Why is ICT A-level seen as 'soft'?

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Reply 20

pnorm

Original post by Hobo389

All myths are based in truth.

No they aren't. Media and Film are the hardest subjects in the world, honestly, they're impossible. :colone:

Reply 21

0range

Original post by Ralpharm

60 % cousework: you basically sit there and get told what to do every lecture and at the end of the year you'll have a full coursework.

40 exam: on definition, advantages & disadvantages of this and that (macro etc)

It was the least challenging of all my A-level but also the easiest to fail cos I stopped caring about it and just wanted AS to be over so I could drop it. This is just my opinion others found it easier/more difficult

Other way round cw is 40% and exam is 60%

Reply 22

username392640

Original post by Pride

I haven't done IT at A-level, only GCSE, but speaking to some mates who did keep going to A-level, many will tell you that it's not hard. It just requires a lot of time.

I remember when I did it at GCSE, I hated it. I had to do so much coursework, it took ages, I had to stay behind after school sometimes just to stay on top of it. It wasn't very hard, it was just long. So much so that I didn't bother staying behind long enough to get the coursework (60% of the GCSE) to the A*, I pushed for the steady A. The exam though was just so easy. They're all so similar, I got 100 ums and so got an A* overall, but it was literally basic exam technique and the same recycled questions from past papers.

When you speak to people who do it at A-level, they might tell you it makes you hate IT, it feels kind of useless at a-level, it's a lot better at degree level (computer science and other it courses). If you're thinking about taking it at a-level, remember it's not that's it's difficult to get a A/B, it's the time. So that's why they've black listed it, they don't respect is as much as the traditional subjects.

Exactly this, I definitely wouldn't class the work as hard but very time consuming.

Reply 23

cl_steele

basically, as many have already said, the work isnt especially demanding ... anyone can play around with microsoft office it just takes a while.

plus many of the universities that utilize these 'black lists' of 'soft subjects' are the creme de la creme ... Cambridge and LSE being the most prominent where ICT alevel is going to be of little to no use in any of the degrees they teach and the skills it imbues [if any] are generally not required or should be known as a given.

Reply 24

llessur123

Original post by JustAGoodLAD

Also see on your that you're doing History, what topics you doing for your modules? I am studying for my masters in history of the modern world, you've made a good choice choosing history.

At the minute I'm doing Germany 1900-1945 and Russia 1895-1945. We're moving on to Ireland 1900-1950 then Ireland 1950-1990 next year. I don't find Ireland interesting at all though so I'm not looking forward to that :frown:

This.

Information Technology is an important discipline and should not be seen as soft but subjects that get a higher number of students getting the top grades are usually seen to be easy. This overlooks the flaw with the curriculum tested upon. If they revised the curriculum it would be a stronger subject as it can interlinks with nearly every subject offered at A Level. In Economics I study about globalisation aided by emergence of e-commerce and other technological changes that can increase a country's supply side capacity. What I learnt for A Level ICT was glorified business studies. I found it dull except for one chapter, which was actually about real world technology.

Reply 27

laura130490

I wouldn't class it as soft, but it doesn't really compare to subjects like science and maths. I did an ICT a level along with biology and chemistry 4 years ago, here's my opinion:

Reasons for it being "soft"-
-The stuff you are learning is not hugely difficult to understand compared to some other subjects
-Requires little revision
-You get tons and tons of help with coursework and exams
-You get to prepare for your exam weeks in advance (you get information about what the exam is going to be on and your teachers go through it with you).

Reasons against it being "soft"-
-You have **** loads of coursework
-The exam (in my case anyway) is ten hours long, split in two five hour sessions
-It can be very stressful not knowing or understanding why your database or website etc is not working properly, and half the time the teachers don't know either. So you can end up spending hours and hours trying to figure out what's gone wrong.
-The examiners and coursework markers are very very picky, so it's hard to get the top grades

Reply 28

followmeup

I assume everyone who says that ICT is "easy" is on a different exam board because I'm with AQA and it's damn hard. There's a lot of content at A2 (AS was fine) and it's not just filling out spreadsheets like some people seem to think.

