[Year 12 Its] A radical approach to the course -- and the 2005
examiner's report .....
Kevork Krozian
kevork at edulists.com.au
Fri Mar 31 09:14:44 EST 2006
Hi again everyone,
While on the subject of exams, here is a list of my comments about the
examiners' ( or examiner's ) report on the 2005 exam :
( The examiner's report and the exam are both on the vcaa web site if you
are not aware of this yet )
Section A
Q6 -- Main purpose of acceptance testing. Acceptance testing is the
customer's responsiblity and requires the customer to either agree to the
plan or actually do the acceptance testing with or without the support of
the IT team. ( http://builder.com.com/5100-6374-1044625.html )
The wording used in the answers suggests it is a demonstration performed
by builders of the system to show the client the system meets the
needs/goals defined in the system design. Maybe it means the same thing;
maybe it doesn't.
Q7 -- one factor not mentioned is customer internet connection speed.
Marks affected - 2 marks
Section B
Q 9 - a little hard as there are different types of ROMs from
very slow to very fast. Hopefully the examiners are expecting only the very
fast variety to be discussed. I expect the 2 advantages are speed ( faster )
and non erasable unlike a hard drive - handy for a small program. However I
caution, the slowest ROM access speeds are 200ms compared to a slow hard
drive speed of 30 ms.
In addition, the read only aspect of ROMs is mentioned
as an advantage over the writeable aspect of the HDD. However, with a GUI
driven system, this should not be a valid reason as customers should not be
able to access the hard drive directly.
Some students may have given reliability of ROM over a
HDD as another advantage in terms of MTBF ( Mean time between failures). Was
this accepted/considered ? ( 2 marks affected )
Q10. Input devices considered were keyboard, mouse or touch
screen on a GUI driven interface. Was this intended to read keyboard AND
mouse OR touch screen ? You can point with a keyboard and you can type
with a mouse by using a virtual keyboard on screen , and maybe press Tab to
jump to the next object on the screen or program the arrow keys to do so.
So , reasons given for not using a keyboard and mouse is that it could be
stolen or broken. In an international hotel, this seems a little unusual
that in a registration area, people who can afford to pay for a room may
wish to steal a keyboard.
Or a student could have been completely thrown by the fact a mouse
alone will not do the job considering there is no mention of a virtual
keyboard or navigation keys on the keyboard if only a keyboard is
considered. ( 3 marks affected )
Q 11 - the last item in the table reads " The speed of a guest
booking into the hotel must be REDUCED by 30% on average" ? So bookings
must be slower !!!! Clearly this is unintended wording and this question
should have been withdrawn as happened with an IPM question last year.
Also, The system must not cause a wait of more than 3 seconds
to answer any request from the booths is categorised as "efficiency". What
about effectiveness based on the fact it is timely, on time exactly at 3
seconds or less ?. This is clearly effectiveness. ( 2 marks affected )
Q12 - A sad day when there is a question with the network
designed with this type of bottleneck where all traffic to the internet HAS
to go through the server, just like it HAD to in the early to mid 1990s. Why
? Because routers were so expensive, servers acted as de facto routers with
2 network cards adding untold loads on these machines.
Two options given in the answers. Option 1, Components 1,
2, 3 as Router, server and switch respectively. Option 2, Components 1, 2,3
as Modem, Server, Router .
To make sense of this, consider that Component 3 HAS to
be a switch. There is no other concentration device to connect nodes apart
from a switch, in the list given. ( A router is not a concentration device.
To see that it is in the examiner's report brings tears to my eyes. ) There
also has to be a server in there and realistically it has to be at Component
2. Finally, you don't need a modem when you have a router, if you
understand what routers can do, so component 1 has to be a router though
it can be a modem with no firewall.
So in summary, a network that looks nothing like what you
find in any modern organisation with too much confusion on what components
are valid in each location. ( up to 2 - 4 marks affected )
Q 13 -- a) and b) and c) good question. Fair errors in
algorithm (only prints total if booking is off-peak and calculates an extra
day for cost of booking ).
d) What about a double ( or float ) data type as
used in Java or C for Total Cost ?? and room cost is given as an Array.
As mentioned in an earlier email, an array is not a data type, it is a data
structure, like a record or an array of records. The correct answer is
integer ( or even double or real as dollars can be written with the cents
showing and this could be indicated. ( up to 2 marks affected )
In summary, I can see a total of 13 marks a student could have
lost by giving valid but not the preferred answers the examiners wanted.
Whether such a student existed during last year's exam is probably unlikely.
