Scope drift in the external Personal Endeavour
Nadia's Personal Endeavour proposal was a 10-week project to design, build, and race a solar-powered model car, with a six-entry testing log and a final timed race. In week 7 the car runs, but she has only two log entries; most of her time went into redesigning the body shell. She asks to change her endeavour to '3D-printed body-shell design' and submit the shell as the product. Three weeks remain before the external assessment. Her teacher must decide whether to approve the change. The Personal Endeavour requires evidence of sustained planning, capability development, and evaluation of the process and product, not only a finished artefact.
1. Should the teacher approve the change of focus? Justify your decision.
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Not as a simple substitution. The Personal Endeavour is assessed on sustained planning, capability development, and evaluation. Changing the label in week 7 to match the artefact would reward drift rather than inquiry. The body-shell redesign may be genuine and valuable, but it is part of the original endeavour, not a new one.
A change could be approved only if Nadia can show that the redesign raised a new question she has been pursuing with evidence, and that three weeks is enough to plan, test, and evaluate it. The current record has two log entries, which is thin for either version. The better decision is to keep the original goal, reframe the shell work as a design sub-problem, and require a retrospective and prospective evidence plan. That protects the integrity of the external assessment without dismissing her actual work.
2. Outline an evidence plan for the remaining three weeks.
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Weeks 8–10 should be an evidence sprint, not a rebuild.
- Week 8: Nadia writes a dated reconstruction of weeks 1–7 from files, photographs, and messages, marking what is remembered versus documented. She sets three test questions for the shell and runs one timed trial.
- Week 9: Two more trials with a simple data table covering mass, drag proxy, time, and failure points, plus one design iteration justified by the data.
- Week 10: A final race or controlled test, a short evaluation that separates product success from process learning, and a capability statement with specific examples.
She should keep a daily three-line log. The teacher can ask clarifying questions but must not supply the evaluation or the design decisions. Feedback should target evidence quality, not content.
3. Where is the line between teacher support and teacher authorship in an external assessment?
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Support is about the quality of evidence; authorship is about the substance of the work. The teacher may explain what the performance standards require, ask questions that expose gaps, point to evidence Nadia has not used, and set deadlines. The teacher may not generate the design idea, write the evaluation, choose the final interpretation, or tell her what conclusion to reach.
A useful test is whether Nadia can defend every claim without the teacher in the room. If she cannot, the teacher has crossed the line. The teacher should also document advice given, especially where it concerns scope, so that authentication is transparent. In an external assessment, the teacher's role is to make the rules and evidence requirements clear while leaving the inquiry, decisions, and judgements with the student.