Mac Controllers Exam Testing Guide

Welcome to Activity 5 in the Unit 6 Mac Controllers exam guide. Today we'll be looking at completing the test plan which was started in Activity 2 and is completed after the main program has occurred. So Activity 5 says you are advised to spend no longer than 1.5 hours on this activity which is similar to a lot of the other 9 mark activities that we've seen before and in this you need to test your system against your test plan from Activity 2. and include some unexpected events. That unexpected event is really important again. Record the outcome of each test in the template provided, and we'll have a look at that template in a moment. And then analyze the test results and evaluate your system for conformance against the client brief. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna unpick this, look at some examples, and talk about what this all means. So, a quick overview. And we have our table here, which is the table that we used in Activity 2. And you've got the four different columns. You've got the test number, the purpose of the test, the test conditions, and the expected result. And we fill this out. You should have eight or so different rows in this table from Activity 2. And we fill this out with the intention of carrying out these tests at the end of the programming. Now, before we go any further, what I will say is that I found that... Activity 5 is best done alongside Activity 4. You don't tend to do all of the programming and leave all the testing to the end. You tend to want to do a lot of the testing alongside Activity 4. So you'll make a little bit work, you'll test that, you'll make a little bit work, you'll test that. And just bear in mind that's probably the way you'll end up doing this when you come to do the exam, even if you do some of the writing up later on. So in Activity 5, we're going to add two columns to this table. So when you do it in your book, in your answer booklet, you will have... A completely different table that you'll have to copy and paste your original answers into. And you'll have these extra two columns which are the actual result, which is what's actually happened. And then comments and justification and that's a really important column to make sure we're going to get the highest marks. Calculator is running. It times the length of the journey accurately to ensure the displayed charge is correct. So this is talking about making sure that the timer is working correctly. The test conditions is what we actually do to carry out this test. So. I will start the calculator and compare the displayed charge to a clock built into the computer I used to program the device, which is two minutes. Now, you know that I say we're going to be using the computer clock here because we don't want to be using mobile phones in the exam because that's not allowed and it could well end up getting you kicked out. So the timer on your computer should be very, very accurate and it's a really good one to use. You might have use of a stopwatch or something, but the one on the computer is fine. And then the expected result, what we expect to happen. The fare will increase by 25 pence each time 20 seconds passes on the computer clock. After two minutes, the displayed time should be £3. I should probably say the displayed fare should be £3. So what we've done here is we've said what we expect to happen, how we're going to carry it out. And we've even given some numbers because we can here. And I think that's quite good if you can give numbers to explain what you actually expect to happen. So you've got something to compare to. So you carried it out test. And the actual result is something a little bit like this. The clock was running slightly slow and took two minutes and five seconds to reach three pounds. So we expected it to take two minutes and it took two minutes and five seconds. So it was running a little bit slow, which is probably to be expected a little bit. And then the comments and justification is a very important part of this because this is where we pick up our marks. And if everything just works straight away, then we don't have anything to comment on. And it's very hard to get the... higher marks because you're not talking about what's going on and you're not showing off your knowledge so the comments and justification always try and put a bit of detail in there use any technical knowledge so here i've put the timer seems to be running slightly slow to counteract this i shortened the delays which control it to come to compensate for the discrepancy so the delays within the program have been shortened by a little bit you might go from 1000 milliseconds to 950 milliseconds or even 900 you 80 milliseconds so it's a very small change but it just helps to counteract that difference if you really want to do a good job here you could even include a little calculation to show how much that you're going to reduce your time by but you can just use a little bit of trial and error i think this is a really good example of where we've had a little bit of a problem and we've gone and fixed it and if you ever do anything with a timer this is a perfect example of how you can include a section on a timer going awry or just how to test a timer in general. Now another thing is if things do work sometimes it's best just to pretend it didn't work it's not really cheating because you're showing that you understand how to test a device and you're using the opportunity to show off how well your device works and how well your knowledge of the systems are. And it also means that if something doesn't go wrong, but then you manage to fix it, or you at least know what's gone wrong, then that's what you get the marks for. You don't actually get any marks here for how much your program works. It's the marks for how good your explanations are. I think it's worthwhile having a look at another example so we can see exactly how these work. And you can see here I've put unexpected event. So I've put unexpected event in big capital letters because it's shown... the examiner that was definitely talking about an unexpected event in this section so we have access to those top marks and the unexpected event is the driver presses the reset button whilst the timer is running so in theory the reset button shouldn't do anything the timer presses it it shouldn't do anything and we're going to make sure that's the case so we're testing this unexpected event because even testing something that makes sure nothing happens is very important in this thing sometimes if you have a device which you press the wrong button at the wrong time it'll break the device and you definitely don't want that to happen So test condition what we're going to do I will start the calculator and press the reset button whilst the timer is counting the expected result nothing should happen as the button has no function at this point the actual result is nothing happened and then the comments and justification the test is success and the button does not produce an unexpected action and for all I say that you should probably always say kind of what's going on and use as much technical knowledge as possible and even say that sometimes things don't work and saying things don't work is good sometimes they do just work and there's no way nothing to talk about but here at least I've tried to put a little bit of technical language in and said it stops it from producing unexpected action so I think that's an important inclusion. Now after the table I think there's another important bit that we need to put in and it's just a small section I would say a short paragraph or two and what we're going to do is going to compare our device and what our device is Back to the original brief. So when we're doing the table, that's like a checklist, and it's like a quantitative comparison to a set list of things that we're going to be doing. But what these paragraphs are for is to look in a qualitative way. So we're going to be comparing it to the device that's described in the brief. How well does it meet that brief? And like I say, just a couple of paragraphs where you're going to talk about how well it meets it, how much like the original idea. is your device and adding this paragraph in just helps get a little bit more detail and approach this analysis from a different view. So in summary this is a continuation of activity two not the specification but the test plan from activity two and you can change activity two at any time if you make your device and you program in it and then you realize you could have added another test then you can go back and do that that's fine because the whole exam submitted at once and that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do and sometimes in real life you decide that you need to test something else as you're developing it as well. Things change over time. You have a chance to show off your technical knowledge and you need to use technical language to do this. The more technical knowledge that you use and demonstrate, the more marks that you can be given and the examiner can't read your mind. If you have anything at all, you can make sure that you need to put it down on the paper. And finally, don't forget to include an unexpected event because this is what you need to put in to get access to those top marks. and to get the top tier of marks. If you don't put an unexpected event in, you can't get more than six or seven marks, really. Hope you enjoyed it. You can follow along at showworkstem. It is a Twitter account which we'll be getting used a little bit more in future. If you are doing your exam this week, good luck, and I wish you all well. If you have enjoyed it or have received some good knowledge from the channel, feel free to give the video a like and give us a subscribe because hopefully we'll be getting Activity 6 out very soon. Bye.