Reply 29

JustAGoodLAD

Original post by llessur123

Ahh yeah, i did Russia for A Level. From Autocracy to communism, which i think covers the same years you did.
I also did Ireland, which was surprisingly my favourite topic, although mine was 1798-1921. Bloody Irish didn't really seem to know what they wanted or how to get it. We stopped after civil war.
Germany is a pretty cool module, especially looking at Germany between the two wars.

You need any help or discussion, ill happily help any fellow historian where i can. Just message me.

Reply 30

hamzazulfiqar

ict has alot of coursework involved ... jeeez i guess its around 60% cw and 40% exam

Reply 31

The_Internet

Original post by TopStudent7

Why is it? I always thought it would be good, as we are advancing in technology?

I'd hardly call learning how to do office work, advancing in technology..

Original post by ak9779

Because you're learning about technology that will be out of date in 5 years! Still, ICT was my worst result so I wouldn't say it was easy...

The thing is you really don't. ICT is based a lot on office work, and tbf a lot of people at university doing IT related degrees don't rate ICT too highly

Original post by JustAGoodLAD

You have not done A Level ICT before then i presume. Drama, that would be an easy A Level. Does it even exist at A Level?

Personally, I've not done A level ICT though I have done GCSE ICT. Looking back, it was worthless. Pretty much all university students doing IT degrees don't like ICT

Original post by Yash13

Information Technology is an important discipline and should not be seen as soft.

It shouldn't be seen as soft, but that's because schools have taken the easiest part of IT they can, which is office work. If they taught coding, they'd be taking a huge gamble because not too many people want to do that, but otherwise ICT is seen as an easy option by students, even if it is tedious

Reply 32

theronkinator

I've not done it at A LEvel. But I did a GNVQ in it (as a GCSE option but it was loads more work). Anyway the whole thing was a joke. It took hundreds more hours than most other subjects, it was stupidly easy but tedious and time consuming. Most of it was MS Office based, the one time we had to make a website it was marked via a print out. This was with the OCR GNVQ.

It put me off ICT as an education aspect for ever (still do it in my spare time and as a job). But unless the A Level was literally 500x time harder than that then it will be easy but take a lot of time.

Reply 33

The_Internet

Original post by followmeup

Well do you do any programming or any networking?

Reply 34

0range

It can but that's only if the candidate wants to do it that way. I'm in A2 and I'm basing my system on Excel whereas my friend is basing his on VBA (It's a computing program) but he's only doing that because he does A2 Computing as well.
Last year in AS they did add a code integration kind of thing but no one in my class could do it so we basically just had to skip it :l

Reply 35

InArduisFouette

Original post by RocknRap

I'm guessing it has little to no maths/coding involved?

that's the entire issue 'ICT' vs. proper comp sci

with a proper comp sci course it wouldn't matter if you were using Beebs , dos or command unix for the programming content as it would be teaching you about programming... where as ICT seems to be about 'using' IT kit rather than 'under the lid'

Reply 36

SarahM94

It's hardly media studies is it

Reply 37

Dominicque

Original post by Xero Xenith

Academic people look at subjects like Art, Drama, Dance, maybe Music and what have you, and claim they're "easy" just because they don't require the same style of thinking or talent as science or written art subjects. They forget that they all require a lot of hard work and practise, and are aimed at different people. This does not make them easy.

Music is the only creative subject that seems to be "respected" on TSR.

Reply 38

followmeup

Original post by de_monies

Well do you do any programming or any networking?

No, because I don't do Computing A-Level because my school doesn't offer it. We do a bit of networking though. 40% of the course is building a fully functioning system without help from the teacher. 60% is an exam.

Reply 39

JulietheCat

I'm an ict person myself and I love computers! But the gcse was absolutely awful! Evaluate how you made your advert. Evaluate this. Evaluate that.

In real life, you don't do the evaluations or print screens! You just don't do that! :frown: