Assignment Overview

You are required to complete weekly questions & activities and summarize them to provide a consolidated portfolio. Your portfolio will provide an account of your learning based on your practice and your critical reflection.

Purpose

The primary purpose of this assessment item is to help the students:

• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of knowledge and skills that includes recent, global developments within the area of program and portfolio management and their applications in professional practice.
• Develop the capability to investigate, research, analyze, and synthesize complex information, problems, concepts, and theories and to apply established theories to program and portfolio management practice.

Task

Each week one topic related to the weekly lecture would be given.

The weekly assignments are in two parts: (1) topic discussion on Moodle forum and (2) answer to topic questions.

• You are expected to contribute to the topic discussion posted on Moodle forum weekly by Sunday before 11:59 pm AEST.
• You can either start a new thread or comment on an existing one.
• A response may extend, support, or challenge the post of another student, and your position should be supported with evidence.
• Each student must then submit their final response to the weekly topic question via the Moodle by Tuesday before 11:59 pm (AEST) of the following week. These responses accumulate to form the student’s portfolio. Each submission should comprehensively discuss the topic and arguments should be supported with evidence. Academic writing including appropriate referencing is required.
• Weekly submission would start from week 2 until week 11 (10 weeks in total). 
• At the end of this term, you will consolidate your weekly response into a single document which becomes your consolidated portfolio for submission. The assessment marking would be given upon this consolidated portfolio.

Consolidated Portfolio

The consolidated portfolio MUST be submitted as a single document (one file). Evidence of the weekly forum participation should form an appendix to the consolidated portfolio.

Referencing

• Ensuring you have accurate references is important and will allow the marker to easily identify where your portfolio maps to the unit or other peer-reviewed material.
• Referencing should be made according to CQU’s APA referencing guide. To locate the guide then Google “CQU APA referencing” and download the PDF file for the current year.
• It is because of your references and academic proficiency with critical analysis that you will be able to gain maximum marks.

Your assignment will be assessed on the extent and quality to which it meets each of the following criteria.

1. Forum discussion participation with posts which are relevant to the discussion topic and demonstrate an understanding of the topic, comments are appropriate, thoughtful, reflective, and respectful of other’s postings (15%)
2. Quality and appropriateness of the response to questions that demonstrate arguments supported by evidence (70%).
3. Clarity of expression, grammar, and spelling (5%)
4. Strict conformity to CQUniversity Australia APA Referencing Guide (author-date) (5%)
5. Appropriate presentation and formatting (5%)

Task Description

Propose a portfolio management framework that would realize a company’s strategic objective

Purpose

The primary purpose of this assessment item is to help you to be able to apply systems thinking and the tools and techniques related systems thinking in coming up with a comprehensive solution to a complex problem. The secondary purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to enhance your analysis, critical thinking, and written communication skills; particularly in the areas of argument development and academic writing. Finally, this assessment aims to provide you the ability to apply project management information systems in prioritizing portfolio components, and managing group projects.

Task

• This is a group assessment (3 to 4 students).
• Select a specific strategic objective related to student pillar in CQUniversity's 2019-2023 Strategic Plan, Our Future Is You. The objectives are given in page 6, 7 of the CQUniversity's 2019-2023 Strategic Plan document which can be accessed via the following link: https://www.cqu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/97028/CQUniversity_Strategic_Plan_2019-2023.pdf
• Using systems thinking tools and techniques that might aid project managers to design a portfolio and its components (i.e. related projects and programs) that will potentially realize a strategic objective.
• Propose a Portfolio Management Framework to manage the portfolio implementation
• The report of the portfolio management framework must have all components as stated in the assignment guide provided on Moodle.
• The team would need to demonstrate the application of project management information systems (e.g. Microsoft portfolio management, Asana, Jira, Monday.com, etc) in managing this project.

1. A well-developed content with all the components of the portfolio management framework as required (50%)
2. A demonstration of thorough knowledge and application of relevant program and portfolio management principles, concepts, system thinking methods and theories in designing the solution (15%)
3. Evidence of using project management information systems in managing the project (10%)
4. Evidence of group work effort and individual contribution of each member (5%)
5. Appropriate and well structured, concise and clear expression arguments in response to the assessment task (5%)
6. A clear flow of thought throughout the paper with a clear purpose described in the introduction. (5%)
7. A critical review and integration of relevant academic and professional literature which strictly conform to CQUniversity Australia APA Referencing Guide (5%)
8. Clarity of expression, grammar, and spelling, appropriate presentation format (5%)

• You will be required to complete a series of multiple choice quiz questions related to the material and topics covered in the first 5 weeks of this unit.
• The quiz will be available from Monday 09:00 AM to Friday 11:59 PM in Week 6 on the Moodle website.

• There will be multiple-choice questions in the quiz which will be randomly selected from a pool of questions.
  
• You may attempt the quiz 2 times and your average score will apply.

This is an open book test.

• The test will be of 2 hours duration (120 minutes + 15 minutes perusal time).
• You will read the questions, write your answers, check, and finally submit your answers back into Moodle within 135 minutes.
• The test consists of 5 questions. Questions will be RANDOMLY pulled out from the question bank. Hence, students will not receive the same set of questions.
• You should make sure you complete your test answers within the given time-frame.

• The test schedule is fixed and applicable to all students on all campuses.

  The test will close and be submitted automatically at the end of the time

  There is only ONE submission attempt during the allocated exam time.

The test consists of five questions, each being worth 5 of the 25 marks available.