aqa comp4 wre jun15

GCE

Computing

COMP4 – The Computing Practical Project

Report on the Examination

2510

Summer 2015

Version: 1.0

Further copies of this Report are available from aqa.org.uk Copyright © 2015 AQA and its licensors. All rights reserved. AQA retains the copyright on all its publications. However, registered schools/colleges for AQA are permitted to copy material from this booklet for their own internal use, with the following important exception: AQA cannot give permission to schools/colleges to photocopy any material that is acknowledged to a third party even for internal use within the centre.

REPORT ON THE EXAMINATION – GCE COMPUTING – COMP4 – Summer 2015

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Introduction

Schools and colleges that entered students in 2015 should read this report in conjunction with the specific feedback sent to them on the publication of results. The comments below highlight the observations of Senior Moderators during this year’s exam and should be used with the subject specification, assessment criteria and the COMP4 Advice and Information Booklet for Teachers' Standardising to ensure that school/college assessment is accurate. For the 2015 exam, the latter can be found in the Secure Key Materials section of e-AQA together with exemplar projects and commentaries. For the 2016 exam, similar information will appear on the Teacher Online Standardising (T-OLS) website which will be available via e-AQA. It is essential that new schools and those who have had mark adjustments complete the T-OLS exercise. Please also use the coursework adviser service for advice on potential complexity of projects in particular. Your adviser can be contacted by emailing [email protected]. There were no changes to the total mark or assessment criteria compared to last year. In most cases those that had marks adjusted had incorrectly assessed the level of complexity or failed to adjust the marking band used when a potentially complex problem had a solution that was not complex. The procedure to follow in these cases is described in section 6 ‘Reassessing Complexity’ of the document referenced below. This was particularly the case when candidate record forms had the ‘concluding comments’ part of section B blank or incomplete. The form specifically states that the level of complexity needs to be stated here and justified with reference to the document COMP4 Definition of problem types for projects. Comments relating to student ability and/or effort, whilst helpful to students, are irrelevant to moderators. Moderation is only concerned with the accuracy of assessment of student achievement.

Administration

Many centres complete all the administration requirements fully and submit excellent assessment comments with the projects which is very helpful to the moderation process. There is a high correlation between centres that complete all the administration correctly and have centre marks accepted. A significant number of centres submitted work after the 15 May deadline, however as there were several late changes to the moderation team it could be the case that projects were sent to the moderator first allocated to the centre and there was a delay with forwarding to the adjusted moderator. If this is the case then AQA sincerely apologise if your feedback form has a negative comment re late arrival. All moderators were informed to check carefully to avoid this type of comment. A reminder that 15 May is the date always used and it is the date by which the moderator should receive the projects and fully completed, carefully checked paperwork. It is also noted that too many centres persist in sending projects other than by 1st class post as in the instructions to examinations officers from AQA. Moderators are not at home all day and cannot be expected to go a distribution centre to collect projects. This risks the projects being returned to centres with a possible delay in publication of results. Some centres still send work in bulky ring binders, on other than A4 paper or as loose sheets in wallet files. Please assist moderation by sending projects printed only on A4 paper and bound by treasury tags that enable the projects to be read as a ‘book’.


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All contact between AQA and centres is through the centre’s examinations officer who should check that the paper work sent with the projects is complete. This is particularly the case if the person responsible for assessment is performing this task for the first time. A significant number of exams officers failed to ensure the instructions given in the document ‘Instructions for submitting coursework/controlled assessment marks and samples’ (CAW/INST) are followed exactly. This is sent to centres and is available on the AQA website. This causes problems with moderation and centres who do not follow these instructions risk having their results delayed. The most frequent errors were

1. Failure to submit a CDS with the coursework sent to the moderator. 2. Failure to add section marks correctly on CRFs 3. Failure to the check total mark on the CRF is correctly copied to the CMF or EDI entry. 4. Failure to ensure candidate authentication signatures on the CRFs. 5. Failure to complete fully the CRF section entitled ‘Concluding Comments’ with the level of

complexity used when assessing the projects and failure to justify this with reference to the document COMP4 Definition of problem types for projects. This is available at http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/AQA-2510-W-TRB-COMP4DPTP.PDF

