The Benefits of Banning Devices During Meetings

Research Report Assignment
The research assignment will test your ability to create three brief, practical, research-based reports as described below. You will turn in the first report and receive feedback before completing the second; then you will complete the second and receive feedback before completing the third. Before turning in the first report, you will have opportunities to practice various research-related writing tasks so you can receive feedback and revise. Please use those opportunities to practice and build confidence in your research-related writing skills.
Scenario: You are an assistant manager at Olive Interiors, a 20-employee interior design firm. Weekly meetings are a vital part of your business, and they are always conducted with a clear agenda and respect for everyone's time -- they last only 30-45 minutes, and people generally give good feedback on them. During the past two meetings, you and your manager have noticed a trend of people focusing on their devices (phones, tablets, laptops) during meetings for long stretches of time, rarely or never making eye contact with those conducting the meeting or anyone else who is speaking. You and your manager have discussed the possibility of banning devices in meetings because the behavior is causing those employees to miss important information and opportunities for connection, as well as being disrespectful and distracting to others. Neither one of you wants to make such a decision until you learn a little more about the conventional wisdom (look up the term conventional wisdom if it's unfamiliar to you) of personal device use during meetings. To that end, you manager has asked you to do some research to see what others have to say about using devices during meetings and then make a recommendation about the best approach for Olive Interiors.
Assignment: Write three research-based reports. The first two will be informational reports examining a different side of the issue and considering different perspectives. The third will be an analytical report; it will combine details from the two informational reports and use that information to recommend an action/solution to your manager. Note that our textbook does not have a report that looks like the ones you will write; your reports will focus only on research and content, not on formalities like title pages, abstracts and other elements. Our textbook does describe the difference between informational and analytical reports, so please pay attention to those details, and use the Research Report Template to help you with content, organization and formatting.