Computing – Page 88 – Computing & Digital Blog

Aiming for 500 followers

January 10, 2013 - Bobby - 0

The recent satisfaction survey showed that Twitter is becoming more popular with readers of this blog. There was a large increase in the number of people who said they used it to follow the team’s activities. We currently have over 450 followers and we’re aiming to get this up to 500 in the next few months. So, if you don’t already, please follow us on Twitter. I promise not to bombard you with irrelevant messages. We recently announced that we…

Commenting on posts

January 10, 2013 - Bobby - 3

One of the great features of a blog is the facility to provide comments and create discussions. But this feature has been rarely used on this blog and the few comments that are posted are invariably spam. So, this afternoon, I have enabled the verification feature on comments so that whenever anyone provides a comment they will have to enter a designated word to prove that they are human (and not machine generated). If this doesn’t help to cut down…

Priorities for 2013

January 8, 2013 - Bobby - 0

We have a team meeting once each month (the first Monday of the month) and we had our first one of 2013 yesterday afternoon. The main discussion point was our priorities for 2013. We agreed that the key tasks are: validation and implementation of the new and revised HNDs reviews of PC Passport and NC Digital Media Computing introduction of CBQs completion of NC Computer Games Development (Level 6). There are lots of other things to do (such as commencing…

Centre satisfaction survey

January 4, 2013 - Bobby - 0

The team met this afternoon to discuss the results from the recent survey about your satisfaction with the service that we provide. Overall the results were positive again. We were pleased that you liked the range of qualifications (almost 100%) and the quality of the qualifications (over 80%). More than 90% were happy with the quality of communications. I was particularly pleased that you think that we’re polite and courteous (only 2% thought otherwise). The two main areas of improvement…

Happy New Year

January 3, 2013 - Bobby - 0

The full team returned to work today. It was particularly nice to welcome Caroline back from her travels in the Far East. There are two main tasks facing the team in the forthcoming year. Firstly, we have to finalise the revised HNDs, which were recently validated. And secondly, we have to commence the reviews of NC Digital Media Computing and PC Passport. So 2013 looks like it will be as busy as 2012. Our resolution for the coming year is…

Review of the year

December 19, 2012 - Bobby - 0

This seems a good time to look over the last 12 months. The main project has been the HN Review, which culminated in a recent validation. There is still some work to be done, but these new awards are on schedule to be available to centres from next session. Some centres offered the new HNC this year, while some others introduced some of the new units into their existing HNC programme. By all accounts, the new units are popular with…

Satisfaction survey results

December 14, 2012 - Bobby - 0

I recently wrote that I would say more about the satisfaction survey once I had had time to digest it. I’ve now had a look at the results. The key findings were: Most people (93%) were satisfied with the overall quality of communications between the team and centres. E-mail is the most popular means of communication. This blog is becoming an important communication channel (83% of respondents had used it in the last year). There was overwhelming satisfaction with the…

Visit to Forth Valley College

December 14, 2012 - Bobby - 0

I visited Forth Valley College yesterday to help the centre with a curricular issue. The college offers a number of vocational Computing qualifications, but focus on Computer Games at non-advanced level and Software Development at advanced level. The centre wanted some advice about their NC Computer Games Development award, which I was happy to give. I was also given a tour of the college’s science and computing facilities, and I was introduced to a class of their NC Games students,…

Second meeting of the Qualification Review Team

December 11, 2012 - Bobby - 0

As I noted previously, Computing is one of four subjects that has received funding to improve articulation between college and university. The Qualification Review Team (QRT), which will take this forward, met for the second time this morning. The Team consists of representatives of Scottish colleges and universities. As convenor of the QRT, I was particularly pleased to welcome Duncan Smeed, of the University of Strathclyde, to his first meeting. At the previous meeting members brainstormed a number of possible…

HND validations

December 11, 2012 - Bobby - 0

Those of you who follow the HN Review blog will know the outcome of the recent validation event for the revised HNDs in Computing. In short, the awards were validated with conditions. Quite a lot of conditions asctually, but nothing that the Qualification Development Team can’t deal with. The big change was a new name for the proposed HND Computing, which will now be called HND Computer Science, to better match developments in the school sector. So, the new HNDs…