COG-310 exam success - IBM Cognos TM1 Developer Updated: 2024

The A-level exam results are out in the UK. Over 350,000 teenagers have been placed on undergraduate courses, according to UCAS, the organization that manages applications to UK full-time higher education courses. And while they jump for joy, excited at the prospect of going to university, some social commentators and education critics are harrumphing.

They feel that despite their success, these exam-savvy youngsters are woefully ill-prepared for the real world. And that the ones who go to university are simply entering outdated institutions that don’t prepare them for the world of work.

Most university courses aren’t vocational. Yet, the debts that mount up throughout a course (an average of £50,000) are forcing students to create a “personal brand” and a portfolio of work before they leave – so that they have a chance of competing in a crowded marketplace once they graduate.

In the past, students were only expected to step-up their writing, thinking and analytical skills while at university. Now, they’re expected to take Instagram-worthy internships and use social media to network their way to success. They’re expected to document their skills and capabilities across a range of social media so that they can effectively secure work opportunities.

A report from the Department of Education showed that in 2017, graduates and postgraduates had higher employment rates than non-graduates. And that the average, working-age graduate earned £10,000 more than the average non-graduate.

So good, so far. But this emphasis on securing work is contributing to a hole in their university life. This manifests as poorer quality memorizing and writing skills on the essays they write throughout their course. And the writing they do in the business world. This is not new. And it’s not down to youngsters spending more time on Snapchat than perusing the abridged works of Shakespeare. But it’s a skill gap that doesn’t seem to be closing.

Many arrive at university after years of teachers “teaching to the test”. Students haven’t necessarily been given the opportunity to think for themselves. At least, not in an academic sense. Their teachers have been judged on results throughout their teaching careers. So, their primary task hasn’t been to help students to write fluently, or accurately. In fact, while 26.4% of exams scored an A or A*, just 1.8% of English language exams were graded A*. Overall, the teachers have done their jobs, which has been to get their pupils to pass. And the overall pass rate for 2018 sits at 97.6%.

But when school leavers get to university, many will find themselves in a quandary. It’s likely that they’ll feel a pressure “to get their money’s worth”. Yet, they’ll also be faced with a barrage of new concepts and theories. And they may not have the writing skills to communicate them effectively. Ironically, this can hamper their chances in the job market.

A Royal Literary Fund report called “Writing Matters” labeled the writing skills of students “shocking” and “inadequate”. What’s more, an academic survey cited in this report found that 90% of lecturers said it was necessary to teach writing skills to students. Yet, university is structured so that the teaching of writing skills is not embedded into courses. It’s a veritable chicken-and-egg situation.

In any case, qualifications alone don’t sell themselves anymore. So, students need to see themselves as a package, not as a vessel for their exam results. They need to hone their soft skills – their ability to think well, write well, be emotionally intelligent and communicate with themselves and others.  Employers want to hire people who are creative, resourceful and resilient.

So, as students crack open the prosecco and celebrate their results – I say we provide them a break. Going to university is a massive life transition in itself, as is starting work for the first time. It’s easy to forget the days when you couldn’t boil an egg. And it’s easy to forget that it’s the system itself that isn’t teaching students the writing and communication skills they need to truly succeed in life and work.

Students should double check the location of their exam prior to arriving at the Accommodated Testing Center. PTS uses other locations across campus as needed and will change the location in the PTS Student Portal. The PTS Accommodated Testing location is STEW G59.

Check-in Process

To check in for an exam, students will need the following items:

• PUID (required for all testing appointments)
• Pens/pencils, erasers, rulers, calculators, etc.*
• Any materials students are allowed to use on their exam as specified by their instructor and/or accommodations

* PTS will not provide writing utensils or calculators. Students must bring their own supplies.

Students will be asked to place all of their electronics (i.e. cell phone, smart watch, etc.) into an envelope and turn them in to the Proctor prior to receiving their exam. If students have any questions during their exam or they feel as though their accommodation is not being met, they are asked to inform the PTS Staff immediately.

Student Expectations

Breaks: Students are expected to treat breaks as they would in most classrooms. Bathroom breaks will not be allowed unless specified otherwise. If students have concerns about breaks during examinations, they may contact their access consultant.

Food and Drink: Only a CLEAR water bottle will be allowed in the testing rooms.

Keeping Time During an Exam: Clocks will available on the walls in the exam rooms to keep track of the exam time. There will not be clocks at each individual seat. If a student feels the need to keep time at their seat, they may wear a non-smart watch that does not make noise. Their watch must be approved by the proctor in order to take it into the exam room. Official time of the exam will be kept by PTS staff.

Personal Belongings: All items (hats, purses, scarves, hoodies, etc.) will need to be stored in a bag provided to the student upon their arrival to the Testing Center. These bags are sized to fit under their testing station during their exam time.

We do ask students not to bring additional items other than what is required for their exam to the Testing Center.

We understand that students may be taking exams in-between classes and may have backpacks. In this case, they will need to store them in one of the bags provided by the PTS staff.

If a student is seen reaching into the provided bag during an exam, they are at risk of having their exam terminated as a possible breach of academic integrity. Students will continue to turn in their cell phones and smart watches to the proctor at the time of check-in as has been the procedure in the past.

Exam Start Time: Students must start their exam within 15 minutes of their scheduled start time. Failure to start on time may result in not being able to take the exam. Please be sure to take this into consideration when planning travel to the Testing Center.

PUID: Students are required to present their PUID to check-in for each exam. No other form of ID will be accepted and students will be at risk of not being able to take their exam without their PUID.

Scantrons: All scantrons must be completed within the allotted exam time. If students have an accommodation that requires PTS staff to fill out their scantron, the student must inform the proctors at time of turning in their exam. Failure to do so may result in a scantron not being filled out and answers not graded.

