[pliddle34]

27/02/2014 at 8:46 am

Copied from Brian’s post on the activity thing:

—-
I’ve been looking at the programming part of the N5 GAmes Review assignment. It states…..

The program should:
• input a valid page number and number of visitors for each page

Does this mean that the program should
-ask the user to enter the page number,
– ensure it is between 1 and 4
– check that that page number hasn’t already been entered
– repeat the whole process until 4 unique page numbers are entered within the 1-4 range?

If so, this seems a pretty inefficient, and over complex solution. At first glance I assumed that a fixed loop should be used to enter page 1, 2, 3 and 4, but now I’m not so sure.

What are your thoughts?

Brian
—-

I reckon that you’re right, but it seems like a faff. Considering a page can have zero visits, the code for checking if it has previously been used would be weird (or array would need to initialise everything at -1?)

I reckon pupils will see this as a fixed loop with input validation for the page view. According to that they would lose marks.

[harry.perston]

27/02/2014 at 10:12 am

I feel that this task is far from clear.

There are 5 web pages not 4. Surely you would want visitor numbers for the home page?

A number of fellow teachers have suggested that pupils use arrays (perhaps because it is NAT5 level?). I can’t see that using arrays is required for this task.

I would expect that pupils validate that the number entered between 1 and 4. Also that they validate the number of pages to a limit of 100. Not sure if I would expect pupils to check if the page number has already been entered.

Unfortunately another assessment that is open to interpretation. A worked solution issued by the SQA might clear this up.

Harry

[Robert Young]

27/02/2014 at 11:48 am

Arrays are not part of the assessment standards at N5 so they don’t need to be used at all. Although it does make sense to use them pupils do not need to.

[Colin McAlpine]

12/03/2014 at 9:40 am

I’ve kind of allowed my pupils to complete this as freely as possible. As far as I’m concerned, there shouldn’t be a “right” way to complete it. Surely the aim is getting pupils to a) develop it on their own and b) test that it meets requirements and iteratively fix any errors

I’ll send the MS over that we are putting together, as we are also being verified.
What we have done is essentially break down the marks into a MS reflecting what we would have had with the old standard grade MS

Do you want to mail me your email address?

cmcalpine@hamilton.s-lanark.sch.uk

[tim]

12/03/2014 at 12:42 pm

Most of my pupils haven’t been using arrays. They have been using input validation. It would be ridiculous to criticize pupils for not doing something that they haven’t been asked to do if they have fulfilled the program specification.

The solutions without arrays are of course very inefficient!

[Richard Tierney]

12/03/2014 at 6:04 pm

SQA seems to want things like arrays, but also first and second normalisation. That these topics are not officially to be covered seems not to matter.

[Lee Murray]

17/03/2014 at 2:55 pm

Arrays do need to be covered, as is stated in the Course Assessment Specification and other documents.

Normalisation isn’t expected and isn’t necessary; not all linked tables have to be normalised.

Regarding the Games review task, I agree that it is so badly thought out that I’ve avoided it completely. The program isn’t clear on exactly what it should do and the website must be created entirely in HTML, which none of my pupils could do.

[Colin McAlpine]

17/03/2014 at 3:02 pm

I think the Games Review task is pretty good. The HTML part is pretty basic and I would say most of my pupils are getting full marks on this section of the coursework. They’ve quite enjoyed making the pages and has been a welcome break from the incessant programming and databases!

[Colin McAlpine]

17/03/2014 at 3:03 pm

I think the Games Review task is pretty good. The HTML part is pretty basic and I would say most of my pupils are getting full marks on this section of the coursework. They’ve quite enjoyed making the pages and has been a welcome break from the incessant programming and databases!
I totally agree on the programming section however, it really needs clearing up on the exact requirements. Perhaps an SQA sample solution would be useful?

[pliddle34]

17/03/2014 at 3:40 pm

Arrays aren’t in the unit assessments but they are in the course spec. This means they -can- be in your N5 assignment. They -shouldn’t- be in a unit assessment (but they are…) but that doesn’t relate to the N5 assignments.

Today at the Higher implementation event there were lots of questions about N5 coursework, because so many people are being verified. Dave main said they would be responding to the uncertainty about input validation in particular.

Today when asking the verifier I was told that arrays would be expected but input validation for page number wouldn’t necessarily be as necessary (i.e. a fixed loop could be used instead). This is where the “extra information” bit comes in – if pupils fully justify a design decision and it works then it shouldn’t be a problem…

I like it but it’s messier than it should be. I don’t mind spending time working on coursework – I do not want to be doing the same next year for the unit assessments though – so much time!

[David Muir]

19/03/2014 at 3:19 pm

Thanks pliddle34, for passing on the comments from your verifier that we don’t need to validate inputting the numbers 1 to 4. We were assuming that was the case but it’s nice to have it confirmed.

Less clear about arrays though. Although arrays are “expected” I assume the “…if pupils fully justify a design decision and it works then it shouldn’t be a problem…” bit means they are not compulsory?

[pliddle34]

19/03/2014 at 3:24 pm

Hi,

I should caveat that – Dave Main then said they would sending out official advice on the issue.

I think so too. I think it’s totally doable without arrays and still have validation, but to use control structures well it really needs an array?

[David Muir]

19/03/2014 at 5:40 pm

I’ve had a couple of pupils do it as a VB list. Although that is not an array, I think it can be justified as a perfectly sensible way to do it. One did it as four text boxes in an onscreen form which was used for data input. The contents were validated before processing. Not easy to process with a loop but, again, I think it can be justified – especially since there are only four pages worth of data being collected. Am I being too nice? Should I have insisted on arrays and for loops?

[Lucinda]

19/03/2014 at 6:14 pm

I was told it is ok to use arrays, VB lists or arraylists, VB lists can be processed using a for each loop- which is pretty easy to do. loads of examples on MSDN

[pliddle34]

20/03/2014 at 1:03 pm

Here’s a question:

What’s the maximum you could give a candidate who produced a working program (with input validation etc) that didn’t use arrays? Is it 10 or 9? Or is it less? My reading of it is that it would probably be 9, as they have selected data types/structures that are not as suitable for the job as an array. Does anyone think this is correct?