Parallel session A Marking App: from student engagement to feedback and grading Victoria Jack, Tom Smith

The session focused on the development of a marking app which could be used to grade work and also provided some learning analytics about marking activity. This was developed because lecturers took part in a summer school with 100 students and marking of a piece of coursework had to be done in 3 days. The digital tool made tis easier and quicker.

The app was developed following some exploration of feedback given previously and discussions with the markers. What emerged was that 5 categories which marking comments were made around. The team then wrote descriptions for each grade that could be awarded for each category. These were then taken to whole team meeting and revised. The app then had all these added. Markers then used the app to do all marking online.

I6 staff took part in focus groups after the marking and were very positive about this. They said it saved time and you could refer students to the comments in the grade descriptors. They did not however like the calculator and so some changes will be made for next time. A positive feature tutors felt was the analytics where they could see their performance over the time they marked and what grades they gave at different times but also how they were marking compared to the overall tutor performance. The app enables anonymous marking as well.