Student Support Site

Sunday, 14 October 2007

Top Tips for Success - Please read

Understanding and meeting the needs of a given audience and purpose is a key aspect of the course, as is students ability to plan and adapt approaches effectively to meet deadlines, review progress and critically review their products against success criteria.

You must work INDEPENDENTLY – use the facilities outside of lessons. Effort = Success.



Planning & Monitoring (5) Project review (5) =10 marks
Planning is something that young adults find difficult but is quite key to the ultimate successful completion of the course. Organisation and self evaluation are strong features of the coursework which are evidenced in the planning, monitoring, end user (test buddy) testing and project review.


PROJECT REVIEW
For each task- state
What did you did. Who for. How you did it
Explain your testing against the spec. What criteria and who test user etc
Testing of Suitability for Audience and Purpose SOAP
Review – state improvements made and why they improve SOAP and further SOAP improvements possible
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Research (7) and Analysis (7) of data 14 marks Quite easy to loose marks here.

Your bibliography is extremely important. Record all your web research and browsing, you need primary and secondary evidence. Listen to your teachers guidance – appx 10 sources for each. You should try to state your main sources in your products. Respect copyright. Make or take your own graphics, any graphs you make are primary images so record them.

Data collection forms must be designed and tested before circulation. Your questions must be sensible and provide data that can be analysed purposefully.

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Analysis section
This requires you to show your analysis of data using spreadsheet and database tools. You must perform analysis equally well in both programs to achieve marks.
Show formulas, show results, show stats i.e. percentages, graphs must have good labels meaningful titles (not be 3d) each graph must be explained. Top marks are earned by further analysis to investigate hypothesis or bias (e.g. complex analysis by gender).

Database design, onscreen entry forms, demonstrations of validations, input masks, quick input methods. Outputs must be meaningful, well labelled and laid out, (not truncated, not including duplications)

* make sure you show evidence of development at every stage. No evidence no credit

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Products 9 marks – Who is the Audience? State it.. 9-11 year olds

Suitability of products for audience and purpose (SOAP) is something that can only be evidenced through end user testing at several stages in product development. Refined and suitable products must be produced for ALL of the tasks that are set. If a single product is missing students are heavily penalised (ZERO marks) If a product is unsuitable for the Audience and Purpose marks are significantly reduced.

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Eportfolio 9 marks – Target Audience is the marker/moderator
Very easy to gain marks for this but you must design the site, and have detailed commentaries introducing the evidence. Think for each PRODUCT explain about what I must do, who for, what I must include and test, feedback and testing evidence x3 (design, WIP and pukka print).
The eportfolio is a product also it deserves a page of its own.
Also identify improvements made and possible.
Test and review the development of the site and show evidence of testing it against the success criteria, file types, folder structures . YOU MUST TEST EVERY HYPER LINK - no link no marks for the product and lost marks in the eportfolio.
Stay under your max site limit. 20MB (optimise graphics and video)


To achieve a pass in the AiDA qualification students need to earn over 18 points out of 42. The course is offered at 2 levels. Level 1 provides opportunities to access grades G-C whilst level 2 provides opportunities to access grades A* to C only.

AiDA - What is it?

AiDA stands for Award in Digital Applications, it is one qualifications that can be obtained from following the Diploma in Digital Applications course (Edexcel). Once students have completed the first mandatory unit in using ICT they may undertake additional units to gain up to 4 GCSE’s.

AiDA is a single unit award which has the equivalent weighting of a single GCSE. Unlike most GCSE's the qualification comprises of just one coursework piece and no examination.

The Examination Board set assignments or Summative Project Brief (SPB) are live for 2 years. Students have to complete the project within a maximum of 45 hours.

The qualification itself is relatively new and is a direct response to the current requirements of employers for computer literate users.

As such the course requires students to work in a more vocational and end user focussed way. Understanding and meeting the needs of a given audience and purpose is a key aspect of the course, as is students ability to plan and adapt approaches effectively to meet deadlines, review progress and critically review their products against success criteria.

To achieve a pass in the AiDA qualification students need to earn over 18 points out of 42. The course is offered at 2 levels. Level 1 provides opportunities to access grades G-C whilst level 2 provides opportunities to access grades A* to C only.

Tasks at level 1 and 2 a broadly identical and all students are encouraged to attempt level 2 in their first year of study. Students are prepared for the practical tasks required in this course during Key Stage 3. However, due to the vocational aspects of the course requiring good organisation, significant independent working, reflection and evaluation, many students find the course very demanding.

Support Sites

Here are some very useful support sites which will help prepare you for this demanding course.

DiDA Delivered

http://www.dida-delivered.org/

E2BNA

http://dida.e2bn.net

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Sunday, 7 October 2007

SPB Exam Board Coursework Projects

Use the link below to access the Summative Project Briefs

http://dida.edexcel.org.uk/home/spb/

Student Support Site

Welcome to my student support site.

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