Long time, no post... and no more

My apologies for this blog being neglected for so long. It was part of my proposed collaborative qualification development, which was meant to be an innovative way of developing qualifications.

Things haven't quite worked out as planned. The award itself has progressed fine, but the new approach hasn't really worked. After a good start, we have regressed to a fairly traditional means of qualification development, with the course team getting on with the work in pretty much the normal way. There have been some successes - the private e-group used by the QDT has been fantastic, with hundreds of posts - but my goal of engaging the entire FE community in this development has clearly not succeeded. There are lessons to be learned from this experiment and we will consider those lessons once the new award has been validated.

Speaking of which... the validation event will take place on Wednesday, 28 January. Everything seems to be in-hand for a successful event. Contact Caroline if you want more information.

So, I don't propose to continue to use this blog. Future updates will be posted on the Computing blog. Thanks for using this blog.

Digital Culture Units - Consultation

We have in development a suite of Digital Culture Units at SCQF Levels 4 - 8.

These are now out for consultation until the end of November 2008. A blog has been created exclusively for this purpose and gives an excellent overview of each Unit as well as the draft specifications.

Please follow the URL below to access this Blog and please feel free to comment on the draft units using the comment facility:

http://digital-culture.info

HND Interactive Media – Draft Framework & Units Available For Comment

The draft framework for this award is now available for consultation before being finalised and presented for validation in mid January.

We have been fortunate, as most Colleges have been involved in the development of this award through membership of the QDT. There has also been significant discussions and contributions made via the online jiglu discussion forum and I thank everybody for their contributions.

To ensure that everyone gets a final opportunity to contribute to the award, the QDT welcome comments, observations or suggestions from stakeholders on any aspect of the framework.

Near completed versions of Unit Descriptors will be uploaded on Monday replacing the current draft versions giving clear guidance on unit specific content.

Unfortunately it is not possible to leave comments on the wiki itself so please email me directly at markmcphee@adamsmith.ac.uk.

The framework can be found at http://hndinteractivemediaqdt.pbwiki.com/ and I look forward to receiving feedback.

Mark McPhee
Lead Developer

HND Interactive Media - Validation Event Volunteers

I am seeking volunteers to serve as Validation Panel members for the new HND Interactive Media award. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure that the new qualification is valid, credible and fit for purpose.

We plan to host this event approximately late January 2009 in Glasgow and seek representatives from the following areas who have had no involvement in the development of the award:

Educationists (FE & HE)
Industrialists

If you are interested, please contact me direct (caroline.douglas@sqa.org.uk)

Updated project plan

I met with Mark and Caroline last Friday to discuss developments and we came up with a revised project plan. You can download it here.

It's inevitable, in projects like this, that dates slip and we're now looking at a validation date of mid-January 2009.

I'm aware that the margin for further slippage is very small.

Survey results now available

The survey that we carried out at the beginning of this project is now closed and the results are available to view.

Mark has been using this information to shape the proposed award. It will also form an important part of the Validation Proposal Document, which describes the consultation that has taken place.

Changes to the SQA team

I posted a message today on the SQA Computing team blog about changes to the team. These changes affect this project, since Angela is being replaced by Caroline.

Caroline will play a key role in this development so you'll be seeing lots of her in the coming months!