Course Content

Unit 1: Software Design and Development

Candidates develop knowledge, understanding, and advanced practical problem-solving skills in software design and development. They do this by using appropriate software development environments. Candidates develop object-oriented programming and computational-thinking skills by analysing, designing, implementing, testing, and evaluating practical solutions and explaining how these modular programs work. They use their knowledge of data types and constructs to create efficient programs to solve advanced problems.

Unit 2: Database design and development

Candidates develop knowledge, understanding, and advanced practical problem-solving skills in database design and development. They do this through a range of practical tasks, using SQL to create and query relational databases. Candidates apply computational thinking skills to analyse, design, implement, test, and evaluate practical solutions, using a range of development tools. Candidates apply interpretation skills to tasks involving some complex features in both familiar and new contexts.

Unit 3: Web design and development

Candidates develop knowledge, understanding, and advanced practical problem-solving skills in web design and development. They do this through a range of practical and investigative tasks. Candidates apply computational-thinking skills to analyse, design, implement, test, and evaluate practical solutions to web-based problems, using a range of development tools including HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and PHP. Candidates apply interpretation skills to tasks involving some complex features in both familiar and new contexts.

Unit 4: Integration

The integration of technologies is central to the course. Teachers and lecturers should consider candidates’ previous experience in ‘Database design and development’ and ‘Web design and development’ when planning delivery. This will ensure candidates are prepared for the integration that is required for the question paper and project assessment components.

Assessment

Each of the units are internally assessed throughout the course. The assessments are mainly practical based activities and some written responses. All pupils must achieve the standards set out for each unit at Advanced Higher level.

The course is assessed with a formal examination (60%) and a coursework assignment (40%). The assignment is a project-based task that covers a broad range of skills developed in the mandatory units.

Career Pathways

A Computing Science qualification can lead to exciting careers such as:

• Systems analyst

• Multimedia programmer

• Software developer

• Social media manager

• IT consultant

• Database administrator

• Web developer

• Games developer

• Information systems manager

• Cyber security consultant

• Network engineer

• Web content manager