As Salamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh World!
As promised, I will be blogging about my top 3 tips for doing the programming project along with a couple of other things including 5 exemplars and various other resources. Anyway, let's get straight to it!
Tip #1: Choose the "right" project!
This may seem obvious, but a lot of students don't! Some pick really complex projects whereas others pick boring ones. Choosing a project that's right for you right from the beginning of the coursework is absolutely essential! In fact, it's even better to have an idea BEFORE your teacher says anything about coursework, this way you'll already be ahead of the pack i.e. the class and will be able to get stuck in immediately.
But how do I even choose the right project before the teacher even starts the coursework in class, I hear you ask? Well, there's a plethora of resources available to help you decide (albeit some were originally meant for the old H047/H447 specification) that I will link below.
Personally, the right project doesn't mean it has to be the most complex to gain the most marks, to have the best chance of getting the most marks it just has to be complex enough AND be something you are interested in. If you find your project boring, then you'll put less effort in it and basically set yourself up for failure!
If you're unsure regarding the complexity of your project,just check with your teacher (I didn't say you had to decide all by yourself did I?). Teachers can be an invaluable asset that can offer specific advice based on your project unlike the Internet, where finding answers catered to your questions can be a nightmare!
Tip #2: Don't make the report unnecessarily long or cumbersome!
Your report/paperwork/documentation should be straight to the point, that means no waffling and aiming to reduce the volume of pages produced. Remember, this isn't an English essay where you get marks for flowery language, this is a programming project; the primary focus of which is on the development and coding elements. The documentation you produce is simply to evidence said development and coding elements.
Ideally, your project's documentation should have no more than 100 pages. To do this, follow the marking criteria very carefully, don't go on a tangent when documenting any evidence! I can't stress this enough, but you should ONLY link to evidence where needed and eliminate any repetition as this will waste time and will probably end up not giving you any marks.
As my old school's Head of Computer Science used to say, "the examiner will only look at the parts of the report that will earn you marks, everything else is irrelevant". Trust me, you may think doing some extra stuff for your report may impress the examiner but it won't. They have tons of paperwork to get through so they're only looking for the sections of your work actually addressing the marking criteria.
In short: stick to the marking criteria, follow the spec and GET TO THE POINT!
Now you may have noticed the exemplars linked below are all over 100 pages, they are for the old H047/H447 spec which emphasised less on coding and more on the report. The new H046/H446 spec is basically the opposite, it favours complexity and coding over the volume of paperwork in the report. It even removed the need to produce a user guide, a positive if you're someone like me who hates coursework.
Your teacher may suggest different which is fine (and I highly recommend you listen to your teachers if they differ from my opinion since I am just a student), but I would recommend the paperwork of your documentation should be allocated like this:
- Analysis - 15 pages max
- Design - 25 pages max
- Development - 40 pages max
- Evaluation - 30 pages max
I know the total of pages is over 100 (110 to be precise) but they are just in case you need to go a little over the recommended limit (which I strongly advise against). Again, if your teacher disagrees with this then by all means listen to your teachers (as they are far more knowledgeable than I am). Anyways, let's move to the third and final tip.
Tip #3: Focus on the development and programming side!
I'm not going to beat around the bush, but the programming project isn't easy. The new linear spec makes sure of that by allocating 30 marks to the development and testing sections of your coursework (which is just shy of 50% of the total by 5 marks). The old H047/H447 allocated the same number of marks (30) to the development but had a total of 80 marks.
Some of the more "resourceful" ones among you may think it's a bright idea to just find a fully documented project on GitHub or somewhere else and just link evidence from that claiming it's your own. I suppose I don't have to tell you that OCR will easily find out if you copy and paste someone else's code but I can also assure you that it can be much harder creating a report based on a program that you didn't build or understand.
Your teacher should've already taught you how to program to some extent by the time you start your project. If you don't know a thing about programming then there are plenty of websites which can teach you how to code e.g. Codecademy is a fun way to learn how to program.
Even if you're not the most advanced programmer you can still get a good mark in your project and make it sufficiently complex. You could use other the code of other programmers provided you reference it in your report. Obviously I am not saying just copy someone else's program and think it's ok just because you've referenced it, instead use other programs for inspiration and take sections of it if you need to. The important thing is to link all the evidence of YOUR program in your report.
The writing part of the coursework is relatively easy, just follow the basic structure of the exemplars (altering where you need to) and only write stuff that will give you marks as indicated in the marking criteria.
Links to Resources
Now that you have at least some idea of how your programming project should be, it's time for you to look at some exemplars and other resources. I found the exemplars by simply searching on Google and using OCR's website for the other resources. Not all of these exemplars are good, it's better to look at examples of good and bad projects to know what to focus on and mistakes to avoid. First the resources from OCR:
If you didn't understand a word of this post or just wanted to get to the important bits, the key things you need to understand to successfully complete your coursework is:
- Remember to choose "right" project, don't make the report unnecessarily long or cumbersome & focus on the development and programming side.
- Check out the OCR resources linked above guidance and advice regarding your coursework from OCR themselves.
- Study the exemplars above to know the do's and don'ts of the documentation.
A bit of a longer post than usual but that's all from me for today and as always...
Hope this helps!