The complete subject specification is at http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/specifications/alevel/AQA-2510-W-SP-14.PDF with the detailed assessment criteria for COMP4 on pages 18 to 33. Specific guidance with regard to coursework is at http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/ict-and-computer-science/a-level/computing-2510/coursework With regard to the content of the actual projects some centres ‘labelled a project as ‘adequate complexity’ but then gave a mark from the top mark band. The assessment criteria give detailed comments as to what is required in each mark band for each level of complexity. Some of the more frequently occurring problems are reported section by section in the following paragraphs. Analysis

It would appear some students are writing a program and then finding a user with a problem that their program can solve. It is very unlikely that the assessment criteria can be addressed unless the student first establishes a real user need so that they are aware of the problem that needs to be solved. Particular weaknesses are a lack of the use of formal methods, lack of analysis data dictionaries, and data flow diagrams that do not conform to the convention that they are actually supposed to show what happens to data as it passes through the system from source to destination. An analysis that does not fully address all the relevant assessment criteria cannot be rewarded by a high mark from the relevant mark band according to the ‘complexity’ of the problem being solved. Frequently objectives are either not clear and/or not SMART. Design

In almost every case, students who were able to show the processing they intended to code with algorithms/pseudo code were those that gained a high mark overall. It remains disappointing that the programming skills required for COMP1 are often not built upon for COMP4. Most students gave clear details of data requirements and some normalised data sets accurately if their project was data handling. HCI ‘designs’ are frequently post implementation with no evidence that they are prototypes. If such screens have evidence of dialogue with the end user then this is good practice.


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Technical Solution

There was some exceptionally high levels of coding skills shown by some high scoring candidates. The assessment criteria describe how to award the marks based on complexity. However some centres frequently give a mark based on successfully achieving all or most objectives when the candidates’ own appraisal indicates that few of the complex objectives aimed for were actually achieved. However, centres must be careful not to give credit for imported modules of code when using an application builder or the Raspberry Pi. Testing

Although this is not linked to complexity, it is not possible to score top marks without boundary testing. If this is not applicable the student needs to clearly state and justify why. Too many students give details of multiple logon and navigation tests only. Candidates need to concentrate on testing the code they have written to process/transform data. Most test evidence was cross referenced to a test plan but a significant weakness was annotation of test results as was multiple screen shots on the same page making it very difficult to see the results of tests. The advice is no more than 2 screen shots per A4. System Maintenance (SM)

Only a very few high scoring candidates fully addressed all the assessment criteria for this section. Most included the code and some good candidates indicated the more complex parts they had written. This is very good practice. Algorithms were a problem here as well as in design. If the algorithms in design indicate all the processing and are fully implemented by the code it is permissible to reference the design algorithms in this section. However credit cannot be given for referencing SM algorithms in design. Design algorithms indicate the processing intended whereas SM algorithms state the processing actually done by the finished program. If they are the same then just copy them so they are in both design and SM. User Manual (UM) including QWC

Although it perfectly acceptable to include this within a single project report document it should be possible to print it as a stand-alone document, hence the need for page numbers. Error handling was often poor which restricts the mark that can be awarded. There is still evidence that a few centres are using an old subject specification in that QWC was given a separate mark. It is essential that the current documents are used as the mark range available is different dependent on the complexity of the solution achieved. The assessment criteria clearly describe how to mark the UM and what to do if QWC does not meet the criteria listed. Appraisal

The assessment criteria make it quite clear that the mark for evaluating how well the objectives set out in analysis is related to complexity. This means 3 marks are only applicable to complex projects with a fully implemented complex solution. A yes/no or tick box approach to the achievement of objectives is not valid. User feedback must be authenticated by the assessor to earn a mark. Only if this user feedback is fully analysed by the student and then used as the basis for improvements can additional mark(s) be awarded. If the student lists improvements without first analysing user feedback then this cannot be awarded a mark. Obviously without user feedback there cannot be marks awarded for improvements. This is explained clearly in the assessment criteria.


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Mark Ranges and Award of Grades Grade boundaries and cumulative percentage grades are available on the Results Statistics page of the AQA Website. Converting Marks into UMS marks Convert raw marks into Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) marks by using the link below. UMS conversion calculator www.aqa.org.uk/umsconversion

aqa comp4 wre jun15

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