Computing – Page 21 – Computing & Digital Blog

Can you help?

November 16, 2020 - Bobby - 3

Me and my team are helped by four important committees, without which we couldn’t do our job. These are: Sector Panel: The Sector Panel provides strategic guidance about business, industrial, technological and educational trends to ensure that Computing qualifications are relevant, appropriate and up-to-date. Members include representatives of industry, universities, colleges, schools, training centres and national agencies. Qualification Support Team: The QST helps us maintain qualifications by advising how existing qualifications can be kept up to date and supported in…

NPA Computer Networks – Update

November 10, 2020 - sqablogs - 3

This development has progressed well and is nearing completion. The revised Group Award has now been validated and the final steps for operationalising the award are now underway. The subject page for this award, which will include a link to the Group Award Specification, should be on the SQA website in the next few weeks. As advised in a previous post, the three component units of this award were being revised. This work is now complete and there are links…

NPA Cyber Alternative assessments – Update

November 10, 2020 - sqablogs - 3

Some time ago, we advised in a blog post that we would be producing alternative assessments for the NPA Cyber Security. The aim of these assessments was to provide centres with a portfolio approach assessment. The work was well underway when COVID-19 drove the country into lockdown, so some projects had to be put on the back burner. Unfortunately, this was one of them. Furthermore, upon reviewing these assessments, issues were identified that impeded their publication and caused a further…

Update on assessment arrangements for session 2020/21

October 27, 2020 - Bobby - 1

Since I last wrote about new arrangements for assessment for the current session, further information has been provided to centres. We recently informed centres that the requirement for a Graded Unit within Higher National qualifications has been removed this year. Centres were informed about alternative approaches, although can continue to use Graded Units if circumstances permit. Please note that some subjects are required to complete a Graded Unit as normal, but Computing is not one of them. In August, we…

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

October 15, 2020 - Bobby - 1

The team has been using FAQs for new (or revised) qualifications since 2015. The idea behind them is to pre-empt the sorts of questions that you want answered about qualifications, such as: “Is my centre approved to offer it?”, “Can I teach it?” and “Where can I find the Unit specifications?”. They appear to be popular with teachers and lecturers so we will continue to write (and update) FAQs whenever a qualification is revised or a new one is created.…

PDA Data Science – subject page now live

October 13, 2020 - sqablogs - 5

Regular followers of the blog will be aware that the PDA Data Science units have been available for some weeks. I am pleased to advise that the final steps for operationalising the award have now been completed, namely the coding of the group awards, and the subject page. The Group Award codes are: PDA Data Science at SQCF level 7 – GR68 47 PDA Data Science at SCQF level 8 – GR67 48 PDA Data Science at SCQF level 9…

Sector Panel meeting

October 8, 2020 - Bobby - 2

The Sector Panel for Computing met last week (via Teams). There was an excellent attendance. The purpose of the Panel is to provide advice and guidance to me and my team to ensure that we’re not missing external trends and ensuring that the qualification portfolio is up-to-date. It comprises representatives of business, industry, colleges, schools, universities, training centres, local authorities and national bodies, as well as educational experts. Last week’s meeting was a little different because I invited DataLab and…

Ada Scotland Festival – starting 13 October

October 5, 2020 - sqablogs - 5

The Ada Scotland Festival is a series of online events focused on addressing gender imbalance in Computing Science education in Scotland. The University of Glasgow’s Dr Matthew Barr leads on the initiative, alongside Festival co-founders Dr Ella Taylor-Smith (Edinburgh Napier University) and Toni Scullion (dressCode) and a voluntary advisory board, drawn from across the sector. The Ada Scotland Festival brings together organisations who are keen to bring more women and girls into computing and IT. It is: • a celebration, aligned to Ada…

HND Data Science

October 2, 2020 - Bobby - 2

Regular readers will know that we’re currently developing a suite of Higher National (HN) awards as part of “HN Next Gen”. One of that suite is HND Data Science. Unlike the other qualifications in this development, HND Data Science is a new qualification (the others are existing qualifications that we’re updating). We had planned to develop an HND in Data Science some time ago, but it made sense to make it one of the first new types of HN qualifications.…

Why data science qualifications?

September 22, 2020 - Bobby - 4

I was recently asked by someone why SQA developed data science qualifications. The person was planning a webinar (with an international audience) and wanted to “set the Scottish educational context” by explaining “the rationale for data science qualifications”. She had searched this blog for an answer — but without success. I promised that I would rectify that. We developed NPA Data Science in 2018/19. At the time, it was the first school-based national qualification in data science in the world…