Reference no: EM132725238

Assessment Task 1: Written Questions

Task summary
This is an open book test, to be completed in the classroom.
A time limit of 2 hours to answer the questions is provided.
You need to answer all of the written questions correctly.
Your answers must be word processed and sent to the assessor as an email attachment.

Required
• Access to textbooks and other learning materials
• Computer with Microsoft Office and internet access

Assessment Task 1 Instructions

Provide answers to all of the questions below:

1. Compare and contrast at least one current and one past theories and thinking about innovation

2. Explain the practical application of theories and thinking on innovation and creativity to the workplace, giving examples to illustrate your answer.

3. Discuss how leadership styles can impact on innovation in organisations. Include at least three examples of leadership styles and their impact on innovation.

4. Discuss how the organisational structure may impact innovation at work.

5. Discuss how the industry context within which a company operates may impact innovation at work.

6. Analyse and discuss three internal conditions or factors that can impact on organisational innovation.

7. Analyse and discuss three external conditions or factors that can impact on organisational innovation.

8. Explain two strategies that can be used to identify, assess and manage risks associated with innovation.

9. Outline three examples of innovation drivers in an organisation.

10. Outline three examples of innovation enablers in an organisation.

11. Describe three mechanisms that can support innovative practices. The mechanisms you described can be relevant to the organisation as a whole or relevant to specific procedures.

12. Discuss three typical challenges and barriers to innovation within an organisation and ways of overcoming these challenges and barriers.

Assessment Task 2: Innovation promotion project

Task summary
You are required to write an innovation review for a case study organisation. You will also be required to make changes to one of their policy and procedures and suggest some innovative products and services that the case study organisation could adopt. You will then conduct a brainstorming session with colleagues to establish innovative approaches to improve the case study organisation's staff's work/life balance.

Assessment Task 2 Instructions

Carefully read the following:

King Edward VII College has been operating since 2010. The College is based in Melbourne CBD and has an additional campus in Sydney. The College offers a range of courses in management, marketing, human resources and international business. It currently has 195 students enrolled across all of its courses and both campuses. Courses are offered at all levels, from Certificate II to Graduate Diploma.

King Edward VII College is very popular due to its competitive pricing structure, innovative teaching methods and state of the art facilities.

The College currently employs 24 staff members that include the CEO, a Sales and Marketing Manager and Sales and Marketing Assistant, Promotions Officer, Human Resources Manager, Operations Manager, Administration Manager, Office Assistant, Receptionist, Academic Manager, Student Services Officer and approximately 14 trainers and assessors.

You are the Operations Manager at the College and, following a recent short course on workplace innovation, you spoke to the Management Team about encouraging innovation in the College. They have given their full support to your efforts.

The CEO has asked you to write a review of innovation that can be used to enhance the College's and its students' performance. Despite the College's healthy enrolment levels, management is aware that they must be prepared to adapt to new trends and ideas. Supporting and encouraging innovation is accepted as being integral to this.

1. Develop an innovation review.
To ensure that you have up-to-date information in your review, research and analyse the following in the internet in order to:
• Describe specific workplace conditions in places such as the case study College and your own RTO that encourage innovation. Describe their impact on individual and collective innovative thinking and creativity.
• Describe at least three innovation drivers and enablers that could be used in an RTO such as yours and/or the case study College
• Describe at least three strategies that would contribute to making innovation an integral and sustainable part of an organisation's activities.
• Explain how risks associated with introducing innovation into an organisation can be identified and managed.
• Describe at least four techniques and tools that can be used to generate new ideas and thinking and two that foster both personal and team innovation.
• Describe the current trends in the environment in which the King Edward VII College operates (RTOs in Melbourne, international students, etc.). Determine which of these could be used to shape the organisation's future practice. Each recommendation should include financial and/or statistical justification.
• Processes that could be established in the case study College that would ensure that all staff are aware of innovative thinking and practices that are proposed or undertaken by colleagues.

Use the Innovation Review Template to guide your work.

2. Send an email to the CEO (your assessor).
The text of the email should be in grammatically correct English, written in an appropriate (polite, business-like) style.
It should introduce and summarise the contents of the attachment and seek their feedback and approval to move forward with the project.

