There is a QST for non-advanced awards and one for advanced awards. Today was the turn of the advanced [HN] QST. Ten members attended a meeting in the Glasgow office, including a couple of new members. Most members are lecturers from FE colleges, across Scotland. Like the NQ QST, the key activity is the discussion about the various suggestions from centres. We considered five QST proposal forms today. The QST is not a talk-shop. We take action and make changes…
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The Qualification Support Team (QST) for my non-advanced awards met this afternoon in the SQA offices in Glasgow. QSTs are charged with advising SQA about the support needs of our awards. A key part of any QST meeting is consideration of proposals from centres, which can request improved assessments or revised unit specifications. We use two types of form: a QST proposal form, for such things as requesting changes to units, and an assessment feedback form, to ask us to…
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I received an e-mail yesterday, which contained a link to a story about boring ICT lessons in schools. SQA is working on new Computing qualifications as part of the Curriculum for Excellence, but there are already a large number of modern, engaging vocational qualifications available to centres. These include qualifications in Computer Games Development, Social Software, and Digital Culture. I was disappointed to see the uptake figures for the Digital Culture units. These are available at SCQF Levels 4-8 but…
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I have previously posted about the E-Placement scheme, which is sponsored by the Scottish Funding Council and supported by E-Skills UK, Scotland IS, and Napier University. I met with Colin Smith, of Napier University, this morning to discuss how SQA can support the academic side of the initiative. The placement lasts for (at least) three months and could be done between the first and second years of the HND Computing programme. Students are paid during the placement. We looked at…
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SQA was the first awarding body in the UK to produce a national qualification in the field of Internet safety and we were delighted when E-Skills UK adopted our qualification as the basis of their own award in this area. The National Unit [PDF] has been available since 2006. Since its introduction, it has proven to be very popular in schools and colleges; some schools offer it to every child in the early years of secondary school; many colleges include…
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I met with Caroline and Hilary this morning to discuss the closure of Jiglu, and what we will do to replace that service. We’ve been supporting qualifications through online groups since 2003, when we used Yahoo Groups. Since then we have used a range of services, including Egroups, Smartgroups, Google Groups and Jiglu. In the last few years, the field has thinned out and there are not so many choices today. We decided to choose two service providers for our…
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The HN development is now at the stage where the QDT is seeking feedback on its proposals. More on the HN Review blog. Please take a little time to complete the survey.
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I received bad news yesterday. Jiglu is closing. We’ve used this service for our online groups for a few years, and we’ve been very happy with it. We now have the problem of finding a replacement service and moving the groups to the new service. But time is not on our side – Jiglu closes at the end of April. We are looking at a number of possible replacements, including our own internal service (based on Lotus Notes). Let us…
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E-Skills occasionally hosts meetings between themselves, vendors and awarding bodies, and one of those meetings was held today in their London office. The purpose of the meetings is to provide a communication channel between the parties and to let the awarding bodies and vendors know about each other’s plans. A number of vendors (such as Microsoft, Apple and Cisco) attended this morning’s meeting, along with a number of awarding bodies (such as City and Guilds, and EdExcel). There were discussions…
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Following my blog post last month the following Units are now coded and available to centres: FK89 34 Configuring a Desktop Operating SystemFK8A 34 Troubleshooting a Desktop Operating SystemFK88 35 Managing a Desktop Operating System Deployment All three Units will be added to the optional section of all existing HNC/D Computing related frameworks. They will also be part of the frameworks that are currently being revised as part of the HNC/D Computing/Networking Review.
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