[Informatics] Question about U3O1

[Garth, Lucas A]

Hi Steven

Assessing students analysis, then providing feedback but not changing the mark, then assessing students' design and again providing feedback but not changing the mark could be a way of managing this.

I've heard of some teachers of ITApps/Informatics who do this, and then let the students do their full development and evaluation stages before final submission.

You could, theoretically, give out the case study lesson 1, get the design documents completed lesson 2 and 3 (e.g. data dictionary, ERD etc) and then hand out a list of sample data from which students can create tables.  They may still need to retrofit their data dictionary/ERD to allow the tables to be created so they can create queries, but I think that's a reasonable enough penalty for a poor start to the project.

Even though you provide data in an acceptable structure, it's still up to the students to create the tables and relationships in the RDBMS correctly (which for some students will be hard enough), and you might even make a requirement to create some additional records of test data so that their queries can be tested (e.g. data you provide is not accurate, clean or complete for all business requirements).  This helps them to test electronic validation.

By giving students data that would create an empty query, you are encouraging them to think about why, and then how they could populate it for testing and output purposes.  I believe this is the higher order thinking required to achieve a very high on the performance indicators.

As you wrote earlier you are still assessing the analysis and design process, but not letting a poor initial process get in the way of a successful end result.

This is an approach I'm planning to take this year, so other list members please let me know if you think this is not acceptable.

Lucas

From: informatics-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:informatics-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Branson, Steven S
Sent: Wednesday, 24 February 2016 10:03 PM
To: Year 12 VCE Informatics Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [Informatics] Question about U3O1

I taught ITApps a couple of times only during the last study design but I have a question about process that I'd like some feedback on.

I noticed during the SAC that I had a couple of students who struggled with the normalisation process. When they created their queries and reports it was no surprise that the results were not what they expected. Consequently they ended up spending extra time trying to fix things, sometimes including those that were not wrong. This meant that they were not able really show what they could do in the other areas of the task as they were rushed when they finally decided to cut their losses on the other areas. These kids are effectively being punished twice for one area of weakness.

My question is that is it acceptable to provide the normalised data without links in a spreadsheet after the design stage so that all students could concentrate on the other aspects of the task without the penalty of having an unworkable set of tables? Naturally I'd have the students submit that part of their design before allowing them to start the creation process if this was acceptable.

I put this question to another teacher recently who originally said no, but on thinking about it thought that it was worth considering as we are trying to assess what they can do. I understand that time management during a task is important, but students also want to create something that works to a large degree and are easily demoralised when nothing seems to work.

Steven Branson
Hallam Senior College
9703 1266

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