CARIBBEAN EXAMINATIONS COUNCIL

SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE

EXAMINATION INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

School-Based Assessment

PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENTS
Word processing
Web Page Design
Spreadsheet
Database Management
Problem-solving & Program Design
Program Implementation
 RATIONALE FOR SBA

The SBA is designed to give students the opportunity to demonstrate, on a timely basis, their ability to solve
problems using computer applications such as: Database Management, Spreadsheet,
Word Processing, Webpage Design & Programming Language.

Students must ensure they have the necessary backups of their work as this will alleviate any undue
delay of submission caused by malfunctioning thumb drives, hard drives, etc. A good backup is for
students to email their work to themselves periodically.

The SBA project is marked out of 50 and is worth 25% of your final CXC-CSEC examination grade. The 50
marks will be distributed as follows:

Word-Processing (10 marks) Web

Page Design (5 marks)
Spreadsheets (10 marks)
Database Management (10 marks)
Problem-Solving (15 marks)
Description of the Project

National general elections have been a recurring feature among the democratic territories of the
Caribbean. Every year, in one territory or another, citizens exercise their right to elect a government of
their choice. However, the exercise is not without its attendant challenges of data management.
Thousands of votes are cast on the day of the elections and an anxious, waiting public demands speed,
efficiency and accuracy in the determination of results.

In preparation for the actual exercise, the Elections Commission has hired you to simulate the elections
exercise as a test run, prior to the actual elections which are to take place shortly in your country. You
are required to utilize suitable word-processing, web page design, spreadsheet, database management
as well as a programming application to design and implement computer- based solutions to the tasks
involved in the simulation of the election process.

SPREADSHEET

The Elections Commission has mandated that you design a spreadsheet that will accept pertinent data
on constituencies and candidates’ votes and generate information that would enable the outcome of the
elections to be divulged to the population in the shortest possible time. Four parties contest the
elections: The Democratic Action Party (DAP), the Workers National Alliance (WNA),
the United Progressive Movement (UPM), and the People’s Democratic Revolution
(PDR). The spreadsheet is design to accept data from seven constituencies.

You are required to:

Task 1

1. (a) Design a spreadsheet with the below table in sheet 1.

Constituency Percentage Voter
Turnout
North 0.75
South 0.85
East 0.90
West 0.80
North West 0.75
South West 0.88
East Central 0.82

(b)Using another worksheet design a table to record the:

● Constituency
● Number of voters (The number of voters in a constituency ranges from 6,250 to
10,795.)
● Votes Cast
● Candidate’s name
● Candidate rating (The rating assigned to candidates are 15, 20, 30 and 35. These
ratings were determined by the results of a recent poll conducted in each
constituency by a noted pollster. Each candidate in a given constituency has
a unique rating.)
● Party name

You must enter data for each candidate in each of the seven constituencies. Use the Percentage Voter
Turnout data to determine the number of votes cast (number of voters * percentage voter
turnout).

Rename the worksheet as Elections Data

Save your spreadsheet as Elections
Task 2

Duplicate the Elections Data worksheet. Rename the duplicate as Elections Data Backup. Modify the
Elections Data worksheet as follows:
1. (Insert a column before the one which displays the name of the political party. Using an
appropriate column title, determine the votes received by each candidate in a given
constituency. The candidate’s rating represents the percentage of votes received by
the candidate in a given constituency. For example, given that 6400 votes were
cast and a candidate has a rating of 20, the votes received by the candidate would
be 20/100*6400. Format the votes received by each candidate to zero decimal places.
2. Sort the data first on party (ascending order) and secondly on votes received (descending
order).
3. The Jamaica Elections Commission needs to determine the following:
● Whether or not a refund is due to a candidate. Use an appropriately labelled column to
state “Refund Due” or “No Refund” for each candidate. A refund is due if the
candidate’s votes received equals or exceeds 20 per cent of the votes cast in the
constituency.
● A list of all candidates who should receive a refund. Extract the data to the bottom of
the worksheet.
● A table with summary data for the elections

Elections Data
Party Total Votes Received Percentage of Votes Cast

Total Votes Cast

Constituency No. of Voters Votes Cast Abstention

Note the following:

● Format the Percentage of Votes Cast to one decimal place with the percent symbol.
● Centre the data in the worksheet.
● Merge and centre the cells in the row with the label “Elections Data”

Charting and Summary Operations

1. Generate a column graph that compares the votes cast and abstention data by constituency.
Provide an appropriate title, label the axes and display the data labels.

2. Create a pivot table showing the constituencies, the candidates’ names and the total number of
votes the candidates received.

3. Use the data in the pivot table to generate a Pie

chart Save your spreadsheet as Elections

DATABASE MANAGEMENT

You are asked to use a suitable application to manage data on candidates nominated to
contest seats in the general elections. Three tables must be used to store the data. The table
with relevant personal data on each candidate should include: name, address, date of birth,
gender, profession, constituency, constituency number, party and votes received. The
constituency data table should include: the constituency name, constituency number and the
number of voters in each constituency. An elections data table should include: the
constituency number and the percentage voter turnout for each constituency.

The data to populate the tables must be sourced from the spreadsheet section of your
project.

