FW: [Year 12 Its] New IS study design query

[Frank Van Den Boom]

I was a bit surprised to only get one response to the question below a
couple of weeks ago. Does that mean that nobody else finds this
difficult to judge?
Imagine you were an experienced IT practioner and you came in to teach
this course with no prior knowledge of it and you were trying to figure
out what depth was required in programming. So you look at the following
:
1. Study design - very hard to know (see comments in original message) 
2. 2006 IS exam - nothing beyond nested IF's - nothing involving arrays,
records, files. One question with a loop was only concerned with
identifying variable types, but not control or data structures.
3. Previous exams - basic use of 1-dim array, basic looping
3. VITTA practice exams - suggest you need to have a solid understanding
of arrays, records, file processing and parameter passing. 
4. Text books - cover algorithms for stacks, queues, linked lists etc
 
At the end of the day, past exams to me are the only general indicator
of the depth to cover. Is there a reason why the study design can't
spell this out more clearly?
 
Frank

  _____  

From: is-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:is-bounces at edulists.com.au] On
Behalf Of Frank Van Den Boom
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 12:41 PM
To: is at edulists.com.au
Subject: [Year 12 Its] New IS study design query


Today I started looking more closely at the revised study design to plan
for next year. One of the things that struck me is that it is difficult
to know what the minimum content requirements are in a number of areas.
For example-data structures. I don't think it specifically mentions any
particular data structure. U4O1 key knowledge includes "methods of
organising files....serial, sequential, random" which implies the need
to cover records. Arrays are not specifically referred to and while, it
would be pretty dumb to omit them, are 1-dim arrays enough, or might
exams expect ability to work with multi-dim arrays? What about sets,
pointers....
 
Another KK point --> 'Forms and uses of data structures to organise and
manipulate data'. Which data structures?? What types of uses?? - all the
oldies like sorting, linked lists, queues, binary searches etc are
possible here.
 
Now I know we have the flexibility to cover as much of this as we want
to for the kids who are really into it, particularly for those who
already have a reasonable programming foundation as they enter the
course. But what I don't know is what the minimum requirement is. This
becomes more important when most of your group have little to no
programming experience.
 
What do you think about this?
Frank
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