Many of you subscribe to an online mailing list called “sqacomputing”, which is hosted by Yahoo. In its heyday it had over 600 members but the membership has been in steady decline. It’s an announcement-only group (you can’t reply) and it’s the only Yahoogroup that we still use. A few months ago the SQA team started to experiment with Twitter, and this has quickly gained a large following, with 110 “followers”. Twitter provides a similar service to Yahoogroups but is…
I got an enquiry this morning about the location of the e-learning materials that can be used to support various IT-related HN units. Previously this had been hosted on a private website but this has been brought in-house and is now hosted on the SQA website. It’s a fantastic resource. All of the HNCs in my portfolio (such as HNC Computing and HNC IT) are covered by this material, and some HNDs (such as HND Computing) have the majority of…
The validation event for the new NPAs in Computer Games Development (at SCQF Levels 4, 5 and 6) was held today at Jury’s Inn in Glasgow. The Validation Panel was convened by Nigel Kennington, of Telford College, who was on the other side of the table not so long ago. The outcome was that the award was validated with conditions (or, more accurately, “not validated until conditions are met”). There were three conditions and a couple of recommendations. But nothing…
Caroline and me visited Central College this morning to meet with Chris Deegan and Ian Lennie to discuss the links between the HNC/D Networking awards and the Cisco curriculum. Cisco’s CCNA programme changed some time ago, breaking the mapping between that and our HNC/D Networking qualifications. Our interim advice was for centres to create their own credit transfer arrangements until we had a chance to review the Networking awards, which was scheduled for 2010. But that review is now entwined…
I received an enquiry today asking for an introductory unit that delivered basic ICT skills covering such things as computer skills, Internet skills and learning skills. When I checked through the units available, there were units on each of these areas but few that covered more than one of them, and none that covered them all. That made me think that it might be a good idea to create a 21st Century version of Introduction to Computers, which some of…
We had an initial meeting this afternoon about the proposed review of HNC/D Computing and HNC/D Networking. These awards are scheduled to be reviewed this year and it has been suggested that they should be reviewed as a single package rather than separately. Representatives of four centres attended the meeting to discuss the options for change that we will present to a public meeting early next month. We considered various options such as: the status quo: continuing with the current…
A group of Australian universities, led by Adelaide University, has been commissioned by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council to explore ways of modernising assessment practice. More about the project here. The project includes a series of online seminars (“webinars”) about assessment-related issues, the first of which took place last week and is available online. Professor Crisp’s talk is a good summary of the issues facing assessment and is worth a listen. It can be dowloaded here or watched online…
Some time ago, I mentioned that Forth Valley College was leading the development of a new National Certificate (NC) award in Computer Games Development at SCQF Levels 5 and 6. Fiona Jackson is currently forming a Qualification Development Team to progress this work, and is looking for volunteers to join this team. So please contact Fiona if you are interested. The first meeting of the QDT is pencilled-in for 9 June. Although I will keep centres posted via this blog…
We would like to invite you, or representatives from your Centre, to attend the Launch Event for the new HNC/D Computer Games Development group awards. This event will take place on Friday 18th June 2010 at 1030 hours in the Stirling Highland Hotel, Spittal Street, Stirling FK8 1DU. For directions go to http://www.barcelo-hotels.co.uk/the-aa/scotland/31357/ This event will introduce the new awards as well as provide information on: 1. Planned exemplar material production2. Proposed delivery schedules3. Articulation routes4. Credit transfer from existing…
As you are aware, we are about to commence the review of the HNC/D Computer Networking awards. In light of feedback from the Computing & ICT Sector Panel, we felt it would also be beneficial to take into account the future plans for HNC/D Computing due to the overlap between the current Computing: Technical Support and Computer Networking awards The purpose of this event is to gain feedback from the sector and offer ideas on the new structure of the…