Teacher Guidance
To support students to develop understanding of technological systems at Level 8, teachers could:

• support students to understand what operational parameters are and the role they play in the design, development and maintenance of technological systems. Operational parameters refer to the boundaries and/or conditions within which the system has been designed to function and are influenced by a number of factors associated with the technical feasibility and social acceptability of the system
• support students to identify and differentiate highly complex systems. Highly complex systems include self-regulatory and intelligent systems. Self regulatory systems are those that have been designed to adjust the functioning of transformation processes in response to feedback from any part of the system to produce desirable and known outputs. Intelligent systems have been designed to adapt to environmental inputs in ways that change the nature of the system components and/or transformation processes in known and unknown ways to produce desirable but unspecified outputs
• support students to identify and analyse a range of technological systems including simple, complex and highly complex technological systems
• support students to use examples to gain insight into underpinning operational parameters and how these have impacted on and been influenced by system design, development and maintenance decisions.

Explain what operational parameters are in relation to technological systems

Teacher-led discussion: What are operational parameters?

Operational parameters in technological systems define the tolerance range of a system's performance. This includes tolerances such as temperature variables, yield, energy consumption, waste and speed of operation. The role of operational parameters used in technological systems is to set limits around such things as:

• energy use
• level of waste
• resource inputs
• back up and fail-safe requirements
• tolerances for outputs.

Explain the operational parameters established for particular technological systems and explain the factors that influenced these

Site visit to a local production facility.

Students to identify the operational parameters of the system of production.

Research the operational parameters of a range of unfamiliar systems.

Conduct an internet research to find a range of systems (alarm system, irrigation system...) and describe the operational parameters.
Students to discuss why they think these parameters are important to the functionality of the system.

Describe the concepts and processes of the operational parameters of a system the student has designed themselves.

Student analyse the operating principles in their own (or other) technological system.

Discuss examples of technological systems to illustrate how operational parameters impacted on system design, development and maintenance

Practicing technologist perspective.

Guest talk from a system designer or use a Techlink case study (or similar) to identify the operating parameters that were established and how these impacted on the design, development and maintenance of a technological systems.

Discuss examples of simple, complex and highly complex technological systems to illustrate the demands that increasing complexity in system design requires in terms of establishing operational parameters

Teacher led discussion on simple, complex and highly complex systems – for example, self-regulatory systems, intelligent systems.

Using the teachers own examples introduce and discuss simple, complex and highly complex systems  – for example, self-regulatory systems, intelligent systems.

Research assignment.

Students choose a simple, complex and highly complex system, research it and explain how operational parameters have been developed to support the system.