And then analyze the test results and evaluate your system for conformance against the client brief. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna unpick this, look at some examples, and talk about what this all means. So, a quick overview.

And we have our table here, which is the table that we used in Activity 2. And you've got the four different columns. You've got the test number, the purpose of the test, the test conditions, and the expected result. And we fill this out. You should have eight or so different rows in this table from Activity 2. And we fill this out with the intention of carrying out these tests at the end of the programming. Now, before we go any further, what I will say is that I found that...

Activity 5 is best done alongside Activity 4. You don't tend to do all of the programming and leave all the testing to the end. You tend to want to do a lot of the testing alongside Activity 4. So you'll make a little bit work, you'll test that, you'll make a little bit work, you'll test that. And just bear in mind that's probably the way you'll end up doing this when you come to do the exam, even if you do some of the writing up later on. So in Activity 5, we're going to add two columns to this table. So when you do it in your book, in your answer booklet, you will have...

A completely different table that you'll have to copy and paste your original answers into. And you'll have these extra two columns which are the actual result, which is what's actually happened. And then comments and justification and that's a really important column to make sure we're going to get the highest marks.

Calculator is running. It times the length of the journey accurately to ensure the displayed charge is correct. So this is talking about making sure that the timer is working correctly. The test conditions is what we actually do to carry out this test.

So. I will start the calculator and compare the displayed charge to a clock built into the computer I used to program the device, which is two minutes. Now, you know that I say we're going to be using the computer clock here because we don't want to be using mobile phones in the exam because that's not allowed and it could well end up getting you kicked out. So the timer on your computer should be very, very accurate and it's a really good one to use.

You might have use of a stopwatch or something, but the one on the computer is fine. And then the expected result, what we expect to happen. The fare will increase by 25 pence each time 20 seconds passes on the computer clock. After two minutes, the displayed time should be £3. I should probably say the displayed fare should be £3.

So what we've done here is we've said what we expect to happen, how we're going to carry it out. And we've even given some numbers because we can here. And I think that's quite good if you can give numbers to explain what you actually expect to happen. So you've got something to compare to.

