November 11, 2013 - Bobby -
The dates for the validation events for NC Digital Media Computing and PC Passport have now been set. The PC Passport validation event will take place on Thursday, 23 January and the NC validation event will take place on Thursday, 30 January. I’ve posted several updates about these developments during the last few months. The purpose of the validation event is for fresh pairs of eyes to look over the proposals. It’s a meeting of peers in that the panel…
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November 11, 2013 - Bobby -
I went along to Saturday’s annual update meeting for External Verifiers. The Computing group is led by David Drennan, who is the Senior External Verifier. It was a busy agenda, covering the new Quality Assurance Management Systems (QAMS), CPD, and David’s annual report on centre performance. I traditionally give a qualification update at the meeting to let EVs know about what’s been done and what’s coming. This year’s presentation (by both me and Caroline) included the new HND awards, the…
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November 4, 2013 - Bobby -
I closed the centre satisfaction survey this morning. It’s been open for 10 weeks. There were only 15 responses so it’s hard to place too much faith in the results. Overall, the results were good. In spite of the use of electronic communications, my annual update letters are still popular with centres (65% of respondents read them); unlike Twitter, which remains the least popular means of communication (7%). Not only were the update letter read – they were liked too…
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November 1, 2013 - Bobby -
Last year, as additional support for the new HNC Computing award, we produced e-materials for the following mandatory units: Professionalism and Ethics in Computing Developing Software: Introduction Computer System Fundamentals Troubleshooting Computing Problems Team Working in Computing This year we have managed to secure additional budget to produce e-materials for a further four units. We have chosen to cover a single mandatory unit in each of the four new HND Computing awards (Software Development, Technical Support, Networking and Computer Science).…
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November 1, 2013 - Bobby -
The centre satisfaction has been open for a number of weeks now and we are looking to close this off so we can evaluate the responses in comparison to previous years. Can I urge you to take a few minutes of your time to complete the survey if you have not already done so. If you feel this would be more relevant to another colleague, then please forward on the survey link to them. You can find the survey here.
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October 31, 2013 - Bobby -
I commenced the (mini) review of HND Computer Science today, when I visited Napier University in Edinburgh and spoke to a couple of members of staff about this new award and how it articulates with their own degree courses. The key questions I need to answer are: do you support the existence of this qualification in principle? does the title match the contents? what changes, if any, need to be made? what is essential to include in this award? if…
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October 30, 2013 - Bobby -
I’ve previously mentioned the Qualification Review Team (QRT). The QRT was responsible for devising alternative assessments that could be used in place of the existing assessments to better reflect the assessments faced by students at university. The QRT for Computing met four times, after which SQA finalised the alternative assessments. I am a member of the Project Board for this development, and the Board had its ninth meeting this morning. The purpose of the meeting was to get an update…
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October 28, 2013 - Bobby -
I attended the second Computing At School (CAS) event on Saturday, which was held at the University of Glasgow. This year, unlike last year, I had the pleasure of not speaking. It’s great to attend events where the sole focus is teaching and learning. In my many conversations with the many educationalists who were there, the sole topic was how best to teach Computing. I attended all of the keynotes and many of the workshops. I particularly enjoyed the workshops…
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October 23, 2013 - Bobby -
As you will know, PC Passport is currently being reviewed. This important development commenced earlier this year and has been progressing well. The Qualification Development Team has been working hard to revise the qualification. The draft qualification is pretty well developed and we are now at the stage of finalising the units. I met with the core development team earlier this week to look at the draft units to make final changes. The recent focus on digital literacy has had…
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October 18, 2013 - Bobby -
The new HN awards are the best supported Computing qualifications that SQA has ever produced. In fact, they may be the best supported qualifications of any kind that SQA has ever produced.There are Assessment Support Packs (ASPs), online assessments and e-learning material available to support the new awards. So far, 58 ASPs have been produced (and available) with another five on the way. These cover all of the mandatory units in all of the awards plus many of the optional…
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