controlled assessment

© Boardworks Ltd 20101 of 14

Controlled Assessment


Teacher’s notes included in the Notes Page

Flash activity. These activities are not editable. Web addresses

Icons key: For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation

Functional Skills check

Student task accompanies this slide Printable activity

This lesson will cover:

What is controlled assessment?

An outline of the marking scheme of controlled assessments.

How to approach your controlled assessments.

Useful tips and advice.



60% of an ICT GCSE is composed of the mark for controlled assessment.


Controlled assessment is the opportunity for you to demonstrate the practical and creative ICT skills you have learned. You will be given a brief and expected to produce a ICT solution.

Controlled assessment has many similarities to coursework but all the work must be under controlled conditions to ensure the fairest test of your knowledge.


What is assessed?

All controlled assessments will ask you to demonstrate your ability to meet 3 key objectives:

25-35%

40-50%

20-30%

Each of the objectives will be marked differently to give youa final mark for 60% of your GCSE.

Do you know what all of the keywords mean?Which objective is worth the most marks?

1. Recall, select and communicate your knowledge and understanding of ICT.

2. Apply your knowledge, understanding and skills to produce ICT-based solutions.

3. Analyse, evaluate, make reasoned judgements and present conclusions.


Key skills


Levels of control

The controlled assessment will be made up of three sections with different levels of control:

Task setting – High control. Only your exam board can set the assessment task. New tasks will publish each year.

Task taking – Medium control. You must complete all your own work under informal supervision. There may be times of lower control if you research at home. Writing up your review may be under high-control (exam-like conditions). All your work must be authenticated as your own.

Task marking– Medium control. Teachers will mark your work in line with the exam board criteria and regulations.

Which if these sections is most relevant to you?


What does medium control mean?


Beginning the task

When you are given the task, you will save yourself a lot of headaches if you do the following:

Read the brief thoroughly – this can’t be stressed enough. You need to comprehend it all before you begin and you will probably need to read it several times.

Organize – look at all the elements you have to complete, think of all the time you have (normally 40hrs) and think how much time you’ll have for each part of the task.

Adopt sensible working practices – organized folder structures and sensible file names will save time and may earn you marks. Think about the good working practices you can adopt while working on the tasks.


Using resources

You not only need to keep a record of all the work you complete, but you should also keep a record of all the sources of information you use.

Alternatively. you could credit your sources using footnotes or by creating a bibliography.

One way of doing this is to keep a sources table such as this:


Crediting sources


Planning

Do you know how much time you have to complete the tasks?

There may be differences between exam boards, but whichever board you use you should be able to plan and organize your time.

Just doing the basics will just earn you basic marks, so you should organize your time to produce your best work.

Look at each part of the task – how much time will it take to analyse, research, implement and evaluate?

Are you leaving enough time to proof and check your work?


Evaluating


Spelling and grammar


Top tips

Be organized – plan your time so you don't have to rushAvoid plagiarism – don’t copy friends, parents, books or the Internet and claim the work as your own; even small instances of this can result in all your marks being withdrawn. Examiners are trained to spot plagiarism.Keep track of any research sources you used and where they were obtainedPresent well – by using advanced formatting options to make your work look/read better you will gain more marksProofread – don’t lose marks by not checking your workRelate you work by to the brief – remember you are meant to be producing solutions to problems. Does your work meet the success criteria specified with the brief?

controlled assessment

Documents