2. Understanding Standards An Overview of Course Assessment
Computing Science
Higher
An Overview of Course Assessment

3. What this presentation covers
Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding
Question Paper
Assignment
Support materials

4. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding
Progression from National 5 course
Divided into four areas-
Software design and development
Computer systems
Database design and development
Web design and development
Covering the five skills of
Analysis
Design
Implementation
Testing
Evaluation

5. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding
Software design & development
Candidates can choose which design technique they use to represent the solution to a problem
Parallel 1D arrays
Pre-defined functions
Create substrings
Convert from character to ASCII and vice-versa
Modulus
Convert floating-point to integers

6. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding
Computer Systems
Conversion of 2’s complement form binary to denary
Exemplification of floating-point representation of positive and negative numbers
Environmental impact of intelligent systems
Heating systems
Traffic control
Car management systems
Computer Misuse Act

7. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding
Database Design and development
Entity-occurrence diagrams
Designing a solution to a query
SQL

8. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding
Web design and development
Design using wireframing
Horizontal navigation bar, positioning of media, Form inputs
HTML
Form inputs and form data validation
CSS
Control appearance and positioning
Create horizontal navigation bars
Testing
Usability testing using personas, test cases and scenarios
Compatibility

9. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding - deletions
Description of language types
Virtual machines and emulators
Video and audio representation and calculations
Contemporary developments
Accessibility of computer systems
Compression techniques
Description of the role of server sided scripting
Technical Implementation – hardware, software, storage, networking
RIPA
Economic and social impact

10. Mandatory skills, knowledge and understanding - exemplification
In order to support centres as to the depth of some areas of the course we have provided clarification as we did in National 5
This helps centres and assessment writers understand the depth required of topics
This can be found in the document ‘Resources to support Higher Computing Science’

11. Course Assessment
Approximate breakdown of content in Course Assessment:
Software Design and Development – 40%
Web Design and Development – 25%
Database Design and Development – 25%
Computer Systems – 10%

12. Course Assessment
Approximate breakdown of skills in Course Assessment:
Analysis – 5%
Design – 30%
Implementation – 40%
Testing – 10%
Evaluation – 5%
Application of Computer Systems knowledge – 10%

13. Design Candidates will be expected to Design database queries
Complete entity relationship and entity occurrence diagrams
Read and understand two design techniques:
Structure diagrams
Pseudocode
Design a solution to a problem using any recognised design technique
Design web structures and pages

14. Implementation - writing code
Writing code will be predominantly assessed in the assignment including:
High level language programming
SQL
HTML & CSS
Javascript
Where code is asked to be written in the question paper there will be scaffolding which could be in the form of:
Re-writing code
Applying knowledge of standard algorithms to a context

15. Implementation - reading and explaining code in Question Paper
Questions may involve reading and explaining code in:
software design and development
database design and development
web design and development
This may involve
explaining what the code does
finding errors in code

16. Course Assessment
Both Assignment and Question Paper are designed to differentiate between candidates:
Approximate ‘A’ type marks – 30%
Approximate ‘C’ type marks – 50%

17. Question Paper 110 marks (69% of Course Assessment)
Section1 – 25 marks – short response
Section 2 – 85 marks – short and extended response
2.5 hours
Specimen question paper available by September 2018

18. Assignment 50 marks (31% of Course Assessment) Externally Marked
Consists of three separate tasks
Software Design & Development (25 marks)
Web Design & Development (10 – 15 marks)
Database Design & Development (10 – 15 marks)
Open Book with no assistance from teachers/lecturers
8 hours to complete
Specimen assignment available by September 2018

19. Assignment Tasks will vary from year to year Will always include
Programming in a high-level language
Coding using SQL on pre-populated databases
Coding using HTML & CSS which may be building on supplied HTML

20. Conditions of Assessment
Timing
Candidates have 8 hours to complete all three tasks
8 hours may be split into shorter sessions but centres must ensure that tasks/files do not leave the classroom
percentages suggest that the time taken to complete each task should be approximately:
SDD – 4 hours
WDD – 2 hours
DDD – 2 hours
tasks may be completed in any order

21. Conditions of Assessment
Supervision and Control
It is the responsibility of centres and candidates to ensure that candidate’s work is their own.
all candidates must be within direct sight of the teacher or lecturer throughout the session(s)
and mobile phones must not be accessed
candidates must complete their work independently (ie no group work is permitted)
without interruption by targeted periods of learning and teaching

22. Course Support
SQA and Education Scotland partnership to identify and develop support materials. Materials are signposted in the ‘Resources to Support Higher Computing Science’ document and hosted on Glow.
Teaching materials
Online training resources
Homework and Assessment tasks
Online teaching materials for Web design & development

23. Course Support
For further information, please visit the Higher Computing Science page at
Online CPD materials on SQL, HTML & CSS
available on SQA Academy
Multiple Choice Assessments
- available on Quantum
Author – SQA Computing Science