The Coursework Project provides candidates with the opportunity to demonstrate and integrate the practical skills, knowledge and understanding from the Units, and apply these in a more complex practical context.

The candidate should select a project:

• at an appropriate level for the Advanced Higher Course
• which builds on learning from the core Units
• which is achievable with 40 hours.

Advice on appropriate projects is included in the support notes for the Developing a Software Solution Unit.

The project will be undertaken under ‘open-book’ conditions. Collaborative projects are to be encouraged, but the assessor should ensure that each candidate’s individual contribution to the project can be clearly identified and assessed.

This evidence need not be a formal report. It could consist of a ‘log book’, notes, references to sources, annotated hard copy of implementation at various stages during the development, hard copy of screen shots, notes on testing. It is expected that the production of this evidence should be achieved during the 40 hours of the Developing a Software Solution Unit.

To pass the Unit, there must be evidence that the candidate has:

• analysed a practical problem at an appropriate level
• designed, implemented and tested a software solution based on the problem analysis.

Note: the implementation (which may be incomplete) may be developed using any appropriate software development environment, not necessarily a high level programming language.

For Course assessment, the candidate should provide:

• the problem specification
• evidence of project planning
• evidence of a completed solution (preferably files on a CD plus hard copy of coding/data files, screen shots)
• user documentation and technical documentation
• an evaluation report.

The project will be marked internally, based on this evidence and observation of the candidate at work, using the marking scheme provided by SQA, but be subject to moderation. The marking scheme will provide a mark out of 80, which will be submitted directly to SQA.

The marks available for each aspect will be:

• specification and plan - 10 marks
• implemented product - 20 marks
• process skills - 10 marks
• user documentation - 10 marks
• technical documentation - 10 marks
• evaluation report - 20 marks