Management: COMM 2086 UO Communication and Organisational Practices

This guide will assist you with finding relevant theories within academic sources for your reflective communication journal and report.

Remember to always read the assessment details in your course website and course outline to understand exactly of what you need to do.

Reflective writing is not just describing an experience, it is about exploring your reactions, thoughts and questions to the experience. The below resources will help you understand more about reflective writing:

Before you start searching for academic sources it is a good idea to plan your approach. 

For example, if for your reflective journal you want to explore the causes of miscommunication within the workplace start by:

• Thinking about what your key concepts are.
• Then brainstorm other synonyms or alternative concepts you could use in your searches.
  
  Consider word plurals, different word endings, common acronyms or different word spellings. This is important as not everyone refers to ideas in the same way. 

 A mind map or table can be a good strategy for organising ideas:

As you start searching you can add to the table or mind map.

Do the same for your reflective report. Remember for this assessment you will need to choose:

• An organisation or group which you belong to. If you do not have work experience consider the below options:

• A communication exchange

For more help read or watch:

As well as referring to your readings for topics for both assessments you will also need to find academic sources to support your analysis. Academic sources are sometimes referred to as scholarly or peer reviewed sources. 

We recommend the following places for searching:

Below is an example search in the library catalogue 

Tip: Use the Tweak my results on the left hand side to limit your search results to peer-reviewed journals, full text online and to limit by publication date

Business Source Complete is a key business database, it is a highly recommended database that you will need to use throughout your studies

How to search Business Source Complete:

1. Type each of your different concepts into a search field. The connector AND will find concepts in your search results.
    
2. You can broaden your search by adding synonyms or alternative concepts using the connector OR.

Tip:  Limit your search results by peer reviewed and publication date.

More help:

Once you have all your information it is time to put everything together, the below resources from Study Help will help you: