DT & HM Online for NCEA: Compression Coding 91887

TEACHER NOTES 
 
This course focuses on the External Achievement Standard​ ​91887: Demonstrate understanding of 
compression coding for a chosen media type​ ​(3 credits). 

The course involves the students/ākonga learning about and demonstrating an understanding of 
compression coding. Areas covered will include learning regarding a number of computer science 
concepts, to allow students/ākonga to choose and investigate an appropriate media type during 
their summative assessment. 

Areas of study will include: 

● Data representation of values in binary: 
○ How is text represented by binary 
○ How is number represented by binary 
○ How is image represented by binary 

● Representations of: 
○ Colour 
○ Images 
○ Video 
○ Audio 

● A range of compression types, including: 

○ Lossless 
○ Lossy 

● Three critical lossless compression methods: 

○ Run-length encoding 
○ Huffman encoding 
○ LZW-based approaches 

● And will consider the implications of each, using a “real-world” example of a school talent 
quest. 

The course begins with a broad overview of bits, bytes and pixels, before moving on to the specifics 
of encoding and compression. Students will experience workable and thorough information, which 
will be able to be applied later to their formal assessment. 

Since the course covers each criteria in depth, it is recommended teachers facilitate and encourage 
students to complete each section in a logical order. There is the facility for students to navigate the 
course themselves in any order; however, be aware there is risk of them overlooking key-learning 
points and dependencies with this approach. 

It is strongly recommended that every student/ākonga complete the course in the following order: 
Introduction (Café) > Foundation Learning (School) > Coding (Computer Lab) > Image Compression 
(Design Studio) > Video Compression > Audio Compression. 

Each will allow them to focus on specific information, and yield more effective understanding, while 
incrementally building their knowledge. The open navigation means students/ākonga are able to 
return to any previous section at any time for refreshment and review. 

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DT & HM Online for NCEA: Compression Coding 91887

 
 
91887 Demonstrate understanding of compression coding for a chosen media type 

3 credits 

External Achievement Standard 2018 

PDF link:​ ​as91887.pdf​ | Document link:​ ​as91887.doc 

This standard involves students demonstrating understanding of compression coding and requires 
knowledge on the following computer science concepts in order to choose and investigate an 
appropriate media type: data representation of values in binary; representations of video, audio, 
images, colour, or text (depending on the media type investigated), and; lossless and lossy 
compression methods and their implications. 

PDF link: NCEA​ e

​ xemplar 

91887 Standard description 

Achievement  Achievement with Merit  Achievement with Excellence 

Demonstrate understanding  Demonstrate in-depth  Demonstrate comprehensive 

of compression coding for a  understanding of  understanding of compression 
chosen media type.  compression coding for a  coding for a chosen media type. 
chosen media type. 

 
Demonstrate understanding of compression coding for a chosen media type ​involves: 
● Identifying reasons for compressing files 

● Showing how the chosen media type can be represented using bits in an uncompressed 
form 

● Showing how a lossless compression method works 

● Giving examples of when lossy compression is appropriate 

 
Demonstrate in-depth understanding of compression coding for a chosen media type i​ nvolves: 
● Exploring the relationship between lossy compression and human perception of the 
medium 

● Evaluating lossy and lossless compression methods 

Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of compression coding for a chosen media type​ involves: 
Evaluating how real-world applications are enabled by relevant representations including lossy, 
lossless, compressed or uncompressed. 

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Media types​ may be chosen from images, audio, video, animation. Where video or animation is 
selected, the image (frames) or audio data may be used for the tasks. All tasks must be completed 
in the context of the selected media type. 

Examples of lossless compression methods include: 

● Run-length encoding 
● Huffman encoding 
● LZW-based approaches 
 

Background 
These guidelines are supplied to enable teachers/kaiako to oversee consistent teaching and 
learning while using this resource. We recommend that all teachers/kaiako complete the course 
material themselves prior to giving it to a class, so they are better able to support students/ākonga 
with their learning. 

This standard is derived from the​ ​Technological Knowledge​ strand of the NZC, and teaching and 
learning should take place within a collaborative environment consistent with the strand. 

The 3 credits for the achievement standard indicates that approximately 30 hours needs to be 
allocated for teaching, learning (in and out of the classroom) and assessment in a programme of 
study. The assessment has been prescribed by NZQA as being 3 hours (either in part or whole) to 
be carried out under exam-like conditions following 10 September. Submissions to be uploaded to 
the NZQA digital external submission drive by Wednesday 31 October. 

