[Year 12 Its] New IS study design query

Thu Nov 16 13:09:22 EST 2006

Hi Frank

Past exams give you what the examiners have asked over the years at an
algorithm level.

All of the SACs are statistically moderated against the exam.

The lack of depth specified in the study design gives the examiners
incredible scope to ask at any level.

Then consider how many students would answer it well.  

Look carefully at the examiners reports over the last twelve years. Look
especially at the success rate on the algorithm questions. Look at the
questions concerned.

Think carefully about the point of asking a question where only a few
percent of students get above zero. The point of the exam is to spread
students in to a long line using the filter of the knowledge learnt in
this subject so that they can be given a study score and thus get put
into a long line for uni entrance. 

Cynical - yes , practical -yes 

The practice exams with parameter passing - an attempt to lift the bar.
( I know, I wrote that algorithm) 

Eventually we will get to that stage. But first we have to educate the
teachers and there are teachers in this subject who are not confident
teaching parameter passing, linked lists, stacks, queues, LIFO, FIFO,
multi d arrays.  There is a lot of PD that needs to be done before we
can ask questions at that depth in the exam.

Meanwhile I teach all of those, make it interesting and for those
students who are not up to it I make very sure that they can do a bit
more than the minimum that we have seen on the exam. Their SAC results
for u3o3 and u4o1 are not as good as the programmer students but
programming itself only makes up a small part of those SACs. Most of the
marks are in planning, documentation etc. The programmer students hate
those aspects and often leave them out.

So it evens up....

(Off the soap box and stagger off to lunch. I hate getting up at 4 a.m.
to mark papers but it is the only quiet time in the house)

Andrew Shortell

Braemar College

________________________________

From: is-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:is-bounces at edulists.com.au] On
Behalf Of Frank Van Den Boom
Sent: Thursday, 16 November 2006 10:29 AM
To: is at edulists.com.au
Subject: FW: [Year 12 Its] New IS study design query

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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