E-learning material

As part of the additional support that we can now provide for the new awards, we plan to produce e-learning material for the mandatory units in the new HNC qualification (excluding the Graded Unit). We have assembled a team of writers, led by Ted Hastings, which will produce the material.

We didn't specify what tools the developers should use, so long as the final material can be used flexibly in a wide range of environments, including stand-alone and hosted on a VLE. One of the most popular ways of generating content is Wordpress, and we hosted a training event on Saturday for those writers who wanted to know more about this development environment.

It seemed to go well, and Wordpress appears to be a very capable development tool. I think the people who attended were impressed with its facilities.

We have traditionally supported our HN awards with e-learning material (the Computing awards are the best supported of any HN) and this initiative will continue that tradition. Look out for the new materials being available in June. Contact Caroline if you want more information on this project.

HNC Computing - Update

I understand that many centres are currently planning for the new session so thought it would be a good time to give you an update on the status for the new HNC Computing award.

The framework is now fixed and can be accessed here.  There is a section on the framework dedicated entirely to vendor.  This section will continue to populate as and when vendor courses have been successfully SCQF credit and levelled (and approved by the QDT).  More information on vendors will be detailed in the Arrangements Document due to be published on the SQA website in the next 3-4 weeks.

The Unit Specifications are validated and currently awaiting coding. These will start to appear on the website for download over the next week or so.  As soon as I start to receive a note of the codes I shall add them to the framework so that you have a complete listing of Units and Codes for the new and revised specifications.

The assessment exemplars for all mandatory Units in the HNC are well underway and these will be in place for the start of the new session.

We have managed to attain surplus monies from our year end budget that we have allocated this to three new projects to help support the new award:

1. Additional assessment exemplar packs (30 in total) covering a selection of optional units in the HNC
2. Online teaching and learning materials for the mandatory units in the new HNC Computing award
3. HN 2.0 project (further information here)

We shall be updating this blog with the status of all these projects over the next few months.

Update on progress

This seems a good time to post another update on how things are progressing.

Since the validation event for the HNC in December, we've been working on the conditions and recommendations that the Panel asked us to address. We've made good progress, and I hope to have the HNC award validated in the near future. In the meantime, you can prepare for the new award if you're planning to offer it in August.

We've also been given additional funding to produce extra support materials for the new qualification, and the HN 2.0 project will investigate how you can use social media for assessing the HNC.

I didn't want to progress with the HNDs until the HNC was in-hand, and I think that we are pretty much in that position now, so we'll be organising the next meeting of the QDT soon.

Contact Caroline if you want specific information about the new awards.

HN 2.0

I've previously mentioned that there is additional money to support this development, and that one of the areas we planned to invest in was assessment. I am about to kick-off a new project to modernise the assessment within the revised HNC.

The HN 2.0 project aims to explore how Web 2.0/social media can be used to assist lecturers carry out assessment in the new HNC award. The objectives are:

1. identify specific Web 2.0 technologies that can be used for assessment
2. identify units within the new HNC that could be assessed through social media
3. exemplify this in terms of concrete examples of evidence generation through social media.

The deliverables will be a report and a workshop.

I haven't created a detailed project plan yet, so I can't be sure about timescales, but I hope to have the work complete by the summer.

I will be seeking volunteers for this project through the usual channels (such as the online group) but contact me directly if you are interested in getting involved.

SOLAR support

The current HNC/D awards make great use of SOLAR for online assessment. In fact, Computing has more assessments delivered this way than any other subject.

I met with Graeme Clarke, Project Manager for Computer Assisted Assessment, this afternoon to discuss how SOLAR could continue to support the new HN awards.

It was a good, positive meeting. The e-assessment team is keen to support the new awards. He gave me some good news about the HNC Graded Unit -- new assessments were recently added to SOLAR for this important unit. Additional questions have been added to the item bank to make more tests available to centres.

Graeme also pledged support for the new and revised units within the new group awards. It's too early to say exactly what units will be supported through SOLAR, but it was great to hear this support.