So you carried it out test. And the actual result is something a little bit like this. The clock was running slightly slow and took two minutes and five seconds to reach three pounds.

So we expected it to take two minutes and it took two minutes and five seconds. So it was running a little bit slow, which is probably to be expected a little bit. And then the comments and justification is a very important part of this because this is where we pick up our marks.

And if everything just works straight away, then we don't have anything to comment on. And it's very hard to get the... higher marks because you're not talking about what's going on and you're not showing off your knowledge so the comments and justification always try and put a bit of detail in there use any technical knowledge so here i've put the timer seems to be running slightly slow to counteract this i shortened the delays which control it to come to compensate for the discrepancy so the delays within the program have been shortened by a little bit you might go from 1000 milliseconds to 950 milliseconds or even 900 you 80 milliseconds so it's a very small change but it just helps to counteract that difference if you really want to do a good job here you could even include a little calculation to show how much that you're going to reduce your time by but you can just use a little bit of trial and error i think this is a really good example of where we've had a little bit of a problem and we've gone and fixed it and if you ever do anything with a timer this is a perfect example of how you can include a section on a timer going awry or just how to test a timer in general. Now another thing is if things do work sometimes it's best just to pretend it didn't work it's not really cheating because you're showing that you understand how to test a device and you're using the opportunity to show off how well your device works and how well your knowledge of the systems are. And it also means that if something doesn't go wrong, but then you manage to fix it, or you at least know what's gone wrong, then that's what you get the marks for.

You don't actually get any marks here for how much your program works. It's the marks for how good your explanations are. I think it's worthwhile having a look at another example so we can see exactly how these work.

And you can see here I've put unexpected event. So I've put unexpected event in big capital letters because it's shown... the examiner that was definitely talking about an unexpected event in this section so we have access to those top marks and the unexpected event is the driver presses the reset button whilst the timer is running so in theory the reset button shouldn't do anything the timer presses it it shouldn't do anything and we're going to make sure that's the case so we're testing this unexpected event because even testing something that makes sure nothing happens is very important in this thing sometimes if you have a device which you press the wrong button at the wrong time it'll break the device and you definitely don't want that to happen So test condition what we're going to do I will start the calculator and press the reset button whilst the timer is counting the expected result nothing should happen as the button has no function at this point the actual result is nothing happened and then the comments and justification the test is success and the button does not produce an unexpected action and for all I say that you should probably always say kind of what's going on and use as much technical knowledge as possible and even say that sometimes things don't work and saying things don't work is good sometimes they do just work and there's no way nothing to talk about but here at least I've tried to put a little bit of technical language in and said it stops it from producing unexpected action so I think that's an important inclusion.

Now after the table I think there's another important bit that we need to put in and it's just a small section I would say a short paragraph or two and what we're going to do is going to compare our device and what our device is Back to the original brief. So when we're doing the table, that's like a checklist, and it's like a quantitative comparison to a set list of things that we're going to be doing. But what these paragraphs are for is to look in a qualitative way. So we're going to be comparing it to the device that's described in the brief.

How well does it meet that brief? And like I say, just a couple of paragraphs where you're going to talk about how well it meets it, how much like the original idea. is your device and adding this paragraph in just helps get a little bit more detail and approach this analysis from a different view.

So in summary this is a continuation of activity two not the specification but the test plan from activity two and you can change activity two at any time if you make your device and you program in it and then you realize you could have added another test then you can go back and do that that's fine because the whole exam submitted at once and that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do and sometimes in real life you decide that you need to test something else as you're developing it as well. Things change over time. You have a chance to show off your technical knowledge and you need to use technical language to do this. The more technical knowledge that you use and demonstrate, the more marks that you can be given and the examiner can't read your mind.

If you have anything at all, you can make sure that you need to put it down on the paper. And finally, don't forget to include an unexpected event because this is what you need to put in to get access to those top marks. and to get the top tier of marks. If you don't put an unexpected event in, you can't get more than six or seven marks, really.

Hope you enjoyed it. You can follow along at showworkstem. It is a Twitter account which we'll be getting used a little bit more in future.

If you are doing your exam this week, good luck, and I wish you all well. If you have enjoyed it or have received some good knowledge from the channel, feel free to give the video a like and give us a subscribe because hopefully we'll be getting Activity 6 out very soon. Bye.

Transcript for:Mac Controllers Exam Testing Guide

Transcript for:
Mac Controllers Exam Testing Guide