Cover for DP 15th October

All year 11 classes.

As some of you are aware, I went on a course last week run by the exam board on how to mark the coursework that you are working on at the moment. The key feature that they stared was that all evaluations (of suitability of software, hardware, database design, form design, report design mail merge template design etc) need to be related to the user requirements, so these need to be made far more specific…

Here are the things that you need to tweak urgently:

1) Make your user requirement statements more specific: e.g. “add a record” becomes “Mr Smith needs to be able to add member’s details when they join the club”; “change a record” becomes “Danny tells Mr Smith that he has a new mobile number. Mr Smith needs to update Danny’s records” etc.

2) If you are aiming for a C+ grade, you’ll need to add user requirements so that you can evaluate the forms and letters – the improvements that you have made all focus on making them look more professional etc, so you need to add a requirement for solution that you design to be professional looking and match the company/team colour schemes / logos etc

3) If you are going to recommend one PC over another based on the cost, you’ll need to add a user requirement that the system shouldn’t cost a lot …

4) If you have said that you want to be able to produce letters, you’ll need to include a printer in the spec that you produce. You’ll need to find a printer that prints only black and white and another that prints colour – explain which is the better, and why.

Letters to and from Mr Smith.

You’ll remember that I said that you are supposed to be doing this project for real – the moderator from the exam board has stated that you have to include evidence that Mr Smith replied to you in writing when you wrote to him asking for an appointment to discuss his current filing system.

To do:

Write a letter from Mr Smith to you, agreeing to meet with you on the date that you suggested and saying that he looks forward to discussing with you how you’ll be able to help him.

DO NOT write this in your template

Now – print this out and fold it as though it was going in an envelope. Add to your folder.