OCR AS Level Media Studies, Foundation Portfolio Evaluation

1. AS Media Studies – Foundation Portfolio – Evaluation
The evaluation is worth 20 marks. It is 20% of your AS coursework.
Assessment Criteria:
A Grade 16–20 marks
• Excellent skill in the use of appropriate digital technology or ICT in the evaluation.
• Excellent understanding of issues around audience, institution, technology,
representation, forms and conventions in relation to production.
• Excellent ability to refer to the choices made and outcomes.
• Excellent understanding of their development from preliminary to full task.
• Excellent ability to communicate.
In your evaluation you must answer the following questions:
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
Examiners’ Report June 2014
At the top end, there were some really creative pieces and here candidates had generally
used a different technology to answer each question, exploring a range of formats and
experimenting with creativity. Centres that did particularly well, made sure that the
evaluation was not an afterthought and that candidates spent a reasonable amount of time
producing it to reflect its mark allocation, rather than just a couple of lessons at the end of
the project. Candidates had used a variety of technology; often the evaluations were
submitted on blogs with PowerPoint, Prezi, video, audio and embedded documents to
support. There were still many which produced evaluations ineffective evaluations as
they were essentially essays. Where Web 2.0 tools are used, centres are advised to
consider the appropriateness and effectiveness of them. In some cases, Prezis were used as
just glorified essays, with one box per question. Fitness for purpose is essential.
A significant amount of candidates only produced Level 2 responses: brief, undeveloped
short written responses done as an add-on rather than being treated as 20% of the mark.
The candidates who had really made an effort showed thorough understanding as well as
very effective use of ICT.

2. Advice for Effective Evaluation
o Use a range of different presentation methods.
o Be creative in your presentation.
o Answer all the questions in sufficient detail.
o Try to make your work visual.
o Don’t write an essay.
Question 1- Conventions
Identify the conventions of page layout and genre. Annotate your magazine pages
explaining how you have used these conventions.
Question 2 – Representation
Explain how you have represented the people within your magazine. How have you used
technical elements (camerawork, mise-en-scene, colour, language, typography) to create
these representations? What social groups have you represented (e.g. age group, gender)?
To what extent is your representation of these social groups stereotypical?
Question 3 – Institutions
What publishing company would distribute your magazine? Why would they be suitable?
How does your magazine fit into their portfolio of brands? What different niche audiences
do they target? How would that institution be able to help your magazine be successful?
Question 4 – Target Audience
Identify who your target audience is in terms of demographics (age, gender) and
psychographics (interests). Refer to the findings of your original audience research. You can
include your media pack to identify key demographic information.
Question 5 – Audience Appeal
Annotate your magazine pages explaining how they appeal to your speci fic target audience.
Refer to the audience feedback you have received on your magazine pages. Consider
including focus group or audience interviews.
Question 6 – Technology
What different technologies have you used whilst completing your coursework? What has
this technology allowed you to do?
Question 7 – Progress from Preliminary Task
Compare your preliminary task (school magazine) to your completed music magazine. In
what ways have your skills developed?
Remember your evaluation is assessed on:
 Use of technology
 Understanding of key concepts
 Use of specific examples from your coursework
 Communication