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 Final Course Report: Research Tracker & Bibliographic Report 

ACCT424 Advanced Accounting

Final Course Report: Research Tracker & Bibliographic Report

General Information:

Project Objective: Create an annotated bibliographic report to meet an assignment from your supervisor after first
creating and using a research tracker. There are two separate deliverables required for this activity.

Why Are We Doing This?: In addition to assessing your performance in this course, this assignment will be used to assess
the accounting program’s achievement of program outcomes for the Information Literacy (INFO) Core Learning Area (CLA),
as described in the University’s Program Assessment Plan. The INFO CLA is defined as follows: demonstrate an ability to
use libraries and other information resources to effectively locate, select, and evaluate needed information. The
accounting program outcomes are defined as the ability to research accounting information to solve business problems
and improve decision making.

Learning Objective: Demonstrate the ability to use academic and professional databases to research and support
recommendations on emerging accounting issues.

Requirements:

Overview: We learn about a variety of topic in ACCT 424 Advanced Accounting, including the very important topic of
accounting for business mergers and acquisitions (M&As). In addition to the “debit and credits” of M&As there is a host
of activities an accountant would be involved in if they get involved in M&As in practice. One such activity is that of Due
Diligence. By performing this activity, you will not only accomplish required learning objectives, you will also develop an
understanding of what Due Diligence is, a very important topic to have knowledge about in practice.

The Scenario: Place yourself in the role of a new team member at an organization that’s just begun the process of
negotiating being acquired by another company. Your team lead has come to you and your co-workers and told you that
in a month’s time the other company will be starting the process of Due Diligence, and your team is going to need to
support that effort. Well, your company has never been bought out before, so this whole process is new to everyone,
including this Due Diligence thing.

Since your team lead knows you successfully completed Advanced Accounting at UMUC, she knows you’re the best of the
best and as such she assigns you the task of researching Due Diligence within the context of M&As, and wants you to
report back to the team with two specific deliverables: a Research Tracker and an Annotated Bibliography.

Part I – The Research Tracker

A Research Tracker is a straight forward activity that can be thought of as something that simply “tells the story” of your
thought process and logic used in finding information on a subject. In our case, that subject is going to be Due Diligence
within M&As. Your requirement for the Research Tracker deliverable will be to research the subject of Due Diligence within
M&As and create a basic Research Tracker to report on your results. The submitted deliverable should take the form of a
chart created in Word or Excel that “tells the story” of your research efforts.

An example of a Research Tracker for the subject of “Violence in Television” is shown below. Your submission for our
purposes of researching Due Diligence within M&As should use the same format and column heading as this example, and
be completed using the same logic. For our class, about 10 rows / topics should suffice. This is the first part of this activity
for our class, and your submission consisting of a Word document or Excel file is to be made as part of your week #7
submission. This part of this activity is worth 3% of your final grade, and will be evaluated based on the grading matrix
presented at the end of this document.

Sample Research Tracker for the Subject of Violence in Television:

Question
Pursuing,
Information
Sought,
Rationale for
Search

Tool or
Source Used

Concepts
or
Keywords,
Terms,
Phrases

Results Decision,
Action, Next
Step

Background
information

General
encyclopedias
(library
reference
section)

television,
violence

Found mostly general information on
“television.” Found one small article in
Encyclopedia Americana on “Violence in
Television.”

Need more
background
info? Will check
other reference
books.

More
background
information

Looked in
Encyclopedia
of Television
(REF PN
1992.18 .E53
1997)

violence Found a small article on “Violence in Television”
(page 1769 – volume 3). Described correlation
between television violence and later behavior

Have decided to
focus on
relationship
between
television
violence and
human
behavior. Will
check for books
in online
catalog.

Description of
human behavior

Looked in
Delhi Online
Catalog

human
behavior

Found a lot of good general books on human
behavior, including The Winning Edge by
Andrew J. DuBrin.

Will focus more.
Will try
“television” and
“violence.”

Delhi Online
Catalog

Looked
under
“television”
and
“violence.”

Found a very good book titled “Violence in the
Media” by James D. Torr (CIRC P96.V5 V563
2001).

Will take notes
from books.

Need to narrow
focus even
more with
magazine or
journal articles.

Used InfoTrac Tried
“television
and human
behavior.”

Didn’t find much. Will try other,
broader
keywords.

Used InfoTrac Tried
“television
and
behavior.”

Found way too many irrelevant articles! Will try another
keyword:
“violence.”

Used InfoTrac Tried
“television
violence
and
behavior.”

Found several very good recent articles,
including “Aggressive response to TV violence
tracks to adulthood.” Sally Koch Kubetin.
Pediatric News, May 2003, v37 i5 p23.

Will print out
and review
articles, and
take notes.

Try to find good
Web sites to
supplement
other
information.

Used Google Tried
“television
violence
and
behavior.”

Found several Web sites that looked good. The
first one was titled “Violence on
television,”www.apa.org/pubinfo/violence.html.
This Web site is published by the American
Psychological Association.

Will examine
other Web sites
and list findings.

Part II – An Annotated Bibliography

An Annotated Bibliography is a simple report that gives a summary of key items of interest related to a topic. The purpose
of annotations is to provide the reader with a summary and an evaluation of each source. An Annotated Bibliography is
not a report on a subject, it is simply a review of literature or websites found relating to a topic.

A good review of what an Annotated Bibliography is can be found here (or through a simple Google search):

http://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow/bibliography_tutorial.cfm

You submission for this second part of the assignment should consist of an Annotated Bibliography created in Word that
discusses three of the sources you have identified in the Research Tracker created in Part I, and this part of your submission
should consist of a single Word document containing all three Annotated Bibliographies. Both parts of this assignment are
due on or before the end of week #7, and this second part comprises an additional 3% of your final grade (total project is
6% of your final grade).

Grading Matrices:

Project Components Being
Assessed

Meets
Expectations

Minimally Meets
Expectations

Does Not Meet
Expectations

Final Student
Assessment

Research Log 100% 80% 60% Assessment
and

Comments

Your research log must be
completed using the Sample
Research Tracker.
Requirements: Log uses at
least three different
databases in the UMUC
library; consults at least five
different sources, at least
two from scholarly or trade
journals; provides evidence
of effective use of research
techniques; comments show
analysis in evaluation of
resources.

The research
log
substantially
meets all of
the
requirements
listed.

At least one of the
requirements
included on the list is
not addressed in the
research log.

More than one of the
requirements is not
addressed in the
research log.

Annotated Bibliography Meets
Expectations

Minimally Meets
Expectations
Does Not Meet
Expectations
Final Student
Assessment

Your annotated bibliography
must be complete and
prepared in good form.
Requirements: Sources are
cited in appropriate APA or
MLA style; annotation
includes useful comments
on the credentials of
authors and reliability of
sources; sources cited are
relevant to the research
project and are included in
your research log.

The annotated
bibliography
substantially
meets all of
the
requirements
listed.

At least one of the
requirements
included on the list is
not addressed in the
annotated
bibliography.

The annotated
bibliography is
missing more than
one of the criteria
listed.