McGraw-Hill Education publishers
For this section, you’ll begin the process of developing a company profile, which represents Part 1 of the project you’ll submit for final exam credit. (There are three parts to the final project, which you’ll submit all together when you finish Part 3.) The complete final project is worth 30% of your grade and will demonstrate your ability to apply all the research and writing skills you learned in the course.
For Part 1 of the project, you’ll research a company of your choice. You may not, however, use Emerald Publications or any of its companies, since we’ll be using it as our example. You’ll follow the same six-step research process you used for the last project, but the final report will be a brief company profile on the company you choose.
For this project, you’ll
• Research a company you might like to work for
• Use the Internet and the Subject Guides in the school’s online library
• Evaluate the company based on your personal needs
• Write a one-paragraph company profile
• Prepare a Works Cited page
The research skills involved in this project include
• Using the Internet
• Using the school’s library
• Paraphrasing and summarizing information from sources
• Synthesizing information from sources
• Organizing your information into a logical paragraph
• Documenting your sources in MLA format
The research process is outlined below, with specific instructions on how to fulfill this assignment. As you did with the feasibility report, read through the process and the example before attempting to complete your own research.
Step 1: Define Your Research Purpose
Your purpose in doing this project is to choose a company that you might like to work for and research it for a company profile. See the example for how you might phrase your statement of purpose.
Example Step 1: Define Your Research Purpose
The purpose of this research is to find information about Emerald Publications as a company for which I might like to work.
Step 2: Take a Mental Inventory
When you research a company for potential employment, you already have some knowledge in your head. Even if you choose to research a company about which you know almost nothing, you do have an idea of what your job interests are and what your education, training, and experience qualify you to do. You will have chosen a company that hires people in your field and you probably know where it’s located. That’s a start.
First, take a few minutes to freewrite about the company to define what you already know. If you know the purpose of the company, its size, its location, or any other information, jot it down in an informal way. Remember that writing your thoughts down will draw out the knowledge that’s in your head and help focus your thinking. It will also clear your brain so that you can more easily go ahead with the rest of the assignment.
Step 3: Formulate Research Questions
Writing down what you already know about your subject leads directly into thinking about what you want to find out. Before you go to any source, you’ll have questions in mind that you want the answers to. Writing down those questions is part of a strong research process. Your questions should focus on
• General details about the company, such as its full name, what it does, locations, size, etc.
• Financial strength and performance compared to industry trends
• Organizational makeup
• Why it interests you
• How you would fit with its mission and environment
Brainstorm other ideas that relate to your needs and expectations for employment.
Step 4: Find Sources
Having specific research questions from Step 3 in mind will help you to determine what sources to use for the answers to those questions. For this project, you’ll start with two sources: research from the school’s online library and from the company’s own Web site. When you choose the company you’re going to research, make sure it has its own Web site. If it doesn’t have a Web site, choose another company
to research.
Step 4: Find Sources
First Source: Emerald Publications Web Site
The page has links connecting me to different template serv- ices. Accessing any of those links provides me with detailed ways Emerald can personalize that service for its customers. I wonder if I would be editing those documents. It doesn’t seem to require much creativity, so the work might get boring.
The link for About Us provides a brief history and mission statement for Emerald, as well as contact links and job open- ings. The job I’m considering is listed there—that’s reassuring. There’s no link for Fiserv, though Emerald is labeled on its Home page as “Another Fiserv Connection,” and the host name on the e-mail addresses at Contact us is emerald.fiserv.
Research Tip
Don’t forget to mark information according to which source you got it from. It’s easy to start answering your research ques- tions and forget to keep track of where the information comes from. Keep careful notes.
Step 5: Answer Research Questions
Once you access the sources, take notes as needed to answer your research questions. Summarize only the information that’s relevant to your research purpose, and include personal comments with the information you’re noting. Make sure you get information that’s both relevant and sufficient and choose your wording carefully to avoid plagiarism. Don’t use any direct quotes for this part of the project, however.
Step 5: Answer Research Questions
Here are the answers I found to my research questions.
How large and financially stable is Emerald Publications?
Where is the company located?
Step 6: Present Your Research
For this part of your final project, you’ll submit your Step 4 work (Find Sources) and Step 6 work (Company Profile).
……………..Answer Preview…………..
Name
Professor
Course
Date
1. Research purpose
The main purpose of this research is to find information about McGraw-Hill Education publishers as a company for which I might like to work. This company is one of the greatest educational publishers and provides customized educational software’s, content and services through postgraduate education. Being a digital learning company, it also bears the capability…………..
MLA
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