Exam Preparation

[Kimbaroo]

• 2 or 3 VITTA Exams (Priced for schools - something like $140)
• 2 QATs Exams (also priced for schools, $55 each)
• Insight (Only sells to schools)
• TSSM ($7 for the student paper)
• Kilbaha ($20 with Student discount [email them for the code])
• CSE/IARTV (Only sells to schools, hardcopy only)
• The 2 exams from the Nelson textbook (teacher access only).

Massive thankyou for this. I was having so many issues tracking down where to find everything. Its horrid being the first year of a study design.

[huss48]

i love to upload some revision but havent got any resources yet.

Exam prep should include:
- looking at ur textbook/vceit site
-study design dot points
- vcca sample questions
- prac exams (if have)

[Lasercookie]

Multiple Choice

This isn't very useful, but still interesting. I also looked at the multiple choice sections for IT Applications.



My data included VCAA 2007 to 2010. D & B were the most common answers.

If you're going to wildly guess - though I don't see why you would need to, as it's pretty damn easy and we get two hours for the whole thing, D and B is probably your safest choice.

[ExamStorm]

Very informative thread guys!

[Lasercookie]

44 Days left - time is disappearing fast (at a rate of 60 seconds per minute in fact).

If you have not yet started your study design notes, I have attached a template that has the all the dot points. I also wrote in a few other dot points under each dot point. This is what I started off with, I then went and expanded on every single dot point. I didn't type up most of my notes though, which is why I haven't uploaded it to here. It is definitely worth putting a set together, do remember that we can be examined on everything in the course.

I am beginning to put together my second set of notes. I'm trying to keep it to four pages max, and contains what I think is the essential knowledge.

I'm also analysing ("evaluating" to be correct within the scope of the PSM) the hell out of trial exams. I start off by just listing which study design dot points each question refers to and then expand on out from there . It's pretty neat, you get an entire course summary out of each practice exam.

I got around to doing the stuff suggested in that Age article, and I think it's a pretty good way to revise the entire course. I guess IT Applications is a pretty lightweight course which is why we have more than enough time to revise the course like six times (well I do anyway, since my only other 3/4 subject is Physics).



Also, in that VITTA PowerPoint, they pointed out this: "If you require extra writing space there are blank pages at the end of the booklet. Clearly direct the assessor to another page. " I have no been able to find a VCAA source for this (though I haven't really gone out of my way to look).

While I think we should all be aiming to answer within the allotted lines, if we are provided with extra pages, they would serve well for scribblings to help figure out the clearest way to answer.

I am doubting the validity of the VITTA statements though, they explicitly claim that Insight is no good for the current study design - something that is clearly not true.

[paulsterio]

Laseredd, I wouldn't call ITA lightweight, a lot of people called Software Development last year "light-weight" and ended up getting disastrous study scores because, as I've reiterated many times, it's a subject that tests your knowledge of what's on the study design, not what you know about IT in general

I found that Software Development ended up being quite a difficult and intricate course last year!
But I personally recommend doing the exam early and then doing them again, and again, and again, and again, and if you still have time, and again, and again, and again, and if you still have time, once more
Purely because there's only a certain number of questions they can ask - and all these questions would be covered during your practice exams
Every time you do an exam and mark it, try to word things better, look at the theory for questions you got wrong!
And most importantly, when you redo them, you have to get a better mark

In fact, if you're not ending up getting 100% on them, you should keep on doing them because you still have something to learn (:
I had a handful of VITTA Exams last year and I went through them again and again, it worked for me because in the end, I got a score I was happy with

[Lasercookie]

Laseredd, I wouldn't call ITA lightweight, a lot of people called Software Development last year "light-weight" and ended up getting disastrous study scores because, as I've reiterated many times, it's a subject that tests your knowledge of what's on the study design, not what you know about IT in general

Fair enough. I can see how it can mislead people into thinking it's an easy subject and end up neglecting it. I'll avoid using the term.

I guess I called it "lightweight" because that most of the concepts on the study design overlap pretty heavily with all of the area of studies, which makes revision quite a pleasant experience (as opposed to just opening up the study design and becoming overwhelmed).

[paulsterio]

Fair enough. I can see how it can mislead people into thinking it's an easy subject and end up neglecting it. I'll avoid using the term.

I guess I called it "lightweight" because that most of the concepts on the study design overlap pretty heavily with all of the area of studies, which makes revision quite a pleasant experience (as opposed to just opening up the study design and becoming overwhelmed).

I agree with you there, the IT subjects - both SD and ITA have very good Study Designs - unlike Physics - which kind of has all separate areas of study, I guess I agree with that

And as far as I know you can't delete posts!

[taiga]

someone make this laseredd guy an IT mod already...

[paulsterio]

I wanna be an I.T mod!

