Creating the Report

Setting Up Your Report

When you complete your report you need to make sure that it is created in word processing software. There are some essential details that need to be included on each page. You need to make sure that you set up the Header and Footer to contain the following details. Your name, candidate number, centre number (52323), qualification code (7517,<year>) and a page number. This will help to identify your work and make sure that it remains in the correct order.

Title Page

You project needs to have a simple title page that contains the following infomation.

• Full name

• Candidate number

• Centre name

• Centre number

• Project title

• Qualification code

• Date

Using Styles

If you use styles within your document, you will find this will automatically help you to create an appropriate table of contents. You should use either Calibri or Arial and the font should be no bigger than 12 for the normal text. The key sections in your report that should be given the Heading 1 style are:

• Analysis

• Documented Design

• Technical Solution

• Testing

• Evaluation

• References

• Appendix

Table of Contents

A table of contents is essential for your report. It enables your teacher and the external moderator to find the evidence that you want them to see for the various sections of your project easily. It will also enable you to reference tests, success criteria and other previous work easily as you proceed through your project.

When your project is marked your teacher will also use the table of contents to guide the moderator to where the evidence can be found for your grade.

If you make good use of styles throughout your project this will create an effective table of contents, which can be updated easily as you make your way through the project.

Referencing

You will have access to an unlimited range of resources during your project and this means that referencing the third party resources that you use to support you throughout the project is very important.

It is acceptable for you to be using any third party sources to help you with ideas for the code you are writing and any technical support you require, but you must make sure that these sources are referenced and then you need to demonstrate how what you have learnt has been adapted for your project. This will enable the teacher to give you credit for how you modified the work from the source.

There are two ways that you can reference. The first is to put a superscript number next to the referenced work and then explain where it came from at the bottom of the page using footnotes.

The second way is to put the author's name and year in brackets after the referenced material. This method known as Harvard Referencing requires you to add the full reference in a bibliography section at the end of your report.

Further information about how to reference will be able to be found online if required.

It is much easier to capture your references while completing the project than it is trying to do it afterwards.

Versions and Backups

Your project will be completed over a long period of time and it will no doubt take a number of iterations before it is finished. With this in mind it is advised that you consider worst-case scenarios during the project. This could include:

1. Corruption of documents or program code

2. Loss of files on a school network or home computer

3. The need to go back to an older version of the project for evidence due to issues in a newer version.

On a number of occasions students have run into issues where these things have occurred and they have not taken precautions, leading to them having to start all over again.

Version Control

You will be making regular changes to your project and it would make sense for you to have at least two versions of your write up and code files that you can go back to if there are any problems with the current work. This will enable you to go back to the previous version if necessary. At the very minimum you should make sure that at every major iteration of your project you save another version.

Backups

A backup of the files for your code and write up in a separate location is advised just in case your files become corrupt or get lost. This will mean that you can simply go to the backup and continue, saving you valuable time and effort.