QDT meeting

The full QDT met today, at Jury's Inn in Glasgow, to discuss the results of the recent consultation exercise. There was an excellent attendance, with 19 people attending the meeting.

The public consultation was now complete, so I spent the first half of the meeting discussing the survey results. I was pleased to be able to report to members that the draft frameworks had been overwhelmingly endorsed by the respondents to the questionnaire.

The purpose of today's meeting was to finalise the draft frameworks, taking into account the findings from the consultation. So, after discussing the results, we broke into five teams, one for each of the qualifications, so that the qualification leader could finalise each framework.

I asked the lead developer, Gerry Mackie, to carry out a final check on the frameworks before submitting them to Caroline. Once we receive the final frameworks we can progress to writing the units within each award.

I will post the frameworks on this blog once we receive them. In the meantime, contact Caroline if you have any questions about this development.

Unit writers training

Today and tomorrow, we are conducting unit writing training for people who want to be involved in producing units as part of this review. The training takes places in The Millenium Hotel in central Glasgow. There are four training session: one this morning, one this afternoon, and one tomorrow morning and afternoon. Around 6-8 people will attend each event, providing a pool of trained individuals who can be used for unit writing.

I gave a presentation about unit writing in general, and Hugh McDiarmid gave a presentation on writing Computing units in particular.
Unit writing training

View more presentations from bobbyelliott.

Today's events went well. Once we have a pool of trained unit writers we can proceed to developing the units within these new awards.

Contact Caroline if you want to know how you can be involved in the HN Review.

Post Consultation Meeting

Now that the online consultation date has ended with over 130 respondents participating, we will now move forward to the next stage in the development.  The full QDT (core and extended core) will meet next Tuesday with four main agenda items:


1. Discuss the consultation survey results
2. Identify new/revised units
3. Finalise the draft frameworks based on the feedback from the sector
4. Agree development timescales


Over the summer we plan to write new/revised units as well as liaising with HE on possible articulation routes for our new awards.  During this time we will also consult further with employers/industry/vendors and SSCs.


With the Validation Proposal Document (VPD) well underway we will be on target for our November/December validation date.

Update letter sent to centres

I arranged for a letter to be sent to all Scottish colleges this morning to update everyone about progress to date with the HN review, and outline the tasks that lie ahead of us. The letter will be sent (via e-mail), to the Head of Computing in every centre, early next week, so look out for it in your inbox.



Not everyone is comfortable with online communications so it is necessary to occasionally send traditional letters.

Online survey: update

There has been a good response to our online survey about our proposed qualifications. So far, over 100 people have completed the questionnaire.

As expected, there has been a particularly good response from college lecturers, but we could do with more people from industry and Higher Education. So, if you have HE or employer contacts, please forward this post to them (there is a link below).

The results, so far, are supportive of the proposals, and will be of great assistance to the development team when we come to finalise the frameworks. Thanks to everyone who took the time to complete the survey -- but please encourage your colleagues to do so if they haven't already.

The survey is due to close on Friday (5 May) but we may extend that to get more representation from industry and Higher Education.