cover this in your report. Overall: If you want to pass RAP then you need to pass both RR & SLS. If you want to get A Grade in your RAP then you need to be fully competent in 4 Technical and Professional Skills of RR. If you fail in any skill of RR or SLS then you will fail whole RAP. Markers require a Balanced Report that reasonably covers all skills required to be demonstrated. You need to ensure you do not miss any area and cover everything subject to word count. Do not emphasis or use too much words in an area for doing best in it and ignore any other sensitive area of RAP as per your topic. In case of re-submission, you are only required to correct mistakes or problems indicated in markers comments. Regards, Hammad Ahmed Qureshi – OBU BSc Hons. RAP Mentor

Great article Sir. Thank you so much.

Can you also tell, for topic 8 what are important models???

@mariaumair Thank you Maria for appreciating my article. Please note, there is no rule of thumb for model selection with regards to any RAP topic. Each model selection should be relevant to circumstances of the company, its performance and topic itself. For example, if there is a company which is loss making, it would be more relevant to apply models such as Altman Z Score and others related to business failure if company is making series of losses in prior years. If it is a profitable company, then you would focus on GP margin, NP margin etc. rather EBIT or EBITDA to sales ratio etc. Everything is dependent on relevancy to company, performance and circumstances. Also, please note that you must be master in knowledge of the model. You cannot apply a model and get A grade if you are confuse about it. So, in my opinion you may select a general model such as SWOT, PESTEL, 5 FORCES, RESOURCE AUDIT etc. for business analysis but also apply 1 specific model such as BCG Matrix, Life-cycle analysis of key product etc. For financial analysis, you may apply some ratios with horizontal analysis of numbers, which is totally dependent on company's performance but i will recommend to choose key ratios and critically analyse them rather analysing 25 ratios in just 1 brief paragraph. In case of any confusion, please ask further question(s). Regards, Hammad Ahmed Qureshi – OBU Registered Mentor

Please help me guys, the area of the RAP called overall research approach, what is expected of me in this area?

Where from F1 to F9 do we study SWOT and PESTEL?

Hi felichiromo 1) Research Approach - Please take a look at the information pack provided. It discusses how you need to understand Primary and Secondary research and its limitations. Also, to discuss the models you use for your report. 2) PESTEL & SWOT - It is mostly touched on in F1 and P3. All said, these are very common models and there is an abundance of information available online (or offline) from reputable sources - university articles, journals, books Tips: Do research and use such diverse sources when writing the RAP instead of overly relying on textbooks.

Sir Hammad, Can you please tell what is difference between Bibliography & List of References? Thanks in advance.

@aroobarazakhan Please find below: References: You will have cited a number of books, journals, newspaper articles etc, using the author’s name and the date of publication. At the end of the piece, you provide a list of all those authors, giving full details of what their work is called, and where it was published. This list is headed References, list all these items, again alphabetically by author and subdivided by year and letter, if necessary, in your References Bibliography: You may also have used material that has been helpful for reading around the subject, but which you do not make specific reference to in your own work. It is important to acknowledge this material. Under the heading Bibliography, list all these items, again alphabetically by author and subdivided by year and letter, if necessary, in your References Regards, Hammad Ahmed Qureshi - OBU Registered Mentor

@aroobarazakhan Kindly find the below mentioned link and read pg 72 of bsc info pack 2015/2016 https://www.accaglobal.com/content/dam/ACCA_Global/Students/bsc/IP2015-16.pdf 2.2) The difference between the reference list and the bibliography Within your piece of written work, you will have cited a number of books, journals, newspaper articles (or whatever), using the author’s name and the date of publication. At the end of the piece, you provide a list of all those authors, giving full details of what their work is called, and where it was published. This list is headed References, and provides all the information about the published works you have mentioned in your text ALPHABETICALLY by the names of the authors (or originators). This list can be subdivided by year and letter if necessary. (More about this later). Also, during the course of your preparatory reading, you may use material that has been helpful for reading around the subject, but which you do not make specific reference to in your own work. It is important to acknowledge this material. Under the heading Bibliography, list all these items, again alphabetically by author, regardless of whether it is a book or journal, and include this list separately after the reference list. The Bibliography indicates to your reader or examiner that you have read more widely that was strictly necessary to produce the piece of written work, and that you therefore have a better grasp of the area or the topic than if you had only used the works cited in your text and your reference list. Everything you cite (i.e. mention) in your piece of written work will be listed once alphabetically by author and subdivided by year and letter, if necessary, in your References. I can make it more easy for you. Suppose you read annual reports of your company and competitor & you keep visiting online business media while preparing your project.. Under the heading of Bibliography 1) ABC, Annual Reports 2012 2) ABC, Annual Reports 2013 3) ABC, Annual Reports 2014 4) XYZ, Annual Reports 2013 5) XYZ, Annual Reports 2014 6) XYZ, Annual Reports 2015 Online Business Newspapers/Media: 1) Business Recorders, 2) Dawn News 3) The News, 4) Tribune Hope the answer of the question. Regards, Ali Farooq OBU Registered Mentor