Attach your Innovation Review to the email.

3. Revise policies and procedures to support innovation.
Review the King Edward VII College's Meeting Policy and Procedures.

Do some research in the internet into how meetings can be conducted to better support innovative ideas.

Make additions or changes to the Meeting Policy and Procedures that will encourage innovation during College meetings.

Save this document as Revised Meeting Policy and Procedures.

4. Research current trends in innovative learning and training practices.
Use the internet to find at least three innovative practices being used at educational institutions such as King Edward VII College.

5. Send an email to the CEO (your assessor).
According to the company's Document Policy and Procedures, any changes to the company's Policies and Procedures must be authorised by the CEO before they can take effect. This email should clearly suggest how the changes that have been made to the document will encourage innovation at the company.

The text of the email should be in grammatically correct English, written in an appropriate (polite, business-like) style.

It should introduce and summarise the contents of the attachment and summarise the three innovative learning and training practices that could be adopted by King Edward VII College to attract students.

Attach your Revised Meeting Policy and Procedures to the email.

6. Prepare for a meeting with staff
The CEO was pleased with your work on the Meeting Policy and Procedures, and you have been directed to open up a discussion with staff about innovative ways to improve their work life balance.

Research how companies such as King Edward VII College can improve the conditions that staff work under, encourage more innovation among students and staff and improve their work/life balance.

Look also at how to conduct a brainstorming session. Take notes on how you can conduct the meeting so that participants are encouraged to be innovative.

You will have a whiteboard and markers to support you during the meeting, so you may want to practice using these prior to the meeting.

During the meeting, you will be required to display a personal leadership style that models positive innovative thinking and practice. Consider how that should manifest during the meeting.

7. Conduct a brainstorming session to encourage work practices innovation.
The meeting will last for a maximum of 15 minutes.
The objective of the meeting is for you, as the company's Operations Manager, to promote and reinforce the value of innovation in King Edward VII College in a way that supports its vision and objectives

Another objective is to collect a number of ideas how working conditions at King Edward VII College could be changed to reflect and encourage innovative practice and improve staff work/life balance.

You are also to conduct the meeting in a manner that models positive innovative thinking and practice

Ensure that the meeting provides opportunities for yourself to initiate the communication and team development approaches that support innovation as set out in your Innovation Review.

Use the whiteboard to record the contributions from all of the meeting's participants.
When the meeting has concluded, take a photo of what is on the whiteboard to use in the next activity.

During the meeting, you are required to demonstrate effective communication skills including:
• Speaking clearly and concisely
• Using non-verbal communication to assist with understanding
• Asking questions to identify required information
• Responding to questions as required
• Using active listening techniques to confirm understanding

At the conclusion of the meeting, you are to hold a short discussion with the other meeting participants.
You should ask them about the way that you led the meeting, and whether that style that you used displayed positive modelling and was supportive of innovation.

8. Write an innovation leadership report.
Following the brainstorming session, you are required to write a short (between 1 and 2 pages) report on the options that the company has for improving the staff's work practices.

Prior to writing the report, do some research in the internet into the suggestions that you received during the meeting. See how other companies have integrated these ideas into their work culture and how it has benefitted the company.

Your report should include:
• A summary of how the meeting went in terms of audience participation and achievement of objectives
• The innovative suggestions that you received during the meeting, as well as what you found during your research.
• A summary of any risks involved with carrying out your suggestions. You should document at least two risks and how their effects could be mitigated.
• A short evaluation of your leadership style and practice during the meeting in relation to modelling and supporting innovation

Use the Innovation Leadership Report Template to guide your work.

9. Send an email to the CEO (your assessor).
The text of the email should be in grammatically correct English, written in an appropriate (polite, business-like) style.
It should introduce and summarise the contents of the attachment and seek their feedback and authorisation.

Assessment Task 3: Physical environment project

Task summary
You are required to participate in a meeting with their colleagues that will explore and then decide on changes to the College's physical environment that will support innovation. You will then carry out the changes and then evaluate their effectiveness.

Complete the following activities:

1. Prepare for a meeting with your colleagues.
In the next activity, you will meet with your colleagues, looking at ways that you can alter the learning environment in your RTO to better support innovation.

