This report is the culmination of weeks of writing and research. This project began with the proposal to do research. You then submitted an annotated
bibliography, which showed that you were making progress by finding high-quality sources to base your recommendations upon. In a business setting, for a
long research project, you will likely be required to write one or more progress reports to keep your managers apprised of where you are in the research
process, though we did an abbreviated version for this class. At a minimum, you will send your manager a detailed email that contains the same information
that the progress report does. The recommendation report is the final and most important document you create during the research project.
As you are writing the recommendation report, keep your audience and the purpose for which you are writing firmly in mind. For this assignment, you are
asked to write a recommendation report on the topic you selected to write the proposal upon.
Instructions Part 1: Drafting and Editing
Start writing the recommendation report as soon as you possibly can. The document is complicated enough that you will want to give yourself ample time to
write each section and revise it.
Sample Recommendation Report.pdf
Sample Recommendation Report2.pdf
Step 1: Carefully read Chapter 13 to reach an understanding of what you need to write for this report.
NOTE: As you consider and compare your solutions, please discuss the following questions:
Is the solution cost-efficient? What are the costs? Do the costs create enough benefit to students that the expense is warranted?
Is the solution safe? Are there any risks of harm to students, staff, or faculty from applying the solution?
Is the action easy to implement? How difficult will it be to install necessary platforms (e.g., computer systems and supporting equipment)? How difficult will
it be to train faculty and students to use the equipment or implement the action?
Is the proposed action likely to help students learn better and be better prepared to stay employed in the rapidly changing, technologically driven work world?
Step 2: Start drafting the body of the report. Do NOT attempt to write the cover memo, the abstract, the executive summary, or the introduction until you have
completed the research methods, results of research, conclusions, and recommendations sections. One cannot summarize what is not yet written.
Step 3: As you write, you may find that you need to do additional research to fill in gaps in your argument. Needing to do additional research is a common
occurrence. You may add to the sources that you submitted for the Annotated Bibliography assignment. You do NOT need to submit new annotations for
these additional sources.
Step 4: Once you have completed the body of the report (research methods, results of research, conclusions, and recommendations), edit the body. You may
find that you need to make significant changes, or even rewrite entire sections. Needing to make changes happens to experienced writers as well as learning
writing, so you should expect that the first draft will be drastically changed during your first revision phase.
Step 5: Once you have a better second draft, review it again. If you feel that the basics of what you want to say are there, then proceed to write the front and
back matter of the report.
Note
The front matter is the memo to your manager introducing what the report is about, the abstract, the cover page, the table of contents, the executive
summary, and the introduction (which also summarizes the entire report). In short, you will find yourself writing a lot of summaries in the front matter. The
reason you do this is that these sections are for different audiences, and each of these audiences needs a summary of your report. For example, the memo
that you send to your manager (with the report attached) helpfully summarizes that the report is about for your manager so that person does not have to
read the report to see what you did for the project – the memo is a courtesy to your manager. The abstract will be placed on your organization’s Web site; the
audience will be everyone in your organization and possibly even the general public. The executive summary is for the people who will decide whether to
carry out what you propose in the recommendation report. The executive summary is a page that helps decision-makers remember what they read in the full
report as they are discussing whether to implement your recommendations. Finally, the introduction summarizes the report so that busy readers can decide
what parts of the report they want to read in-depth. The introduction allows busy readers to understand what the report is about without having to read the
entire report in full.
Step 6: Once you have completed and edited the front and back matter of the report, submit your draft here for peer editing.
Note
The recommendation report should be in the format found Chapter 13 and have:
One graphic that conveys information about the results of your research to your audience; you may choose the type of graphic to include. You must create
this graphic; cutting and pasting graphics from the Internet is a type of plagiarism in a business document and considered dishonest under the grading rubric
for our class.
Citations in the APA format
Instructions Part 2: Editing, Revising, and Submitting the Final Draft
Step 1: Submit the smooth draft of your report by the due deadline. You can only upload Word, PDF, and RTF format files.
Step 2: Edit one (1) of your peers’ documents (you may choose whose report you edit) using the Grading Rubric provided below.
Note
You are only asked to edit for content, using the grading rubric and the Writers Checklist.
You are not required to edit for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If the draft you are assigned to review contains a lot of these errors, or you find that you