Tips on how to write the evaluation

You can refer to the Exam Booklet (U8 section of the ICT/Computing Intranet) for other details of the evaluation. When writing your evaluation you need to cover two strands:

Evaluation of the solution(s)

Strengths
Look at the strengths of your best program (these are some of the things you could write about if they are actually well done)

• sensible clear comments
• meaningful variable names
• meaningful subroutine names
• Using camelCasing for variables, Pascal casing for subroutine and function names and CAPS_CASING for contsants
• careful use of comments
• clear solution
• Appropriate use of modules
• Use of constants where appropriate to make the program more meaningful
• Clear User interface
• Meaningful messages to user

Weaknesses and Improvements
Weakness can cover any of the bullets above that could be strengths, but in the opposite way e.g poor naming of variables and interface elements.

If you have specific issues with either your first program (or even in the finished improved program), then explain them here (make sure you use a separate paragraph for each) list those issues with direct reference to the program code.

Looking at your improved program, for each improvement explain why they way you did it is better than the way you did it in the original program, this may be better for the user of the program or it may be better for another programmer (easier to maintain / better structure [modules, subroutines] / naming of variables/subs/functions).

This could be accompanied with screenshots from the code to illustrate the differences. It is important that this is clear, use a separate paragraph for each improvement

Future improvements
If you did not do an improved version you need to look at the program and identify anything that you could do to improve it (these should of already been mentioned in the weakness), make sure you identify more than one improvement (you don't have to do it just explain it what the improvement could be and why it would be better)

if you did an improved program then you need to also think of any other ways in which you could improve it, explain them clearly making sure you have explained why it would be an improvement. This is more likely to be extending the features of the program (unless you identified a weakness in the improved one)

Evaluation of your performance

Strengths
Try to identify what you feel your strengths were/are during the VB programming task. This is really asking you to talk about what you did well when you approached the task:

• Preparation, prior learning
• Commenting as you went along
• How you tackled the task (e.g. did you put the interface elements together first?, then storage etc...)
• Clear testing

Weaknesses and Improvements
It is not wrong to have weaknesses with the way you approached the work, it gives you something to address for improvements  Make sure you also discuss any areas in which you feel you have weaknesses and how you could improve them, these may be issues you had with the bullet points above or something else entirely.

For each weakness you identify you need to explain what you do on a future task to reduce the weakness, what would you do differently and explain why this would make a difference to the program produced.

Future improvements
If there is anything else you could do on top of what you did well, then explain those items here.Think about approaches to programming (you may need to look up some methods of program design), user feedback etc...