In today’s tech landscape, engineering talent is one of the most valuable assets that an organization can have. However, increasing attrition rates among developers means that retaining quality developer talent is also one of the biggest challenges for business leaders. Even despite sweeping layoffs in tech, engineers are still in high demand. 

At the center of software engineering innovation are teams of developers. Teams of great developers build new products, services and entire businesses – they are the core of modern business strategy. Now that technology teams are being asked to do more with less resources, skilled engineers are more important than ever before. 

So what are business leaders to do in this uniquely challenging tech talent environment that has left many engineers burdened with extra responsibilities? Business leaders need to focus on creating an engineering culture that attracts, rather than repels talent. In the tech industry, engineering culture is inextricably linked to business success. Here’s how to create a culture where developers want to stay.

Focus on the Experience

Leaders of all stripes are tasked with ensuring that their employees are supported, engaged, and motivated to do their best work. However, the route to achieving these outcomes can sometimes seem vague and elusive. 

Research from Google shows that there are several key pillars for creating a strong organizational culture. The first is psychological safety. It is important for employees to know that they can take risks without feeling insecure or ridiculed. This is especially important for highly creative roles like software engineering where developers are often asked to create something out of nothing. Ensuring space to experiment with new approaches is crucial. 

Secondly, it’s important to create an environment where dependability is at the center. This means that team members and leaders alike can be counted on to do high quality work in a timely manner. Developers often face immense pressure to ship functional code on a daily basis. It’s important that they can depend on their team members and leaders to each do their part in order to drive projects forward. This relates to the third pillar of cultural success – structure and clarity. The goals, roles, and plan for execution within a team must be clearly communicated by leadership. 

The final two pillars for cultural success are ensuring that the meaning of work is clear, and that they can easily see the impact that their work is creating. For developers, these two components are key. Sometimes, the work of a software engineer can be very routine and can involve an exorbitant amount of time spent on small fixes and updates that seem insignificant. Making sure to communicate the value that your team members bring to the business is crucial in these instances. Prioritizing this creates a strong positive feedback loop for outcomes and for team wellbeing: the more developers see that even difficult work will be valued, the more they’ll be motivated to stay in your organization.

As you continue the hunt for new talent to fill gaps within your organization, don’t forget to focus on making your current employees’ experience so great that they want to stay with your organization longer and do their best work. Additionally, by keeping your current engineering teams happy and supported, you’ll likely see an uptick in engineer to engineer referrals, creating an organic talent pipeline from outside your organization. 

Realize that Transparency is Key

Another key facet in ensuring healthy engineering teams is to be as transparent as possible. Information asymmetries can be damaging. What I mean by this is that developers can’t do their jobs effectively if they don’t have insight into the workflows on their teams or don’t have context into decision-making that impacts them. 

A great way to bake transparency into your engineering culture is to help them see the impact they are making on the business with their contributions. Utilizing a software delivery intelligence platform can help developers have concrete data showing their progress towards individual and organizational goals. Engineering managers can use this data to celebrate progress on previously invisible work. 

Manulife is a great example of an organization that adopted engineering analytics as part of their culture with great success. Manulife set out to create an engineering culture that was based on trust amongst their engineering teams. The concrete data that they used to analyze their engineering process revealed hidden talent within their teams that they may not have found without a data-driven approach. Additionally, it allowed for deeper transparency when it came to promotion decisions within engineering teams. 

Employees value transparency because it leads to greater autonomy, communication, and ultimately, better business outcomes. An engineering culture that lacks transparency is sure to be plagued with high attrition and low value delivery to customers. 

Empower Your Team to Remove Roadblocks

The role of a developer grows with complexity as new technologies, programming languages, and methodologies are continually introduced. It is up to engineering leaders to help their teams remove potential barriers that are blocking them from being successful in their roles. 

As an engineering leader, I am constantly working to understand how to best manage complexity. I have a thesis that as an organization grows, it can only execute effectively on simple ideas, rather than complex ones. This is because there’s this coordination and friction associated with growth and change that generates a huge amount of unknowns in terms of dependency management. If you’re not careful, the complexity associated with a given project can stop it dead in its tracks.

This is where taking a data-driven approach to engineering leadership kicks in once again. Rather than setting targets for your teams that are based on standards with no concrete backing, instead, look at the data associated with your engineering teams to get to the heart of what seems like a complex issue, thus simplifying it. Data-driven insights help organizations manage complexity more efficiently.

Finally, a data-driven approach to engineering leadership also helps team members to remove roadblocks that may be slowing their projects down. Allowing your team to operate in an efficient way while consistently delivering value will make them happier in the long run. 

The importance of software developers to business outcomes will only increase in the coming years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that between 2019 and 2029, there will be a 22 percent growth rate for software engineering roles, which is considerably higher than the average 4 percent growth rate for other occupations. This means that business success is quite literally tied to the success of developer teams. 

By focusing on improving the developer experience through transparency, autonomy, and empowerment, organizations can expect more stability in the coming years. The key here is to be committed to using data-driven insights to properly support and uplift your teams. In the current job landscape, culture is king. Developers will continue to demand a stellar work culture, and it’s the job of engineering leaders to deliver it. 

Harrow's GCSE students appear to have done better than ever in this year's examinations.

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ACCESS Justice Initiative (Addressing Climate Change through Environmental Science and Social Justice)

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Learn more about the Bridge Builders Foundation and the marine science program at Scripps Oceanography. 

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DIVERSITY IN DIVING

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IN the LAMDA examinations held on November 24 and 25, the pupils of Jean Willis of Great Harwood achieved the following results.