Unit 1: Applied Computing

​Area of Study 2: Programming

Outcome 2

Interpret teacher-provided solution requirements to design, develop and evaluate a software solution using a programming language.

Examples of learning activities

• Students research, list and describe a range of key hardware and software components of a specified digital system. They note the functions and capabilities of the digital system in terms of how the data and information is processed, stored and communicated.
• Students develop a list of data types from the Terms used in this study (pages 8–11 of the study design). They research and develop a description for each of the data types in relation to the programming language being studied and give examples for each one.
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  Students develop a series of small software solutions that demonstrate the use data structures such as arrays and records and then describe the differences.
  
• Students interpret a short case study in order to prepare a table listing the functional and non-functional requirements of the software solution, as well as the constraints and scope.
• Students use design tools, such as data dictionaries, mock-ups and pseudocode to design a software solution in response to a case study. An example of a software solution could involve a payroll system that calculates the gross pay, tax deducted (30% of gross pay), superannuation collected (12% of gross pay before tax) and net pay from the input of hours worked and hourly rate paid.
• Students list and describe how naming conventions can be used to distinguish solution elements, such as file types, functions, methods and variables.
• Using code from a range of software solutions, students identify and describe the control structures of selection and repetition.
• Students develop a software solution that uses the processing features of classes, functions, instructions, methods and control structures.
• Provide students with the source code for two different programs. They analyse the code in order to determine what each program does. The first program given to students contains no internal documentation. The second program contains sufficient internal documentation to identify the purpose of the program. Conduct a class discussion examining the purpose of internal documentation and where comments should be placed within a software solution.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a range of file types and file formats including: TXT, CSV, XML and XLSX. Demonstrate a range of examples to students.
• Discuss the difference between debugging and testing. Provide examples of a range of techniques.
• Students design a testing table for a software solution that calculates an employee’s pay. Hours worked is entered followed by hourly rate. A value for gross pay is calculated with 12% subtracted for superannuation and 30% for tax. A value for net pay is then calculated. Students determine the expected result in the testing table with a pen and calculator; develop the software solution using a programming language and then test. Test results are noted in the actual result column of the table. These are compared with the expected result to determine if the software solution meets requirements. Students debug if errors are found.
• Students identify and describe a range of techniques for evaluating a software solution in terms of whether it is efficient or effective. Refer to the Terms used in this study (docx - 356.7kb) on pages 8–11 of the study design.
  
• Create a simple Gantt chart in a spreadsheet. Place task names in Column A, start date in Column B, end date in Column C, duration (in days) in Column D. Let the remaining columns be used for each day. Students list the tasks that would be followed for creating a software solution; assign the number of days for each task; assign the start and end dates for the each task; and use colour to highlight the cells in each row for the duration of each task.

Detailed example

Developing software solutions – programming skills development

To assist students who have limited programming knowledge, the teacher could provide them with partially written programs. These programs may consist of missing lines of code, or lines of code that are incomplete, or a combination of both. In the commercial world not all programs are written from scratch. Instead, many businesses employ an approach involving a type of ‘skeleton’ programming framework, where the program contains common pre-written lines of code but omits the intended functionality of a program. This helps in ensuring consistency in how programs are written in the organisation, which makes the code easier to read and simpler to maintain. For this reason, the teacher could consider providing the less experienced students with skeleton code (i.e. a working program that has had some lines of code removed and/or some lines of code that are only partially written) to help scaffold student learning, especially in the initial stages of the programming area of study.

Examples of practice activities that students might complete are:

• Arrays
• declare and initialise a one-dimensional array
• insert elements into an array, then print the array
• loop through an array, printing each element of the array
• change the value of an array element, printing the array before and after the change
• concatenate the elements of the array, then print the result of the concatenation

• Records and files
• open an existing ‘txt’ file, then close it (note: it is a good programming practice to close a file when finished with it)
• open an existing ‘txt’ file, then read a fixed number of characters of the first line (or record) of the ‘txt’ file into a variable which is then printed
• open an existing ‘txt’ file, then read the first line (or record) of the ‘txt’ file into a variable which is then printed
• write a record to a file, creating a new file in the process or replacing an existing file
• append a new record to an existing file
• read the records from an existing file into an array or list, sort the array or list, and then write contents of the array or list to a new/existing file
• use getName (or similar, depending upon the programming language used) to return the name of a file as a string
• delete a file and its contents and rename a file
• develop code for exception handling to test whether a file exists or not.

Note: As part of these programming practice activities, students should use comments to justify their use of appropriate features of the programming language.