Year 11 Digital Technologies · Level 1 HCI external (AS92006)
They leave able to say what separates the grades: Excellence adds exactly two things — a comparison and a principle-grounded improvement.
Excellence is not "the same answer, longer."
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 0–10 min | The three verbs. Straight from the standard: demonstrates understanding → examines → evaluates. Write them up. Everything today hangs off that progression. |
| 10–20 min | The chain, and where the grades sit. Links 1–2 (feature, principle) = Achieved. Links 3–5 (evidence, effect on the task, effect on purpose) = Merit. Link 6 plus a comparison and an improvement = Excellence. Say plainly: get links 1–2 wrong and everything above is wrong too, however well written. |
| 20–40 min | The same feature, written three ways. Same interface, same user (Sam, low vision, using a keyboard), same task (saving the Harbour workshop). Read the Achieved paragraph, then Merit, then Excellence. After each, ask them what changed — do not tell them. |
| 40–55 min | They write. Give a different feature from the same two interfaces. Each student writes one paragraph at the grade you assign them. Then swap and mark against the chain — which link did the partner stop at? |
| 55–60 min | Exit ticket. One sentence: the two things Excellence adds are ____ and ____. |
| Grade | The shortfall | Say this |
|---|---|---|
| Achieved | Writing the definition of a principle instead of its use. | "Point at it. What would I see on the screen?" |
| Merit | Replacing the mechanism with an adjective — "easier", "more user-friendly". | "Easier for whom, at which exact step, compared with what?" |
| Excellence | Writing more rather than differently. Comparing unlike things. Proposing an "improvement" the interface already has. | "Same action in both. What would you change that isn't already there?" |
Teach both moves: test the claim and supply an example. A student trained only to test claims can freeze in the exam and score nothing.
Their always-safe base: accurate te reo Māori; spell-check and text support that works for te reo; support for tikanga and mātauranga in how content is organised.
Use NZQA's wording — but a mātāpono is not a renamed heuristic. Comparison is legitimate; conflation is not.
One-period plan. The full unit, its resources and the classroom deck sit behind the links above — this page is the thing you hold while you teach.