Prepare for this by taking a good look at your learning environment. Think about the aspects of the RTO that encourage innovation and those that don't.

The meeting will be held in an innovative style: there will be no chairperson, and no-one will lead the meeting. All decisions will be reached by consensus decision-making, not a "yes or no" vote. Do some research on consensus decision-making so you can participate fully in the meeting.

Your Assessor will observe all participants during the meeting.

2. Conduct a brainstorming and idea evaluation session.
The meeting will last for a maximum of 30 minutes.

There will be no chairperson for this meeting Your group of students is required to meet and reach the meeting's objectives together without any one person leading the meeting.
It is very important that each member of your group is given the chance to give their input on every idea that is proposed at the meeting, and that each idea or suggestion is acknowledged by all students.

There are two main objectives for the meeting. The first part of the meeting involves generating innovative ideas for changes to your RTO's physical environment to better support innovation
In a second step, the ideas will be evaluated among the group, and the most effective idea(s) will be selected and carried out. Each member of the group should be allocated at least one activity to carry out.

Begin by letting each person give their evaluation of the impact of the RTO's current physical environment in relation to innovation. Then, as a group, discuss the aspects of the present RTO environment that encourage innovation and those that don't.

The next part of the meeting requires your group to conduct a brainstorm to generate ideas that would encourage creative mindsets, collaborative working and the development of positive workplace relationships.
These may involve your working station, the rooms of your RTO, or the ways that you work together with your colleagues.

Use the whiteboard to record all the ideas that are generated during the brainstorming session.

After 10 minutes of brainstorming, stop the process and look at all of the suggestions that have been generated.

Your group should then have a discussion that evaluates each idea. Participants should evaluate each idea in terms of:
• Practicality
• Cost-effectiveness
• Potential for supporting innovation
• Physical resources and equipment required
• Risks involved

Keep in mind that, in the next activity, you will have to actually make the change(s) to your work environment decided on during the meeting. And following that, your intervention(s) are then going to be evaluated by yourself and your colleagues.

There is, therefore, a certain amount of risk involved with carrying out the tasks that the group decides on. There is a risk, for example, that your intervention will be evaluated negatively by other students or staff who work at the RTO, which may generate social stigma. There is also a risk that your intervention could be seen as offensive by others who may be from a different cultural background to you. You should therefore consider the potential risks involved in carrying out the change(s) to your work environment before you agree to undertake them.

Highlight any potential risks when an idea is being discussed.

Ensure that you acknowledge suggestions, improvements and innovations from all colleagues

During the meeting, you are also required to demonstrate effective communication skills including:
• Speaking clearly and concisely
• Using non-verbal communication to assist with understanding
• Asking questions to identify required information
• Responding to questions as required
• Using active listening techniques to confirm understanding

3. Write a Workplace Innovation Report.
In this report you will evaluate the changes that you and your colleagues intend to make to the RTO environment.

Your report will need to:
• Describe and evaluate your RTO's facilities and how their appearance and function encourage or restrict individual and collective innovative thinking and creativity.
• Describe the actions that were decided on to promote innovation to students and staff at your RTO
• Identify and assess the resources that will be needed for the innovation actions to occur. These should be readily available in the RTO.
• Analyse potential barriers and risks to the innovation actions and devise strategies to respond to these.
• Determine the most appropriate means to promote the transfer of knowledge about innovation to students and staff at your RTO.
• Include an action plan that will document the actions to be carried out

Use the Workplace Innovation Report Template to guide your work. 

4. Apply strategies to encourage innovation in the workplace.
Make the changes to your workspace that were decided on at the meeting you conducted in the previous activity.

5. Write an innovation evaluation report.
In this report you will evaluate the changes that you and your colleagues have made to the environment.
Your report should:
• Describe the feedback that you have received about the actions and your opinion of them.
• Suggest how the actions could be improved on in the future.
• Reflect on your own performance during this assessment task and suggest at least two ways that it could be improved
Use the Workplace Innovation Evaluation Report Template to guide your work.

6. Send an email to your assessor.
The text of the email should be in grammatically correct English, written in an appropriate (polite, business-like) style.

Attachment:- Student Resources.zip