ACC3002 Accounting and Personal Finance

Learning outcomes and assessment criteria specific to this assignment:

Upon successful completion of this module, students should be able to:

• Create and interpret basic financial statements.
• Identify the structure of different businesses, who key stakeholders are, and their interests in financial and management accounting.
• Use forecasting techniques to make appropriate financial decisions.

Number of attempts

At time of publication under the university regulations students have a first attempt and a re-sit opportunity to pass this module. Please refer to the above regulations for full details about assessment rules or the student summary guide.

Penalties for late submission

At time of publication the rules regarding late submission of work are:

• Assessments submitted up to 1 hour after the published deadline will receive no penalty.
• Assessments submitted between one and 24 hours after the published deadline will be reduced by 5% of the actual mark.
• Assessments submitted between 24 hours and five working days after the published deadline will be reduced by 10% of the actual mark.

BIRMINGHAM CITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Assessment Brief (MAIN)

ACC3002 Accounting and Personal Finance

• Work submitted more than five working days after the published deadline will not be marked and the student will be deemed to have failed an attempt at the assessment.

If a student has a support statement specifying additional time to complete coursework, the penalties will only apply from the alternative deadline provided by the statement.

Importance of Taking Assessments

It is really important that you complete your assessment as if you don’t this counts as a failed attempt, unless you’ve made a successful EC claim about Exceptional Circumstances you’re experiencing.

If you fail any of your modules you will have to re-take it and there are limits on the number of times that you can re-take, you may even have to re-study a module you have previously failed. Having to re-sit or re-study modules means that your workload will be increased and you will be putting yourself under more pressure. You may even be liable to incur more fees if you are required to restudy a module.

The university does appreciate that there are times when you may be unable to take an assessment due to circumstances outside your control such as illness. If this is the case you need to make a formal claim for an extension or deferral, as without this you are expected to submit within the standard guidelines. No lecturer or course director can grant any form of extension to the published deadlines, this is done by a separate team within the university to ensure consistency and fairness for all. If you find yourself needing to make a claim please visit iCity for full guidance on how to do it and for what constitutes an exceptional circumstance, you can also contact the Ask Desk for help.

BIRMINGHAM CITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Assessment Brief (MAIN)

ACC3002 Accounting and Personal Finance

1. Assessment overview

1.1. Method of assessment

The assessment consists of individual activities/ tasks that are worth 80% of the overall final mark.

To pass this module, you must achieve a final overall mark of at least 40%. If your mark is less than 40%, you will be required to retake the assessment.

1.2. Deadlines & submission

The deadline for submissions is: 09th May 2022, 12pm (Midday)

Assignments must be submitted online via the link provided in the ASSESSMENT area of the module’s Moodle site. Please follow the University policy regarding online submission and submitting assignments on time (see Page 1 and 2).

1.3. Word count

For part (a) of task 1 of your assignment entailing a portfolio of items, there is no specific maximum word count for this section, and as for part (b), it has a limited word count of 200 words.

For task 2 of your assignment involving the Reflective report, the expected word count is a maximum of 1000 words.

1.4. Assignment format

Your coursework assignment should be submitted as a single Word document, which should be named using the following file naming convention:

StudentName-StudentID-ACC3002-Submission

Example: (e.g. HamzaBukenya-12345678-ACC3002-Submission)

Please ensure that you retain a copy of the original assignment for your own records.

1.5. Tutor support

Support is available throughout this module; simply contact your tutor if you need help.

Specific feedback on individual assessments will only be available via scheduled, face-to-face meetings (online or in person), not via email. To make the most of these sessions, it is expected that you will have already begun work on your assessment and have a list of questions for your tutor prepared in advance.

1.6. Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct

Any work you submit must be your own original work. Any work that is plagiarised – this means submitting any item of assessment which contains work produced by someone else in a way that makes it look as though it is your own work – will be subject to an academic misconduct review. This includes ‘self-plagiarism’ – you are not allowed to re-use work or significant sections from work, which you have already submitted for an assessment.

BIRMINGHAM CITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Assessment Brief (MAIN)

ACC3002 Accounting and Personal Finance

You are also not allowed to collude with others to produce work unless your assessment brief specifically outlines group work. Collusion means working with at least one other person to produce a piece of work that you then pass off as your own. You can discuss ideas for the work with other students, but you must not work with them to produce a piece of work together, you must not copy or share another student’s work, and you must not lend your work (including drafts) to another student to allow them to copy your work. If your piece of work is very similar to that of another student, you are likely to be accused of collusion. If you are found to have made your work available for another student to copy all or part of it, you may be referred for disciplinary action even after you have completed your award and are no longer a student of the University. You must not also falsify information, resources or data in any way.

These, and any other types of academic misconduct which are likely to give you an unfair advantage in an assessment, will be referred for investigation. Academic misconduct threatens the standards of awards we make, so we take this matter extremely seriously indeed and any student found guilty of this will have penalties applied and in the most serious of cases students with be withdrawn from the course.

BIRMINGHAM CITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Assessment Brief (MAIN)

ACC3002 Accounting and Personal Finance

2. Assessment Brief

Required tasks:

1) Graduate + Activities (20 Marks)

You are required to produce an electronic portfolio consisting of the following components:

You are required to attend at least one Graduate + activity/ workshop during Teaching week 7 (07/03/2022) and the Trading Amplify workshop

In your portfolio, it is expected that you will present:

1. a) Evidence of engagement with at least one chosen Graduate+ workshop and the mandatory Amplify Trading workshop
2. b) A summary of one of the workshops attended above and lessons that you have learnt. (max. 200 words)

2) Reflective Report (60 Marks)

You are required to prepare a written reflective report, about the following topic:

“How has this module, helped to enhance your understanding of personal finance and the financial decisions, you might undertake in the future?”

Within your reflective report, you would also need to make reference to the weekly cash budget seminar task, that you were requested to prepare and analyse, based on your own personal finances; and to reflect on how this activity, would shape your future financial decision-making process.

Additionally, within your reflective report, you can link your reflection to attended Graduate+ activities, in part 1 of this Assignment.

(max. 1000 words)

Students are encouraged to structure your written reflective report, applying an appropriate reflective model, such as the: Terry Borton (1970) / Driscoll (2007) Framework model of reflection.

BIRMINGHAM CITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Assessment Brief (MAIN)

ACC3002 Accounting and Personal Finance

3. Guidance

3.1. Writing style

Task 2 of the assessment requires you to adopt a reflective approach to the required task, exploring your personal thoughts, feelings and experiences. Therefore, you should use first person narrative as opposed to the third person narrative more commonly required by academic assessments.

Although the assessment contains a range of tasks, it should be presented as a single piece of work with a sense of narrative flow. As such, it is expected that your document will include:

• Module Name and Code
• Student Name and ID
• A table of contents, showing each section with their respective page number
• A brief introduction, outlining the purpose and structure of the document
• A clear structure that aligns with the tasks, using numbered headers and sub-headers to break your work into sections and which starts each new section on a new page
• Closing comments or conclusion

3.2. Formatting and presentation

Formatting and presentation are an important part of demonstrating transferrable, commercial skills. As such, you should ensure that your assignment:

• Uses formal English, e.g., no slang, inappropriate language, etc.
• Is free from formatting errors, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
• Is structured clearly so that the reader can easily follow the flow of information
• Uses relevant tools such as section headers, section numbering, lists, bullets, etc. where appropriate to make it reader-friendly and support narrative structure
• References all materials appropriately