Different Types of Assignments in a Financial Management Course

The most common type of assignment you will get at the college level is that of essay writing. Essays are assigned to students for them to defend or do a presentation on a topic with the help of evidence gathered in research. The essay assignment could require you to argue your case on a topic, persuade your reader on a certain topic, or provide a description of a topic. Simply put, your essay could be argumentative, persuasive, or descriptive. The body of your essay should directly answer the question posed in your topic.

For example, a topic like ‘Do risky assets have a higher rate of return’ is an essay assignment. It will require you to research the different risk levels of assets and how they affect the return rate and either corroborate or reject the assignment topic depending on the instructions. This could be a persuasive essay, where you convince your instructor how high-risk assets have a higher return or a descriptive essay on the same. Essays are a way to polish your research skills as well as your writing skills. Essay assignments require your perspective as the author on the respective topic assigned.

Another common assignment in a financial management course is report writing. Unlike essays which are more flexible with the structure and content, reports at the college level will tend to take a specific outline. You must read and understand the instructions issued with the assignment to ensure you do it correctly. A report writing assignment will require you to research a specific topic and use the findings to address the problem in the assignment. Comprehensive research is key here. Information presented in your report is either gathered from your reading, research, personal experience, or experiments.

Reports are highly organized assignments and mainly follow standard formats. An example of a topic in financial management requiring a report would be say, discussing capital budgeting methods in organizations. This would not do as an essay since it is not a matter of opinion but facts. You would need to create a thesis statement for it and create an introduction, body, and conclusion. Reports have to include references from where the facts presented in the body were derived from. It is a longer form of assignment and the most common at this level.

Literature review assignments may seem technical but they are highly similar to report writing. They require you to summarize a specific topic, gather research data on said topic, and explain why more research if any is needed on that specific topic. The first step in writing a literature review is to rewrite the topic assigned or chosen into a research question. For example, if your topic was ‘The relationship between the rise in the cost of equity as debt increases’, rewrite it to be, ‘How does an increase in debt affect the cost of equity?’ This will ease your research time.

If the literature review assignment was aimed at proving research gaps, then adjust your research question to be more specific to better address this. The next steps in the literature review involve conducting your research, taking down notes on your findings, and then writing your literature review. Your review should answer the research question initially posed. The main format for this will be an introduction, a body (where you include details in your research), and then a conclusion. Make sure that the body of your literature review answers the research question that it explains and guides your instructor on how you got the answer to your research question and the connections that exist through existing literature.