Brave New World: the e-CRB

I’m currently involved in a correspondence on the OCC visual arts forum about the interview, exchanging posts with some teachers who feel that a video of the interview will give a better representation of the interview than an audio recording.

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true, but either way the time it’s taking – to set up, record and edit – especially if you have a lot of students – is causing some angst and anguish.

Also, they seem to think that the file size of the examples of the four candidate interviews posted in the OCC is an indication of the file size to be used in the e-CRB Pilot submissions.

But, as I wrote on the OCC

“I think there may be a misunderstanding of the purpose of the OCC videos. These were posted to show what a series of interviews might look like, which might help teachers and students – not because that size of file is what is expected or allowed…The OCC interviews are the size they are because that format will best show the interview process; they are not intended to be the same file size as actual e-Pilot video interview submissions”.

There are also some complaints already appearing about the amount of work the e-CRB is taking, even in its pilot form.

The old blue CRB paper booklet may be environmentally unfriendly and unable to adequately depict video or sculpture or installations etc – but it is at least comparatively simple to manage, even with the duplicate.

I handed over my (last) set of CRBs and duplicates to my DP Coordinator on Friday: nine off to our visiting examiner, and duplicates to be sent to the IA moderator (actually two moderators, because we have both option A and option B candidates).

Of course, part of the purpose of the pilot is to identify problems and issues that might need resolving before the real thing in 2013, and in that sense its already pretty successful – quite a few problems and issues are being encountered!

Next week is examination week – we’ll see how it all comes together. Stay tuned!

Cheers!