Thomas Adam wrote...
I think the reason why exam boards are afraid to offer such options is that it is new -- it has not been tried and tested.
I for one would rephrase this... "I think the reason why exam boards are afraid to offer such options is that it is not 'old hat' and they have an fundamental abhorrence of anything that might involve them in 'trying and testing' something different."
Now I realise this is paradoxical, but perhaps the other main reason is that there are a lack of qualified people to actually *teach* the proposed module.
...which tips us into a circular argument about there being a lack of courses and qualifications for those who might want to learn how to teach such a module. There's also the fact that Linux has traditionally been 'self-taught' ...at the level of 'kernel development coordinator' all the way down to the humble user. Indeed I'd be surprised if Linus Tourvalds himself possesses a formal academic 'Linux' qualification. Now the same used to be true of Microsoft people / developers / users up until the 1990s. For back in the 80s when I was most active at the leading (and all too often bleeding) edge of software development there were no qualifications to be had other than 'Computer Science' degrees. Furthermore, at that time Computer Science degrees were considered a 'Kiss of Death' with regard to a graduates suitability for employment in the harsh real (non-academic) creative world of software development. Like them or loath them, since the late 80s Microsoft has invested heavily in its own qualification system. Academics followed suit with their own watered down versions, having rejecting Microsoft's offerings the result of academia's endemic all-pervasive 'Not Invented Here' syndrome. So what's the answer? Well maybe the Linux community simply has to come up with a qualification structure and range of courses commensurate with that of Microsoft's. Only then will academia rush to produce their own self-referentially 'valid' academic qualification. David Bowles