IT update

Bized Developments

The Summer term is always a frantic period and the start of the term was a period of peak usage for Bizled. In the busiest month we received over 850,000 hits to the site and even since then have had over 500,000 hits every month. However, we know people will only keep coming back if there is useful material and so we have been working hard over recent months to provide some new materials.

One important new section has been the 'examiner' section (1). This section is written by a very experienced senior examiner and has information on the subject criteria, assessment objectives and the way command words are used in exam questions. Perhaps most useful of all though is a monthly question and guide response, a monthly feature on the examining process and an update and feedback section. The first 12 enquiries received each month will be answered in person by the examiner and they will form the basis of the next months feature.

Another new section is the 'Chronologies' (2). These have been generously provided by the Barclays Bank economics department and are a day by day guide to important economic and political events. As well as being able to browse the chronologies by quarter, you can also search them by keyword, so a search on "Chancellor" or "Brown" will yield all the important announcements made by the Chancellor. To supplement the chronologies there are also sections on the 'Key Facts' from the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. These become progressively more detailed the closer to the present you get.

Not content with just these we have also added new Company Facts on British Aerospace and Tescos (3) and a new version of our Company Report Profiler (4). The company report profiler has three sections. For this feature we have standardised the accounts of 18 well-known companies including Marks & Spencer, Manchester United and Harry Ramsden's. This means that they are consistent for students and immediately comparable. To view them there is the 'profiler' which allows you to select the figures for several companies at once, the 'browser' to view all the figures for any one company and also the 'interpreter' which gives some insight into the figures and what they mean. There are also supporting materials including a teacher's guide and details on accounting terms and ratios.

For teachers of GNVQ we have put up a downloadable database in Microsoft Access. This database will enable you to track students results through all the units and produce all the necessary reports. The database has been generously provided by Gloscat where it has been trialled and further developed. There are full instructions for using the database on the site as well.

URL'S (WEB

ADDRESSES)

All the features mentioned are available from the front page of Biz/ed

(http://www.bized.ac.uk/), but to get directly to them, you can type the addresses below into the address bar of your browser.

(1) http://www.bized.ac.uk/ stafsup/exams/

(2) http://www.bized.ac.uk/ dataserv/chron/

(3) http://www.bized.ac.uk/ compfact/comphome.htm

(4) http://www.bized.ac.uk/ dataserv/comprep.htm

Copyright Economics and Business Education Association Autumn 1999
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