We have compiled a survey to gain feedback from centres who are offering both SQA qualifications and vendor courses so that we can monitor how they are being delivered and to promote awareness of the new approach to vendor within HNC/D Computing awards. This survey is not exclusive to HN awards. This is open to all SQA approved centres (FE, HE, Training Providers etc) who are delivering SQA qualifications (HNC/HNC, PDA, NC, NPA, SVQ, CBQ) in conjunction with vendor courses.…
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I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions the Royal Society report on Computing in schools. One of the key recommendations from that report was to do with naming the subject. I subsequently stated, after internal and external consultation, that SQA would adopt the nomenclature. So, today, I instigated changing the names of the verification groups to follow the advice in the Report. There are currently two Computing verification groups: 357 Computing 358 Information Systems. This will become three groups: xxx…
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You might have noticed that we plan to formally introduce “academic skills” into HN programmes through the Alternative Assessment project. The QDT for the NC Review also wants to do this for the revised NC awards, which are under development. We plan to make an “Academic Skills” unit mandatory at SCQF Level 6 and an option at SCQF Level 5. The sort of things that would appear in these units include: referencing structured writing researching plagiarism study skills selecting sources…
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The team recently reached a milestone in its use of social media. Our Twitter account now has more than 500 followers. It’s taken a while to get there (we started to use Twitter in 2009) but it has slowly evolved into an important communication channel for the team. We don’t use Twitter for vanity. You won’t find our opinions on it or advice about how best to teach. But we do use it to share important information about the work of…
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Both the NC Review and the PC Passport Review are going well, and we have reached the stage, in both developments, when we need to get down to unit writing. So the QDT members, for both reviews, met on Friday for some training. We have now carried out consultation for the awards, developed frameworks, and assigned unit writers and vetters to the component units, and we want to use the summer to write the unit specifications, so it was vital to…
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The Summer time is relatively quiet in SQA since we receive far fewer enquiries from teachers and lecturers at this time of the year. This means that we can use the time to catch up with outstanding work and push on with on-going projects. Right now we are working on a number of projects including: PC Passport review NC Digital Media Computing review E-Commerce units HNC/D assessment exemplars HNC/D support materials HN Alternative Assessments HNC/D international awards SVQ/CBQ awards vendor-related…
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I’ve noted previously that PC Passport is currently being reviewed. The Qualification Development Team (QDT) met yesterday for its second meeting. The lead developer is Frank Frame of Bannerman High School. We’ve made a lot of progress in a short time. We have now consulted on the draft framework. Over 200 people completed an online survey and we also carried out a number of face to face interviews. There was overwhelming support for our proposals so we’re pretty confident that we are…
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The launch event for the new and revised HNDs took place yesterday at Jury’s Inn in Glasgow. We launched the following awards: HND Computing: Networking (revised award) HND Computing: Software Development (revised award) HND Computing: Technical Support (revised award) HND Computer Science (new award). There was a great turnout, with over 50 people attending. Launch events are something of a celebration; a culmination of a great deal of hard work by a lot of people. I pointed out that 17…
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Colleges Scotland has held an annual staff development event for Computing lecturers for several years, and I have presented at most of them. I attended yesterday’s event at the City of Glasgow College, when I presented an update on SQA developments. It gave me an opportunity to update people on the various changes that have taken place over the last 12 months. And there have been lots. I discussed the PC Passport review, the NC Review and, of course, the…
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The Qualification Development Team (QDT) for NC Digital Media Computing met on Friday, for its third meeting. We last met in April. The purpose of this meeting was to look at the draft frameworks in the light of the consultation that we recently carried out. The updated awards have a new working title: “NC Computing”. Many of you will recognise that from the days before the current NC awards. It’s not been decided to rename them but that’s the title…
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