Week 9

I've given in Nader's assignment on unit 6, P1 P2
My assignment for Maura Pope which is for the P1 P2 P3 M1 is due for tomorrow, I have completed it and am going to give it in.

I got a big assignment from David Castor, it's for system analysis and design and its due for December 12th.

Part of my criteria for the assignment was to have an interview with the client, I have done this and have got a video which I will post underneath.



Here is the video transcript:

// Monday 14 November, 9:16AM, Richmond upon Thames College, ICT Staff Department Q Block

Ø  = Kambiz Karimi

¨       = Norbey Beltran

Regular text = Judy May

So good morning it’s Monday the 14^th of November

Ø  What are the rules of the system?

I will refer you to the edexcel.com website, if you look up btec extended diploma in the 600 page document that is the course handbook, it will give you all of the rules because it depends how many merits you get will give you whether you get a merit distinction overall, the basic rules per unit you’ve either got to pass everything or pass everything and get merits or pass and merits and all the distinctions to get distinctions.

There are 18 units to the entire extended diploma, initially you’re starting on an subsidiary diploma which is 6 units and in order to get onto the extended diploma you need to pass the subsidiary diploma, there are mandatory units that you must complete, which are: employability, business systems and computing systems and then there will be another three units for the subsidiary that you will need to get through in order to get onto the next extended diploma and at the end of the extended diploma you will get 3 qualifications, because you’re getting the equivalent of three vocational a levels and there will also be points attached so you’re overall grade will give you ucas points and universities will require a certain amount of ucas points to get in.

¨       If you get triple D?

Triple distinctions most universities will take you

Ø  What is the highest grade?

D* D* D*  and we are now on BTEC 2010 and we are looking forward to BTEC 2012, I will try to get the direct link for you because obviously it’s a bit quicker when you’ve been through the website a couple of times.

And what we need is a system that allows us to track student’s progress initially for the subsidiary diploma but then for the extended diploma and what we’re looking for is that it will allow the tutor monitoring people to see how students are progressing identify issue’s early, it will work in two ways, one it will track students completions of assignments, resubmissions, identify any problems early and then hopefully do something about them, it will also allow us to add up all the passes all the merits all the distinctions and work out what the grade will be at the end without having to do a big sum.

Ø  And is that system for you?

It will be for me, the BTEC tutors, for the tutor manager and we have lecturers with additional responsibilities (LARs) who would also be monitoring the monitoring of the tracking of the tracking. And obviously the data would be input from the lecturers responsible per unit. And I’d be interested in your input whether that would be a visible system so you can rack your progress against other students because we can either keep it in the student pool which means you can see it but the student pool is read only by default so students wouldn’t be able to change it and that’s already set up or if we put it in the staff pool then students wouldn’t see it unless we show it to them, we’ll work out whether it can be ‘moodalized’ later. And we should be able to predict grades after the first two terms.

Ø  So would you have predicted grades by now?

If  you consistently got a pass all the way through your predicted grades are PPP if you’re half passes half merits then we’ll be looking at whether it’s a PPM or PMM

Ø  Do they look at your GCSE grades and workout what you should be getting?

No, not but GCSE grades will give us some information about what you should get.

¨       So do we put GCSE records in the database as well?

I would be more interested in just college grades because I can pick up your points score from your GCSE from an existing system. Now I have got some system that you can have a look at I’d like you to do a bit of thinking and then I’ll sort of show you a system, we have set one up for our gateway groups which is very straightforward, their rules are slightly different because every learning outcome has pass merit distinction and that is in the student pool which I think is in your K drive, 20IT/Gateway/something like gateway to IT support tracking. So you can have a look at that but that’s slightly different because the we have is this assignment is going to give you p4 p5 m3 d1 and trough the point of view of a staff member I Just want to track what you got for this assignment, so interested to see what your analysis comes up with, ok.

At the moment we’ve got two groups on year one and two groups on year 2, we hope to expand this so on the grounds that this is on the place to go forward it needs to be expanded to 3 possibly four groups and we may have the situation to have 3 on the first year and 4 on the second year so again it’s moving those results across effectively so to say the result come from the grades from your assignments but we also need to track whether you submitted , referred whether resubmitted and then there’s this pass merit distinction leading to the overall grade and really good to get your analysis. At the moment this is all being looked at the college wide by our quality manager who’s been incredibly challenged by the if statements you’d need to get the if you’ve got all the passed and if you’ve got all the merits and if you’ve got all the distinctions then will you get a distinction and if you haven’t you don’t. So interesting bit of analysis to do so what I will do is share it with her to see it from the student’s perspective. So I need to get the link to you so you can understand the tracking system.

¨       We need your e-mail as well

Jmay@rutc.ac.uk / 116 you’ve got allot of information and you’re going to get an awful lot more

Once you get half way through the analysis by all means come back and we’ll do another interview.

Also really important keep your individual blogs.

Ø  So is this worth the P4 P5 M2 D1 which one of those is group work?

The blog is going to do the showing that you’ve doing the structured analysis and you would also have a presentation to show dual evidence but what the blog will do is, as a group the work may not be up to merit standard but one of you wasn’t pulling y our work and the individual work is going to let us know who’s not getting the passes. But the return on investment because quicker and easier for staff to do the tracking so it takes them less time. And as I say it may well be if you as a group to see each other’s progress it becomes quite a powerful motivator for students and you start getting the message about aiming for those merits and distinctions earlier.

Thank You Mr.Spielburg

// INTERVIEW END 9:31AM

Factors I could have improved on this week:

• Organising my time, I was forced to do my M1 all in one day so making sure I prioritise the right assignments for the right day
• Punctuality; I have been 2 minutes late to a lesson and wasn't allowed in, this is my first lateness and will try hard not to be late again by leaving an extra 10 minutes earlier