Unit Synopsis
This unit focuses on the practice and development of key critical thinking and problem solving skills required in agricultural systems management. You will develop and apply analytical reasoning, to critically analyse challenges, identify and create opportunities, and bring creative, innovative, empathetic and ethical problem solving skills to business management, learning and research opportunities. You will complete a research project that will identify a current emerging issue in agricultural production, and apply the critical thinking and problem solving knowledge and skills to analyse the issue, propose and evaluate solutions, select a solution and develop implementation and monitoring strategies. You will present your research project to an assessment panel.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 3 |
| Credit Points | 12 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 1 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.25 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Prerequisite AGRI13004 Livestock Industry Placement or AGRI13005 Cropping Industry Placement or AGRI13003 Agricultural Service Industry Placement Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 12-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 25 hours of study per week, making a total of 300 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Group Discussion | 0% |
| 2. Written Assessment | 60% |
| 3. Presentation | 40% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 2 - 2021 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 75.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 26.67% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: "Have Your Say" and Discussion Boards
A good variety of topics
Students found the variety of topics/challenges discussed both engaging and interesting. Future offerings of this unit should continue to cover the wide range of agricultural production challenges.
The variety of topics/challenges discussed was maintained, with tutorials offering a greater range of approaches to complex agricultural challenges.
Source: "Have Your Say"
Face-to-face learning
The option of a face-to-face learning activity should be explored for future offerings, perhaps delivered through a field trip. However, as students are on placement, this may be difficult to execute. If the COVID-19 pandemic prevents a face-to-face meeting, then a part-day online workshop should be arranged.
Instead of one part-day workshop, tutorials were offered weekly instead of fortnightly, as they had been in 2020.
Source: Have Your Say Survey
Increase weighting of Assessment 1: Students felt that while Assessment 1 was useful and engaging, the fact that it was a pass/fail assessment based on participation meant it was de-prioritized compared to weighted assessment.
This unit is being terminated after 2021, however other units that use weekly discussion boards should explore the opportunity to increase assessment weighting if this type of assessment proves especially useful in achieving learning outcomes.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Interpret problem situations and the reasoning of self and others.
- Analyse and evaluate concepts, assumptions, explanations, arguments and solutions to business problems.
- Develop problem solving options using evaluative criteria.
- Define option implementation and monitoring strategies.
- Demonstrate the application of problem solving to practice in agricultural system management.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Group Discussion | • | • | |||
| 2 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | • | • |
| 3 - Presentation | • | • | • | • | • |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | • | • | • | • |
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | • | • | • | |
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • | • | • |
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | • | |||
| 5 - Team Work | • | • | • | ||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | • | • | • | ||
| 8 - Ethical practice | • | • | • | • | • |
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |