Albany Senior High School/Coursebook/3HAR

What is this course about?
Level 3 Hard Materials Technology provides the student with an opportunity to work independently when identifying a situation for design, analysis of relevant issues surrounding the problem, identification of a suitable stakeholder and investigation into all of the factors which will impact on the design development and

solution.

What will I learn?
Students will learn how to progress through the design process at a deep level in order to develop a problem solving framework within which they can operate. This will need to cover a broad range of criteria such as critical reflection, interaction with relevant stakeholders, experimentation, analysis and justification of decision making based on evidence such as interview and market or product testing. Students will engage the help and support of professional technologists for useful reference and guidance. Through product development students will gain an understanding of codes of practice at a sophisticated level combined with further materials knowledge which will allow informed choices.

What sorts of things will I do?
Students will identify an authentic design problem which is suitable and which can sustain them for the duration of the course. They will map out all aspects of the problem and will engage a main stakeholder and possibly a secondary stakeholder with whom they can communicate on an ongoing basis in order to gain critical feedback as the project progresses. They will carry out research into materials and analyse their suitability for the outcome based on identified attributes. Students will also develop further workshop skills through practice and experimentation in order to chose the most effective method of production. They will produce a high quality outcome which will be tested against all criteria to ascertain to what extent the solution fulfils stakeholder requirements.

Scholarship opportunities
Technology Scholarship requires students to demonstrate that they can synthesise and critically analyse their technological experiences. Evidence for assessment is required to be presented in a reflective report with supporting portfolio evidence.

The reflective report should: explain the complexities of a situation that the student has identified and explored in the development of a technological outcome through undertaking technological practice; and provide justifications for the technological practices they adopted to develop a technological outcome, as well as evidence of the technological outcome itself.

The portfolio evidence should support the reflective report and provide evidence which illustrates the technological practice the student undertook and the technological outcome they developed. Students who have been successful in Technology Scholarship examination have usually used a major project where they developed a technological outcome which has also been assessed against the Level 3 internal and/or external achievement standards.

Frequently asked questions:
Are there any prerequisites for this course?

There are no set prerequisites for Product Design courses at Albany Senior High School. It is however within the nature of the subject area that through the senior years, although students build their abilities using familiar methods of design and production, study will be at ever deeper more sophisticated levels.

There is an expectation that over this time students will move towards greater levels of independence where they are demonstrating enthusiasm, self motivation and perseverance in order to solve authentic design problems within their specialist Technological area. It is therefore advisable that you always speak to the specialist Technology teacher working in your area of interest before making final decisions on course choice.