B211 Assignment 1 Comments

Assignment 1 - Unit Coordinator's Comments

Comments

All of you should get a completed marking guide sheet back, electronically or in print-out form. The sheet is the same as the one supplied to you at the beginning of the semester (see assignments page). Due to time constraits, I have asked the tutors to use the completed marking guide as the principal feedback method, so some of them may not have put much extra comments on the actual assignment pages - you can blame that on me. Approach them if you would like further feedback. They will be happy to go through the sections of your submission with you.

Some scaling will be done to adjust for cross-tutor differences. I have read samples of every tutors' marks & assignments, and I have noted their leniency or strictness in some parts of the assessment. In this assignment, the maximum scaling turns out to be +8%. Marks are only scaled up and never down - so the score on your completed marking guide is your minimum possible score.

Some sample solutions from your fellow students are found below. The submissions may not have the highest scores among all students, but I am happy putting them up as samples because they separate themselves from other assignments by the fact that

The usage of technologies are always tied to the company's needs.

They present technology options, and give recommendations on those options.

They discuss the technical issues with the technologies that impacts on the company's decisions.

All the above are put in the report coherently.

Their technology descriptions always tied naturally to the company, and the company's purposes always leads to the required technologies. Most other submissions have sections that describe technologies, but I get a feeling that the descriptions are there to score points in an assignment rather than to support the report - you will not produce coherent reports that way.

Referencing is in general very bad. Some have chosen to cut-and-paste sections from web pages. Such cut-and-paste jobs have to be referenced in the correct way to show clearly they are unmodified from their original forms. If a reader is misled into thinking you came up with the words
yourself, then it is plagiarism.

The marking scheme is stacked for you to give you free points, but a lot of students throw away simple marks by not even reading the marking scheme.

Quite a lot of students answer "No problems" in their evaluation of plans. This means you think your assignment submission is perfect, which is impossible. It is the awareness of what your weaknesses and problems are that will make your next report better. In ANY work, you should be
able to see what things you can improve on. Reading the marking scheme on this section again.

Sample Solutions

Sample Solution 1
Sample Solution 2
Sample Solution 3
Sample Solution 4

The solutions are not perfect (no report can ever be perfect), but there are a lot things in above I believe others can learn from.

Sample solution 4 is an example of how to think outside the square. The style may not be appropriate in all situations and more technical content could still be added, but it shows there are many ways to present information so that it is interesting.

H.L. Hiew
Unit Coordinator