You should test your database by generating queries, reports and control forms:

Queries:

1. List the name, sex, age and profession of all candidates from the People’s Democratic
Revolution (PDR)

2. List the candidate name, party, number of voters and number of votes received for
candidates in constituencies with more than 6500 voters and where the candidates
received less than 1000 of the votes. Sort the data in descending order on the number
of votes received by the candidate.

3. Using a calculated field determine the total votes cast in each constituency.

Report
4. Generate a report which lists the constituency, number of voters in the constituency,
name of candidates, gender, party and number of votes received. The report should
be grouped by constituency. Within each constituency the report should be sorted in
descending order by number of votes received by each candidate. It should also give
the total and average number of votes in each constituency. The report should have a
two-line title as follows:

“Official Results Jamaica National Elections”

Control Forms
5. Create a form to display information about the candidates.

Deliverables:
▪ Tables

▪ Queries

▪ Form

▪ Report
 WORD-PROCESSING

Document 1
1. Each candidate must complete and submit a nomination form to the Jamaica
Elections Commission. You are required to:
(a) Design a fillable nomination form. It must allow for the entry of relevant
data on the candidate, including the constituency which he/she intends to
contest.
(i) The letter head (with company Logo) of the Jamaica Elections
Commission should be placed at the top.

The form should comprise of no more than four controls (for example: text
box, drop-down list, check box or date picker). The controls can be used
more than once when designing the form. Manipulation of the controls
should be limited to renaming labels and prompts (tags) and adding
drop-down list properties

Document 2
2. The results of the national elections must be delivered to each candidate. Using a
suitable feature of your word processing application;
(a) Create a document which should be mailed to the candidates. The
requirements for the letter are:
(i) It must be design on letter sized paper and must have a 0.7” margin on
the left and right sides.
(ii) The commission’s letterhead (with company Logo) should be placed as
the header in the letter. The font in the letterhead should be
appropriately formatted for emphasis.
(iii) Candidate’s address
(iv) Salutation
(v) The first paragraph should congratulate and thank the candidates
(insert candidate’s name in the letter) for the manner in which he/she
conducts his or her campaign,
(vi) A summary table of results should be included with at least seven rows
and three columns, with appropriate formats.
(vii) The third paragraph inviting him/her to view the complete listing of
the results on the commission’s website and conclude the letter.
(viii) Close with your name, your position is Chief Electoral Officer

Document 3
3. Your expertise is being sought to prepare an attractive 3 column brochure to give voters
background information about the purpose of the Elections Commission and to
inform/educate the public on the importance of voting, their rights and responsibilities as
a voter and voting procedures, . The main target market for this brochure is the general
population of Jamaica.

Note – Be creative in the design of your brochure to obtain the required marks by
using suitable features of a word processing application (columns, tables, bullets
and numbering, colour, etc.).

NB: The documents should show appropriate use of formatting features such as
justification, bold, italic, borders and shadings. Appropriate margins should be used.
Deliverables:
● Letterhead
● Primary Document
● Primary Document with the merge fields
● 1st, 2nd and Last Merged Letters
● Data Source
● Fillable Form
● Brochure

WEB PAGE DESIGN

The Jamaica Elections Commission has requested that you design a web page to provide the
public with general information about the election. The web page should include the
following:
● The commission’s logo
● Display information about the elections (for example the total votes received by
each party and the number of votes cast in each constituency).
● Links to the commission’s email address and a web page which displays past
election data results (this web page may or may not exist).
● defined areas on the page for navigational links to other webpages or websites
● suitable graphics
● at minimum two hyperlinks of the following:
⮚ link to a location within the web page

⮚ link to an email address

⮚ link to another web page (which may or may not exist)

⮚ link to user-created files

Data used in the web page should be sourced from the spreadsheet section of the
project.

Students have two (2) choices to create this website – word processing software or
a website building software (eg. www.site123.com or www.wix.com). Students
who choose the website buider must publish their website and use the last page in
their word-processed document to paste the URL to the online web page along with
screenshots of the webpage. Only the candidate number placed near the top of the
page should be used as a form of identification for the web page.

Deliverables:
▪ Webpages or Screenshots of the webpage
PROBLEM-SOLVING

1. Develop an algorithm to print the names of the candidates who should receive a
refund. A refund is due if the candidate’s votes received equals or exceeds 20 per cent
of the votes cast in the constituency. The algorithm should also determine and print
the number of candidates who received a refund. Test the algorithm with data from
ten candidates. The algorithm must accept as input the names of the candidates,
votes received and the votes cast in the constituency. The algorithm should print the
name of the candidate and the words “Refund Due” or “No Refund” and the number
of candidates who received a refund. Data to test the algorithm must be
sourced from the spreadsheet section of the project.

2. Design and execute a trace table to test the algorithm developed in question (1)
above. The table should have a maximum of ten iterations.

PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION

1. (a) Develop a problem statement for the algorithm developed in question (1) above.

(a) Using the programming language Pascal or VBA, write code to implement/automate
the algorithm in question (1) above.

Deliverables:
▪ Pseudocode Algorithm/Flowchart

▪ Trace Table

▪ Program Source Code

▪ Program Output Screenshots