4. Methodology

The project aims to give students practical experience of the Systems Development Life-Cycle. This will involve students completing discrete written coursework on Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, Documentation and Evaluation. However, this may be the first time a student has used these techniques within a software engineering project. To avoid students designing systems above or below their technical expertise and without realistic objectives, teachers could encourage students to prototype early so they can get a good grasp of the look, feel and functionality needed in the system. Early prototyping may be executed on paper or card before the analysis is completed, allowing students to agree their system objectives with their client. This early prototyping stage will also allow the teacher to get a good idea of the skills needed to complete a project and advise on the feasibility of a given solution.

Further prototyping involving code should be attempted as early as possible and should be encouraged throughout the rest of the project. Students should use this experimentation to shape their design and take on board feedback from their clients, recording it where necessary for the evaluation.

5. Guidance on marking the Project

Computer Science projects are assessed as follows:

Quality of report	3 marks
Definition, investigation and analysis	11 marks
Design	12 marks
Software development, programming, testing and installation	18 marks
Documentation	10 marks
Evaluation	6 marks
Total	60 marks

Teachers should mark their students’ projects using the following sub-sections and record their marks for each individual project on the marking grid supplied by CIE and any comments that may be helpful to the moderator e.g. identification of missing items, page references for items.

6. Examples of marked candidate responses

For each section of the report marked extracts from candidates work are included, together with a completed section of the marking grid showing the teacher’s comments and examiner’s comments.

The extracts are from a wide range of projects including:

• Sports day

• Flat Management

• Garden Centre

• Bridal Shop

• Pupil records

• Library system

6.1 Quality of report [Total 3 marks]

A candidate should produce a well ordered report that covers all the information from the sections set out below. The report must be the student’s own work and any evidence that has been included from elsewhere, including other students’ work, must be properly referenced as such and cannot be credited towards the student’s mark for that section. For full marks to be awarded for this section, the student must provide clear well-illustrated evidence for all the given sections of the report.

Also, the text must be understandable to the reader and without obvious mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar. Where there are two or more recognised spellings for a word, the student should be consistent throughout in their choice of spelling.

(a) Quality of report			[_2__/3 marks]
(a) Quality of report		Mark	Comments
1	Evidence for most sections is included; there may be errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.		Teacher’s comment none Examiner’s comment – an excellent well-ordered report but some errors of spelling punctuation and grammar.
2	Evidence for all sections is included, the report is well ordered, and there are few errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.	2
3	The report is complete, well organised with good use of illustrations, and there may be a few minor errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Examiner’s note: although this is the first section of the report the examiner would check this mark after they have looked through the whole report. However, inclusion of a contents page is good practice and can help to show the organisation of the report.

The contents page set out below provides some evidence for the mark awarded by the teacher as it is clearly set out and well organised.

Contents

(b) Definition, investigation and analysis 2

(i) Definition - nature of the problem 2

(ii) Investigation and Analysis. 4

Investigation: 4

Analysis: 10

(c) Design. 17

(i) Nature of the solution. 17

(ii) Intended benefits: 41

(iii) Limit of the scope solution 42

(d) Software development, programming, testing and installation 45

(i) Development 45

(ii) Programming. 64

(iii) Testing. 85

(iv) Installation 123

(e) Documentation. 124

(i)Systems maintenance documentation 124

(f) Evaluation 130

(i) Discussion of the degree of success in meeting the original objectives. 130

(ii) Evaluate the client's and user's response to the system 131