[Year 12 SofDev] Student ranking query

[Brett Groves]

A couple of years ago Travis I did the group revision for a network of 
schools for SD. I was shocked to the core to find that out of a cohort 
of 50 or so students that only a handful could actually code! Yet  I am 
sure that very few would actually fail the course overall. Strikes me as 
a bit like dancing about painting at times the amount of documentation, 
and periphera that we expect students to produce, are we testing English 
comprehension or computational thinking?

So my answer, having had quite a few brilliant coders who struggled with 
the written side is to get him off to a CCNA program and get him 
certified. Don't ask me why but all the students I've had who struggled 
with the comprehension of the VCE course managed CCNA without serious 
difficulty. One of these days I must have a look at the course and 
figure out what we are doing wrong and they are doing right.

The bigger picture answer is that authentic assessment and a great body 
of what we know about how brains work and how people learn is at odds 
with the way we structure VCE. It's seems as though good pedagogy is 
sacrificed for the expediency of content. You might enjoy Sir Ken 
Robinson's views on industrial education at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY , I'm pretty sure you student 
would get it.

Wouldn't mind taking a side bet your student will be a very wealthy man 
by the time he's 40, so hang in there and keep plugging

Regards,
Brett Groves
ICT Manager
Croydon Secondary College


On 04/11/11 09:37, Travis Parker wrote:
>
> Colleagues,
>
> In my short teaching career I have taught year 12 Business Management, 
> IT Apps, Cert III Multimedia and this is my first year of teaching 
> Software Development. I have a student that is really concerning me 
> about his performance and I'm sure some of you must have come across 
> this situation before. He is a brilliant programmer -- He basically 
> goes home and that's all he does. He has a website that he has 
> uploaded some games that he has developed to and has even linked in an 
> online high scores table. He has attended most of the Uni courses in 
> holiday periods plus completed a few night courses. He is the only 
> student all year to comprehensively fulfil all of the criteria of the 
> applications in U3O2 and U4O1. However, English is his worst subject. 
> He can't put pen to paper and has recently sat one of the practice 
> exams for me (The Insight one) and got 7/88, 6 of which were from 
> multiple choice. His comprehension is shocking even though practically 
> he can easily apply things like 2D arrays, quick sorts, binary 
> searches, stacks, queues, etc.
>
> My question is this -- How are these type of students treated in the 
> final results? This must be the hardest subject to have rankings in 
> because you give students fair marks for their programs but it doesn't 
> mean that they can sit down and write about it in a final exam. For 
> example, in Business Management all SACs were tests as was the final 
> exam which made for consistent rankings, however much of the SAC marks 
> this year were for programming skills and their application, but the 
> exam is written.
>
> Has anyone had a student like this before??????
>
> Good luck to all in the exam!
>
> Trav
>
> Travis Parker
>
> Head of ICT
>
> Beaconhills College Pakenham
>
> *(*03 5945 3016
>
>
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