On not getting back to El Reg...
Hardly a surprise, that. Having tripped over their own egos in being so dogmatic, they've landed face down in the smelly stuff.
Obviously, someone there may be falling on their stylus before long.
GCSE Computing teachers cry victory as board decides NOT to bin tech teens' work
Frustrated GCSE Computing teachers who battled against OCR's shambolic handling of cheating claims say they are relieved to see the awarding body has finally reached a "common sense" decision on the matter. The exam board, which is part of Cambridge Assessment, had backtracked on an earlier notice that had said that it had …
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 13:04 GMT keithpeter
Assessment methods
Good news for those involved in schools.
Picking up on Leadswinger's comment in the original article, how do we all think these skills should be assessed?
1) Timed written exam
2) Long time scale open ended project documented by code and report
3) One day project with live coded attempt at a vaguely realistic problem and full access to documentation/Web
4) Timed assessment using a simulated environment of some kind without Internet access
5) Anything else
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 13:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Assessment methods
All of the above - there are lots of different skills and knowledge at play in computing and depending on what is taught all four of those are required.
1 is best for testing pure theoretical knowledge (math, the history of coding, what blah is).
2 is best for testing course work, long projects, time management and project management skills.
3 is best for kind of a flash in the pan coding skills (build a health monitoring app using this api in 8 hours)
and 4 is best for infrastructure support/systems administration type skills.
though you could also have 4 but with access to google as in most companies you can google for solutions.
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 13:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Assessment methods
My son is mid-way though his Computing GCSE studies, exams next year.
Controlled assessments don't seem to work very well as far as I can see, though not much evidence of cheating more a problems that its distracting.
I'd personally go for 1) written as 80% of marks and 2) project for 20%, with the project part starting no earlier than 6 months before the written test - that way avoid the nightmare that is controlled assessments taking place in year 10.
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 13:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Assessment methods
"Picking up on Leadswinger's comment in the original article, how do we all think these skills should be assessed?"
But to turn to the meat of your question, the answer is elements of all four. There's some elements of knowledge that timed tests (=exams) are the most obvious way of testing (spelling, for example...) but all of the mentioned techniques do have a place. My original comment was driven by a personal beef that it is daft to have 80% (frequently 100%) of your performance in one to three year's learning decided by a mere couple of hours at an uncomfortable desk in a sweat-scented sports hall in the height of summer, an exercise that primarily tests rote learning, and in such a short time can't possibly scratch more than the surface of the topics taught. In answer to your "anything else", we could consider oral exams or vivas - the best way to find out what somebody knows is always to talk to them, although there is a risk that the marks end up being too subjective and soft.
Testing across a range of assessment methods would allow people's different skills and attributes to shine, and enable the assessment to cover a wider range of skills and topics. I still think that all marked assessment work should not be marked by the teachers - the assessment process should ensure that their is anonymity between marker and marked, to stop "back scratching" generosity.
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 14:59 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Assessment methods
6, Vaguely defined goals set 6months in advance.
Everybody in planning and management of the project changed after 3 months
Hardware platform supplied after 5months
Project deliverable changed the day before the exam
All candidates outsourced to India for the actual exam
Might as well make the subject realistic and appropriate to the workplace
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 15:40 GMT keithpeter
Re: Assessment methods
@Yet Another Anonymous coward: we don't want to put them off too early!
@Ledswinger: you got me there, I copied and pasted the handle this time
Most replies seem to be for a combination of exam and project work of some nature. That fits into what employers organisations always say about developing 'soft skills' (working in groups, time management, evaluation of performance &c).
So we have to make the coursework work somehow and stop it being a competition to see who can find the relative/friend/person down the road who is most prepared to help.
One observation: you don't want to test maths/calculations in each technical subject at age 16, otherwise they will be answering the same kind of questions multiple times. Perhaps some stuff on hexadecimal, floating point representation (covers some wicked maths that) and a bit of logic - in addition to the actual computer stuff of course.
Food for thought: Gove can change the entire exam system without even having to have a debate in Parliament. The education minister has complete control through various 'regulations'.
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Tuesday 1st July 2014 17:00 GMT phil dude
ken robinson, industrial teaching...
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution
This is an excellent talk. The problem with all exams, is what are you trying to teach? One could argue that programming is not taught, but the application to a problem to solve is. And the only reason to memorise computer languages is to make it easier to code.
I'm past any exams, but I would hope that education would become more constructive rather than prescriptive.
"We live in an age of stunning creativity..."
P.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
