Assessment Criteria

• P5: explain the role of software design principles and software structures in the IT systems development lifecycle
  • Development Lifecycles: stages eg determination of scope, requirements gathering and specification, design, code, test, maintain
  • Design Principles: No content!
  • Software Structures: functions, procedures, classes and objects; abstraction of data; pre-defined code (inheritance)
• M1 Explain the importance of the quality of code
  • quality of code eg efficiency, reliability, robustness, usability, portability, maintainability
• D1 Discuss the factors that can improve the readability of code
  • readability eg comments, appropriate names for variables, indentation;

The simplest approach to developing a teaching session is to create a PowerPoint presentation with added notes. The slides should contain the essential points, and the notes should expand on the points and add relevant examples.

In my opinion this is a poorly defined topic as there is no guidance on what should be covered as Design Principles, and the term Software Structures is not one used in the industry. I believe you should talk about Software Architecture, Object-Orientation and Data Structures.

Lesson Activities

1. 10min Tutor: Explain the new structuring of resources and lesson plans.
2. 10 min Tutor: Introduce and explain Assessment 2 - Application Design
3. 20 min Students: Complete a quiz on the C# Programming Fundamentals
4. 10 min Tutor Record Results, and get/give feedback
5. 30 min Students Individual research on P5, making short notes on the points to include for all three sub-topics
6. 10 min Tutor Divide students into pairs, and then join pairs to make a team of four.

Useful Resources

Explore the resources listed on Unit 6 Criteria page