[Lasercookie]

someone make this laseredd guy an IT mod already...

hmm... that possibly might be a useful milestone in my overall quest for world domination



Anyway, back on topic:
This is should give a better idea of what I meant when analysing (sorry, evaluating) trial exams. I did this for the sample questions. Note that the sample questions focused on stuff that has been changed or has been added in, so ensure that you familiarise yourself with these points well - I'd speculate that a lot of this stuff will end up on our exam.

Word document doesn't want to attach (browser still crashing out when I try to :/) so I've just typed them out here.

Summary of ideas from VCAA 2011 Sample Questions

MC
1.   U3 O1 – Networks – The technical requirements to host a network.
2.   U3 O1 – Types of websites
3.   ITA – Problem Solving Methodology. Types of documentation.
4.   U4 O2 – Legislation. Human rights
5.   U3 O1 – Design tools (websites)
6.   U3 O1 – Online communities
7.   U3 O2 – Databases. Efficiency vs. Effectiveness. Evaluation.
8.   U4 O1 – Organisational management. Copyright legislation
9.   U3 O2 – Relational Databases.

SA.

1.   U3 O1, U3 O2 – Websites, Databases
a.   Types of data
b.   Effectiveness.
c.   Acquiring data
d.   Acquiring data
e.   Relational database structure

2.   U3 O1 – The technical requirements to host a network

3.   U3 O2 – Databases
a.   Data types (they seem to like Boolean…)
b.   Normalisation
i.   First Normal Form
ii.   Second Normal Form
iii.   Third Normal Form
c.   Normalisation

4.   U3 O2 – Entity Relationship Diagrams

5.   U3 O2 – Acquiring data
a.   Techniques of acquiring data
b.   The value of data
c.   U4 O2 – Protecting the rights of customer (privacy act, human rights etc.)

6.   U3 O2 – Databases
a.   Database structure
b.   Data types
c.   Data types

7.   U4 O1 – Information management systems

8.   U3 O1
a.   Open/closed access
b.   U4 O2 – Application of legislation

9.   U4 O2 – Management of data

10.   U4 O2
a.   Cloud computing advantages
b.   Cloud computing disadvantages
c.   Disposal of data

11.   U3 O1
a.   Types of websites
b.   Design features of websites
c.   Website protocols

12.   U3 02 – Databases (functionality and structure)

This is what I've been doing after each exam, and over the days I slowly add more and more to it (stuff about style of question and details about how my wording differed from the official wording etc.) and end up with a set of notes. Like I said earlier, this way you can see where the trial exams have their biases and allow you to find out what areas aren't covered that well on exams.

[Lasercookie]

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcaa/vce/exams/examcovers/Nov_2011_covers/2011itapps-cov.pdf

20 multiple choice, 11 short answer.

Nothing much to say really, trial exams have a similar number of questions - so it should be good practice for the pacing.

I'm trying to slow down and instead of finishing trial exams in less than one hour, take up the full two hours (leaving like 15 minutes for checking over). I find that when I find a mistake (or think of a better way to word things), I can't really go and cross stuff out - it ends up being too messy. Since we're given more than enough time, it's better to take the time and answer slowly.

[paulsterio]

Most people can finish an IT Exam comfortably within 2 hours, I haven't heard of many people haggling over time yet, so I'm with laseredd in that you have to take things slowly, leave questions that you may want to think about and come back to them later. I know that I left some of my Short Answer questions in Software Development last year towards the end so that I had more time to think about them. Also note that there are going to be questions that are based on knowledge, and you have to know what to do if you don't know how to answer them. For example, on the SD Exam last year, there was a question on the differences between Viruses and Spyware, I didn't know the exact difference, so I listed properties of both and tried to explain the differences in their behaviour based on what I know.

It's always important to remember to answer things properly, don't oversimplify, use full words and sentences and avoid abbreviations unless they're universally accepted, usually an examiner will award the mark if he understands what you're talking about, he won't say "oh no! you used an abbreviation so I won't give you a mark", however, you can't be guaranteed that he understands your abbreviation.

It's also important to put detail into your answer but don't beat around the bush or don't contradict yourself. If a question is worth one mark, answer it with one statement, if it is worth two, remember that you have to give two separate and relevant ideas which contribute to answer the question.

Most importantly remember the scope of the question and what is being asked, it's all well and good that you know all the different types of Info Systems and what they do, but if the question asks you what a TPS is and you tell them what a MIS is, then you're not gonna do too well

Also, finally, remember to read the assessment reports, once through first so you can have a laugh at the silly mistakes they talk about, but then read it through again and ask yourself which mistakes you usually make and try to rectify them

[MJRomeo81]

2 hours is more than enough time to complete this exam. Considering that 50% of the MC questions can be answered by any well-read student, you just need to be aware of the trick questions.

[paulsterio]

2 hours is more than enough time to complete this exam. Considering that 50% of the MC questions can be answered by any well-read student, you just need to be aware of the trick questions.

LOL! 25% of the Multiple Choice (Minimum) are really and truly just common sense that any IT-literate person can answer