Focus area 2: Design and programming

Students work individually and collaboratively to create practical, innovative solutions to problems of interest. They use computational thinking strategies to develop a series of related instructions that can be executed by computer hardware. Students design and check a solution, and ensure that all design considerations have been met. They code the program using a general‑purpose programming language (GPL) and validate the solution. A solution may take the form of a product, prototype, and/or proof of concept.

Students develop and apply their understanding of program design, pseudocode, simple constructs, array processing, and modularisation. Some students may also wish to explore object‑oriented design. 

Students review, develop, and extend the building blocks of a GPL (variables, expressions, assignment, and input/output commands), and the simple constructs of sequence, selection, and iteration.

Students describe the purpose of the code using comments (annotations) so that another person can read, understand, apply, and/or edit the program or algorithm.

Students practise testing techniques by fixing syntactic and runtime errors, and they correct logic errors by creating and executing test cases. Students explore software development tools to support code development and maintenance.

Self‑assessment tools or skills frameworks may be used to support the development and application of students’ skills in working collaboratively.

The following framework provides a set of possible techniques and strategies that can be used for learning.