Regarding Referencing please visit our homepage www.opentuition.com/obu where you will find 'The Open Tuition Ultimate Guide to Referencing your RAP'. This, as the title implies, has all the information and links that you should need to reference your RAP correctly and avoid any possibility of plagiarism. It is presented in 3 parts but ensure that you follow our Golden Rules as they include advice on all the important points that markers of academic work are likely to apply when assessing students' work Note: If any student has further questions on Referencing in the interest of keeping our Forums tidy, please post them on our Forum 'Referencing - Rules, Queries, Harvard etc' which obviously is dedicated to that particular subject (and is currently to be found on page 2 of our topic list). Thanks Trephena - OT OBU Forum Moderator

@hammad ahmed qureshi hi sir, i was looking for a mentor.Could you kindly provide me with your contact details. thanks in advance

You should consult a mentor by logging on to the OBU mentoring website and using the system there to contact a listed mentor in the first instance. https://www.oxfordbrookesmentoring.co.uk/ Mentors are reminded that they must not post their email addresses or contact details on the Open Tuition website as this is against our Rules

Can anyone give me top tips on how to get started?

A Bibliography is indeed not necessary but there is no penalty for producing one. However bad/ poor referencing will nearly always end in a fail. See all 3 parts of our article The Open Tuition Ultimate Guide to Referencing your RAP on our homepage to understand what is required. https://opentuition.com/obu/referencing-the-open-tuition-ultimate-guide-to-referencing-your-rap/

Kindly assist. The word limit is 7500 including words in graphs and tables. i realised that the word count given by MS word at the bottom of the page does not include words in bar graphs and pie charts. Do i have to count manually the words in graphs and add them to those that are already given?

@xolani - words in embedded graphs and charts will probably be ignored as they are ancillary. However if in addition you have many tables and textual information in embedded images then a marker will look at your total word count and assess approximately how much text is in the tables and diagrams and whether this has been embedded to manipulate the word count. If there is an excess of embedded images of this type and they would have contributed significantly to exceeding the total word count then they will normally fail it on (5) Communication and possibly (3) Evaluation, Analysis & Conclusions as your Conclusion will fall outside the 7,500 word count limit (so will not be included and marked) so in theory you have not produced a Conclusion within the RAP requirements. So don't worry about the graphs but if you have embedded table images add them back to the word count and STATE that the word count includes words in embedded tables.

I am looking to complete my last paper but any factors to consider when choosing the topic areas.....

A topic and company that interests you. However also consider availability of information and whether you will need to collect primary data or whether secondary data will be sufficient. Although it may seem odd to say this now I would suggest you read the article on Evaluation and Analysis on our homepage www.opentuition.com/obu. This is because you need to consider how you will go about producing original analysis and this may affect your choice.

How did people find the Oxford Brookes BSc project generally in comparison to the difficulty of the ACCA exams? I have F9 in Sept then want to commence my RAP but feel a bit lost on where to start with it all. I did produce a project for a credit qualification that i completed a few years ago which provided an analysis of the threats that my company faces and what internal controls are implemented to prevent or reduce those risks and provides summaries on the effectiveness on said controls. My question is whether this project would fulfil the criteria on the Oxford Brookes BSc in applied accounting and whether there is any ethical issue with my adapting this report to use as my RAP rather than starting something from scratch? Thanks.

Trying to compare the exams and the RAP is difficult and people's experiences vary. Many students fail on the Evaluation, Analysis & Conclusions section and/or Referencing but we have articles on both these on our homepage www.opentuition.com/obu The quality of the projects also varies a basic C grade is much easier to achieve than an A. Yes there are ethical issues as all university work should be original. You can refer to your previous work where appropriate but 'duplication' is a disciplinary offence and submitting something that essentially was submitted previously for an award is considered to be academic misconduct and carries penalties (see the Information Pack)

Can one research on a company s/he is working for?

Yes as long as you do the all the work and original analysis yourself. Sometimes students have got their hands on work projects completed by someone else at their company and submitted it as their work. It is usually obvious apparently as the work they submit does not quite match the RAP requirements. In these instances it can then end up as a Misconduct case and this means that not only has the student been failed they are then subject to the GBP 550 penalty resubmission fee for their next submission.

We shall always help . sure thing. though time may be a challenge

@trephena sorry for posting it here but I read somewhere that you take Masters mentees. if so, how can someone contact you directly for advice on that?

I have mentored students for their Masters dissertations (for MBAs). I am contactable at [email protected] in the first instance. Please let me have the details of the course you are doing (or thinking of doing) and any proposal / suggestions for the dissertation if you have got around to formulating this.

Hello trephena, I have an issue in which I need your help. In 2017 annual report, the 2016 and 2015 figures are different from those stated in 2016 and 2015 annual reports. The problem that I am facing is that which figures shall I use to carry out my analysis.

And lastly I want to make conclusion the reference which u provide on your research paper should be understandable and searchable otherwise they could fail you in presentation Note: I know I shouldn't talk this thing right now but my comment could be useful for those people who are new.

Hi guys I am resubmitting my old rap I want to ask as I already know the basics of rap I have not contacted my mentor since the first week of July because my mentor has said to me that I should submit him my final project when it is completed now I want to ask some questions 1 is single email containing my final project for final review enough for evidence (as suggested by my mentor) or should I send him multiple emails containing my project at different stages? 2 my phone was broken and I am unable to restore WhatsApp chat and messages with my mentor I want to ask are these WhatsApp chat messages and call history with my mentor important or not I mean to say should I contact my mentor again and ask the questions again I already know(for evidence purpose only) or not Please reply me i would be very thankful