However I can argue that many students lost 2, 4 , 6, 8 or more marks
unless examiners accepted all the alternative answers I have shown above for
which there is no evidence in the examiner's report.
Maybe someone can help me. What impact would an extra 8 - 10 marks in the
exam have on a student's study score if their given score was 42 and they
were elevated by 10% in their exam result ??? Could they have scored 47, 48
?
How tight was the ranking at the top 8% ( 40 - 50 ) end of scores for IT
Systems ?
Happy to hear comments.
Best Wishes
Kevork Krozian
Mailing List Creator and Administrator
kevork at edulists.com.au
www.edulists.com.au
Tel: 0419 356 034
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Van Den Boom" <vandenboomfj at aquinas.vic.edu.au>
To: "Kevork Krozian" <kevork at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 9:29 AM
Subject: FW: [Year 12 Its] A radical approach to the course
> Kevork
> I did not want to air this with the whole group, but some of your comments
> here really struck me.
>
> I don't know what was different about last year's exam - I have taught
> this course 5 years now and I thought that last year I had the best group
> I have ever had, and did the best delivery of the course I have ever done.
> My kids did about 5 papers quite well, and I corrected them all. Result :
> half of my class got 36 to 39, and I did not get a single 40. In previous
> years, I have always managed to get a 2-4 40's. Something different
> happened last year - but it is a mystery to me.
>
> Frank
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: is-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:is-bounces at edulists.com.au]On
> Behalf Of Kevork Krozian
> Sent: Thursday, 30 March 2006 6:00 PM
> To: Year 12 Information Technology Systems Teachers' Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Year 12 Its] A radical approach to the course
>
>
> Hi Robert,
>
> Consider the following as part of the IT Systems course over the 3
> terms
> that school based learning and assesment is carried out :
>
> 1. High end programming tasks in a true object oriented language such as
> Java using both primitive and advanced data structures such as arrays,
> records, arrays of records, vectors, writing to and retrieving from disk
> files in both text and binary formats, building of truly intuitive GUIs
> with
> menus, controls and validation such as drop down lists, process validation
> with activation or deactivation of controls bases on actions on the GUI
> etc
> etc
> 2. Building real networks as part of the networking SACs (SAC31 and SAC42)
> using cisco routers, switches, switching routers as used in SOHOs as well
> as
> larger organisations, setting up wireless access points, configuring
> security for these and demonstrating how simple 128bit wireless encryption
> can be hacked in 3 minutes, demonstrating firewalls and configuration of
> these.
> 3. Carrying out SDLC examples using the case studies supplied by VITTA CD
> ,
> amongst others as offered on the lists
> 4. Teaching IT Systems students who are also Cisco CCNA students with
> average scores of 95% for Cisco networking assessment tasks.
>
> and the students who average 96 - 97 % in these SACs score a final study
> score of 38 - 40 meaning there are a further 8% of the IT Systems cohort
> who
> are higher performers in the Study of Information Systems ( score of 40
> meaning you are in the top 8% of performance in that subject )
> Can anyone maybe explain how this happens if not for lack of working out
> the types of answers the examiners prefer ?
>
> Best Wishes
> Kevork Krozian
> Mailing List Creator and Administrator
> kevork at edulists.com.au
> www.edulists.com.au
> Tel: 0419 356 034
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Timmer-Arends" <timmer at melbpc.org.au>
> To: "Year 12 Information Technology Systems Teachers' Mailing List"
> <is at edulists.com.au>
> Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 5:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [Year 12 Its] A radical approach to the course
>
>
>> Hello Keith
>>
>> I agree that lots of exam practice produces results, but yes, I am saying
>> that
>>
>>> conquering the challenge of good exam technique is not a 'good' use of
>>> educational endeavour.
>>
>> At least not in the amount of time it consumes in relation to what
>> (ideally)
>> we are trying to teach. While I agree that being able to quickly assemble
>> a
>> lot of facts and put together a coherent response is a useful faculty to
>> have, surely there are more educationally sound ways of doing this.
>> Moreover, I am not so sure that the over emphasis on exam technique does
>> "significantly better (prepare students) for many other challenges that
>> life
>> will throw up at them in their future social and working lives." -
>> perhaps,
>> as others have noted, it does for university, but then that perhaps says
>> something about university as well!
>>
>> (the soap box could get a little crowded - or should we bring our own?)
>>
>> Regards
>> Robert T-A
>> Brighton SC
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> IT Systems Mailing List kindly supported by
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>> Authority
>> and
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>> Teachers
>> Association Inc
>>
>
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> IT Systems Mailing List kindly supported by
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