Computing – Page 71 – Computing & Digital Blog

Digital Passport and PC Passport update

January 12, 2015 - Bobby - 0

We are piloting a new qualification this year called Digital Passport. It’s a National Progression Award (NPA), available at SCQF Levels 4, 5 and 6. A small number of centres (including schools, colleges and training centres) are offering the award this year to try out the contents and support materials. We are receiving a lot of enquiries about the award from centres that plan to introduce it next year (session 2015/16). They typically want to know more about the award…

Product Marketing

January 6, 2015 - Bobby - 0

I met with Karen MacGregor this afternoon. Karen is the new Product Marketing Manager (PMM) with special responsibility for Computing. PMMs are responsible for developing business cases for new (or revised) qualifications. They take suggestions from the ideas capture form right through the a completed business case, after which me and my team take over. Please contact Karen if you have any suggestions or ideas about new awards. I’ve updated my organisation chart to include Karen.

Welcome back and welcome to Helen

January 5, 2015 - Bobby - 0

Welcome back after the Christmas holiday. I hope you had a good break. SQA also resumed today. A new person joined the team today. Helen Zhang is covering Hilary’s post while she is on secondment. Helen will be in position until mid-2016. This means that Helen is the person to contact for all non-advanced qualifications. I’ve updated the organisation chart to show who-does-what. Helen has worked for SQA since 2010 in a variety of roles, including international work, so she…

Agenda for Heads of Computing event

December 3, 2014 - Bobby - 1

We’re currently working on the agenda for the Heads of Computing event, which is taking place at the end of January. It’s shaping up well with talks about cyber security, the Wood Report, and the future of assessment, as well as the bread-and-butter stuff about qualifications and support materials. You can sign-up for the event here.

External verification reports

December 2, 2014 - Bobby - 2

One of the jobs of the Senior External Verifier (SEV) is to write an annual report on each verification group (VG) in their area. I’ve been reading the annual reports for my groups recently. My main verification groups are: 288 Information Technology, 357 Computer Science and 358 Information Technology. The reports made good reading. They were very positive, with lots of improvements compared to previous years. Long standing issues, such as the lack of “red ink” on candidates’ written work,…

Lead Person Network

November 26, 2014 - Bobby - 0

I’ve mentioned previously that we had almost established the lead person network (LPN) for colleges, well I’m pleased to say that the network is now complete. We now have a Computing contact person for each college. The SQA Computing team has been using online mailing lists and online groups for a long time, but the recent re-organisation of colleges in Scotland meant that these groups were out of date, so we have been working on getting a lead person for…

Computing at School

November 25, 2014 - Bobby - 0

I attended the annual Computing at School Scotland event on Saturday, held at Napier University. Computing at School is a UK-wide organisation that aims to promote the teaching of Computing in schools. It is supported by BCS, Microsoft and Google. Saturday’s event was the usual interesting mix of talks and workshops. The keynote was given by Elizabeth Montgomery (HMIe) about the importance of computer science to the UK economy. A couple of the workshops related directly to SQA, including one…

Heads of Computing Annual Event 2015

November 21, 2014 - Bobby - 0

In the recent HN Update letter to centres, you were informed that we were in the process of discussing plans for the forthcoming meeting of Heads of Computing. The annual event will take place on Friday 30th January 2015 at 1000 hours (Registration from 0930 hours) in the Stirling Highland Hotel, Spittal Street, Stirling FK8 1DU. The event will cover current and future curricular developments as well as a number of spotlight items of interest to the field. Places are…

HNC/D Computer Games Development review has commenced

November 19, 2014 - Bobby - 0

SQA was the first awarding body in the UK to offer qualifications in computer games when we introduced the HNC/D Computer Games Development in 2005. We revised that award in 2009, and it is now due to be reviewed again. I met with Gill Flockart, of Dundee & Angus College, this afternoon to discuss the possible changes required to the existing award. Gill is going to scope the likely changes. She will consult widely during the scoping process to discover…

PC Passport and NPA Digital Literacy reviews

November 19, 2014 - Bobby - 0

Both PC Passport and NPA Digital Literacy are being reviewed during the current year. In fact, PC Passport was meant to be reviewed last year but, instead, we forked the development to create Digital Passport. We now want to turn our attention back to PC Passport. I intend to organise two “pre-QDT” meetings to discuss how to take each of these developments forward. These meetings would be wide-ranging discussions on what, if any, changes need to be made to these…