GCSE wjec/eduqas computer science coursework

Ok so coursework...

The exam board gives us some next level: "You have to code a cryptogram. Explain the steps to doing this by making some useless document." yada yada yada. Now the only thing I'm pissed about is that the Eduqas exam board states that your GRADES only count towards both your "Written exam (Theory)" and your "Practical Exam (Programming)" but then they whip out a 3rd exam which is the "Coursework exam". Now my teacher ranted on about this to my CS Class that "the exam board told us to or our school will get sued if we don't follow them." He also stated that coursework does NOTHING to your grades at all. He also said that the reason you don't get "marks" for coursework is the exam board assumes every student in the entire country who do there coursework will 100% cheat. AND He also said we have to do it in Silence but really we are not. Like what the heck it's just there to keep us "occupied" where we could just be "practicing" how to code python, greenfoot etc, and tbh it's a waste of 6 months of time dedicating your butts off doing a coursework that needs to be 2,000 words or longer and then you end up not counting your coursework as a grade. Like fr. My question is: Why are we doing this? Why in the heck is this in the exam board? What is the point in this coursework as it doesn't count as a grade for our GCSE Computer Science grade?

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 1

DoNotMove

20

Original post by aMaffia

Ok so coursework...

The exam board gives us some next level: "You have to code a cryptogram. Explain the steps to doing this by making some useless document." yada yada yada. Now the only thing I'm pissed about is that the Eduqas exam board states that your GRADES only count towards both your "Written exam (Theory)" and your "Practical Exam (Programming)" but then they whip out a 3rd exam which is the "Coursework exam". Now my teacher ranted on about this to my CS Class that "the exam board told us to or our school will get sued if we don't follow them." He also stated that coursework does NOTHING to your grades at all. He also said that the reason you don't get "marks" for coursework is the exam board assumes every student in the entire country who do there coursework will 100% cheat. AND He also said we have to do it in Silence but really we are not. Like what the heck it's just there to keep us "occupied" where we could just be "practicing" how to code python, greenfoot etc, and tbh it's a waste of 6 months of time dedicating your butts off doing a coursework that needs to be 2,000 words or longer and then you end up not counting your coursework as a grade. Like fr. My question is: Why are we doing this? Why in the heck is this in the exam board? What is the point in this coursework as it doesn't count as a grade for our GCSE Computer Science grade?

A couple things:
- Getting angry is no good, it really doesn't help anyone and means no one wants to respond to you. I'm only replying because I have nothing better to do.
- The reason it was removed from being a part of the actual course that was marked, was because so many cheated. Those who cheating were obviously getting top marks, thus making the average higher, and the grade boundaries higher too - this basically means that by having them doing this, it was making the GCSE harder for everyone else to get good grades in. The government/exam board is not assuming everyone cheats, it's just taking the best steps to ensure that the exam is fair for everyone.
- Doing the required coursework is important, and the coding you'll have to do will indeed help you revise your Python and programming skills. The document you have to write for it also helps you practice for real world situations - when you work in real life in computing, you don't ever just write a program. You thinking of something that needs doing, or someone comes to you with something that needs doing, you discuss what they want from it, you analyse the problem, design, get user feedback, abstract the computation problems, do the actual coding, then test, review, adapt, report. There is such more to programming, and the practical side of computer science than just the straight-up code.
- it shouldn't be taking you six months. before it was scrapped, it was said to be a 20-hour project. say you take two computer science lessons a week, this will thus take you ten weeks, this is basically until Christmas.
2000 words is really nothing. The A-Level coursework (which is actually part of the exam) is 6000 words.
The coursework prepares for any future programming and computing work you may do.

Reply 2

username4499734

20

I did the Wjec/Eduqas A Level Computer Science. Barely any revision sources except one sh*tty book. The coursework was crap as well and so difficult to even get one mark

Reply 3

x_noorrxza

7

Im in year 11 and also use the eduquas exam board i completed my coursework as i'm the only one who actually did computer science gcse and I have a great teacher and have all the answers and code if for the cryptogram if you want it :smile:

btw I agree that the fact it doesn't count towards your grade is stupid too

Reply 4

CCD.

2

3 years on and WJEC have reintroduced the coursework to us, where the total marks for it is worth more than unit 2 which actually goes in-depth with programming as a whole and requires way more hours to revise for which is both great for students who spend at least 40 minutes doing python a day as a hobby but the fact that you rely on a terrible IDE is just irritating.

(edited 12 months ago)

GCSE wjec/eduqas computer science coursework

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