Contact Joan Morris if you want to find out more about using SOLAR or find out what is available to centres.

Additional support is coming

We have recently received additional financial support for this development. We have received fairly significant sums of money to support this development. This money will permit us to create additional support materials. For example, we had planned to produce assessment exemplars for the mandatory units only, but this money will permit us to write assessments for many of the optional units too. Some of the money will be used to create e-learning material for the mandatory units in the HNC. And there is now some money to take forward the modernising assessment initiative.

Look out for more information about each of these initiatives in the near future. Or contact Caroline to find out how you can get involved.

Modernising assessment

I came across an interesting paper recently relating to the assessment of Web 2.0 (social media) in universities. The paper is entitled Worth it? Findings from a study of how academics assess students' Web 2.0 activities and was published in the February 2012 edition of Research in Learning Technology. The full paper can be downloaded here.

The paper points out that the use of social media for assessment was limited. When it was used, it was used for low- or mid-stakes assessment. The most common technologies were blogs and wikis. And the subjects that used it most were Social Science, IT, and Education. Its conclusion was not good:

"Web 2.0 cannot be seen to be transforming assessment. On the contrary, its affordances are being appropriated to perpetuate conventional, invisible assessment practices."

The use of Web 2.0 in assessment is a professional interest of mine. My paper on modernising assessment was referenced in this research.

I suspect that practice in FE in the UK is no better and, possibly, worse. One of the goals of the HN Review is to improve assessment. I plan to look at ways that we could utilise some of the affordances of social media to do this. Look out for more information on an "HN 2.0" project in the near future.

What you can do now

We hope to have the updated HNC award available to centres from April. But that doesn't mean that you have to wait until then to start preparing to deliver the updated award.

The draft framework was broadly accepted by the Validation Panel, so the shape of the award is known. In fact, none of the conditions relate to the mandatory section of the qualification, which will be unchanged. The only structural change will be the addition of one or two units to the optional section.

We are presently validating the new or revised units in the award. In fact, some of the units have been validated and are now "feature complete". We'll share these units with you in the near future. Watch this space.

You will start to see final (coded) versions of the units appear on the SQA website from February and definitive Arrangements will be published on the SQA in April. There will be a launch event in June.

The existing HNC framework will continue to be "current" until 31 August 2014 (the date of the final certification) so there is no requirement for you to offer the new award right now, but we think that it is so much better than the existing award that we hope you consider offering the new version from August of this year.

Contact Caroline if you want to know more about this development.

Dealing with the validation conditions

The validation event was very thorough, and resulted in several conditions and recommendations. I created an action plan to deal with them, and allocate each condition or recommendation to a specific member of the QDT. For example, the Validation Panel wanted formal written support from the Sector Skills Council (E-Skills), which I am working on. Janice Maxted, the Qualification Leader for the HNC, is revising the Graded Unit in line with the Panel's suggestions. There are several other actions being worked on by various people.

Caroline, Hilary and myself are also busy validating the 52 new or revised units in the new HNC/HNDs awards. We are slowly working through these and hope to have all of the units validated by the end of January.

Although there is plenty to do, we hope to have all of the conditions lifted by the end of January, so that the HNC award is available to centres from April.

Contact Caroline if you want to know more about how we're progressing with the validation of the HNC award.

E-assessment support for the new awards

I met with Graeme Clark, of the E-Assessment & Learning team in SQA, this afternoon to discuss how that team could support the new HN awards.

The existing HNC/D Computing is the best supported HN award on SOLAR, SQA's e-testing system, with over 70 units currently supported by some form of online testing.

The purpose of the meeting was the discuss the extent of change in the new awards, and how much, if any, of the existing assessments could be repurposed for the new qualifications. Caroline and I emphasised that the new awards were significantly different from the existing qualifications and that a significant amount of new material will be needed to support them. Graeme was very supportive, and went away to consider how best SOLAR could be used to help centres to assess the new HN awards.

The revised HNC Computing will be available to centres from April 2012. The existing award will end (last registration) in 2014.

Contact Graeme if you want to know more about SOLAR.