Portfolio task about Integrating Business Perspectives for solving problems

In Autumn Semester 2019 the problem you and your teammates are working on is as follows: This semester the UTS Business School has over 10,000 students across its different degree programs. Like any group of students they have a range of motivations and expected outcomes from their study. They also, however, are experiencing a number of of challenges. The literature tells us that students at university frequently face difficulties in a range of areas. These include: making friends, understanding the academic expectations of their degree, financing their degree and finding appropriate accommodation etc. While there are many businesses out there already trying to assist students with these and other problems, the fact remains that for many students studying at university remains a daunting experience. Your challenge is to work in teams to critically assess the challenges faced by students in the UTS Business School. We want you to design a business around a product (or service) that will meet a specific need(s) of a group of students. Your product idea needs to be desirable, feasible and viable. The idea you are working on in your tutorial teams will eventually be presented in a final group presentation and report at the end of semester. Before then, however, you have two individual portfolio tasks. Timely completion of these tasks is intended to allow you to be an active contributor to the team’s tutorial deliberations and thus assist with the completion of the wider project. Task 1 – Analysis of the Student Problem Space (20%) The first question you and your group will have to consider in the tutorial is what specific problem affecting Business School students you wish to focus on. Below we have listed five broad problem/topic areas you can use to start to think about what you will research. 1. Uni students and accommodation 2. Uni students and finances 3. Uni students and study habits 4. Uni students and making friends 5. Uni students and eating 6. Uni students and the transition to university life Your first task is to research one of these broad problem areas (or another related problem that interests you) for uni students. The assessment is split into two sections. 1) Start by seeking to understand these problem areas through the experinece of your fellow group members. Write 750 words on the how and why one of these problems has (or has not) influenced three of your fellow group members. Use the following quesitons to guide your report: a) What is the problem they have experienced? b) Compare and contrast the way your group members have (or have not) experienced it. c) Explain what you believe caused these different experiences. 2) You should then investigate how this problem has been reported on by experts in the academic literature and/or government policy documents. Write a 750 word report on your findings. Use the following quesitons to guide your report: a) What is the precise problem that students are experiencing? b) How big is the problem? c) What are the main causes of the problem? For this part of the report, we want you to go beyond the experiences of your group members by using secondary research to inform your understanding of the problem. Make use of the library, the library’s databases (e.g. Factiva), Google Scholar and other reputable information sources. Submit the completed report (Sections 1 & 2; 1500 words in total) in one document. A minimum of 5 academic references must be included for the second component.