Reports

Report treasure hunt

Karen Inkster Vance

Suggested course level

Lower level undergraduate

Activity purpose

  • Students will be become familiar with and be able to identify the required components and design formatting of a formal business report.

Materials required

  • Printed copies of a formal report (1 per pair)
  • Treasure Hunt Worksheet (1 per pair)

Activity instructions

  1. Have students get into pairs and give each team a copy of a formal report and a treasure hunt worksheet.
  2. Together, students must answer the questions on the worksheet by finding the answers within the formal report.
  3. The first team to finish with all the answers correct is the “winner.” I use a copy of our annual university accountability report that is published online, but there are many corporations and government agencies that also post their annual reports to the public.

Debrief questions / activities

  • Review the worksheet answers with the class and provide further explanations about components and formatting as you go along. For example: What did you notice about the page numbering? How were graphs and tables labeled and introduced in the text? How is the table of contents formatted?

Activity variations

  • You could adapt this to an online course by using digital versions of a formal report and having students complete an online quiz.

Additional resources / supplementary resources

Tags: document formatting, hands-on, small group, game, formal report

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