Teachers/kaiako need to ensure they become familiar with the outcomes being assessed by the 
achievement standard, to better guide class direction. (In 2018, the assessment materials were 
released for schools that are registered to sit these standards on 23 July.) 

The assessment activity requires students to respond digitally (in word processor with no access to 
any other materials either digital or hard copy) and as such students/ākonga will need to have 
experienced a range of such experiences prior to assessment. 

This achievement standard does not assess writing style or format; however, the response must 
communicate the candidates’ understanding. Teachers/kaiako may give students guidance on 
appropriate style and format for their response. 

An example of a common assessment task was provided at the beginning of 2018 (​exemplar​ PDF, 
1.7MB). It should be noted that the exemplar was developed to meet prior assessment conditions, 
and as such can only be very loosely applied as guide, i.e. graphic examples of materials from prior 
learning and online sources ​will ​not b
​ e available during the assessment​. 

There will be two optional scenarios provided within which candidates are required to respond to 
the compression requirements of the setting supplied. 

Candidates may be required to either produce a short report, or answer a series of context-specific 
questions. Students must write about the option they have chosen, but can use information and 
examples from their course work to support their response. On the following page a set of mock 
questions (aligned with the assessment step-ups) are provided to help guide the presentation of  

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materials, and the types of questions that can be considered in class (note that without a scenario 
the questions are quite generic). 

Note: The assessment materials will have been released for review by the time teachers/kaiako are 
able to teach this material. A better understanding of the scenario may be gained from said 
materials. 
 

NZQA Standard  Mock 2018 CAT questions 

A Identifying reasons for compressing files  1. Why are image files compressed? 
A Showing how the chosen media type can  2. How can the colours in an 
be represented using bits in an  uncompressed photo image be 
uncompressed form  presented in bits? 
A Showing how a lossless compression  3. How does a lossless image 
method works  compression method work? 
A Giving examples of when lossy  4. From the scenario, what are two 
compression is appropriate  uses when lossy compression is 
  appropriate? 
M Exploring the relationship between lossy  5. How do the algorithms used to 
compression and human perception of  compress images work to minimise 
the medium  the perceived loss? 
M Evaluating lossy and lossless  6. What are the advantages and 
compression methods  disadvantages of lossy and lossless 
  compression methods? 
E Evaluating how real-world applications  7. For each example of use from the 
are enabled by relevant representations  scenario, which is the appropriate 
including lossy, lossless, compressed or  form of compression coding? Why? 
uncompressed 

  

Issues with teaching Compression Coding 

The achieved criteria of the assessment begins with the data representation and defining how “bits” 
are used to represent media data. This can be done in a couple of ways but needs to be more than 
an explanation of binary representation. Rather the description of “physical” visual bits (open a 
computer, and they will not just see lots of little 0’s and 1’s). 

All explanations must be in their own words with their own examples, based on experiments they 
have carried out and understood in class (e.g. do not paraphrase a definition from an online 
encyclopaedia, or this course). 

An important concept to get straight is “lossless” vs “lossy” compression; students should make sure 
that they are clear on the difference between these two similar-sounding ideas that have opposite 
meanings, as the standard uses both of them in different places. 

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The achieved criteria of the standard covers “lossless” methods in detail. A simple lossless method 
is r​ un-length coding​. This is suitable for the “achieved” level of the standard, but the merit criteria 
require an evaluation, which is challenging without a detailed understanding of how it is used in 
practice. The excellence criteria include “real-world” applications, and although run-length coding is 
used on fax machines, these are becoming uncommon, so might be problematic using these as 
“real world” applications. Run-length coding is part of JPEG compression, but the way it is used is 
part of a complex combination of codes, and explaining this well would involve understanding the 
Discrete Cosine Transform​, ​quantisation​, and ​the Huffman​ code. 

For further discussion on these requirements, see this​ ​CSFieldguide​ discussion. 

Class tasks 
The Additional Resources document (provided in the resources section of the course) contains a 
number of external web links that give alternative approaches to the topic. There are PDFs, 
websites and other downloadables that can help with developing deep understanding. 
Students/ākonga must be encouraged to explore and experience all of these sources. 

Some class-based tasks are provided in PDF format for students/ākonga to practice the learning 
gained during the course. Some of these may necessitate teachers/kaiako preparing the materials 
(or guiding students/ākonga to develop resources for others in the class). 

Additional Links 
Audio Compression 
https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rbf/CVonline/LOCAL_COPIES/AV0506/s0561282.pdf 

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