Monday 4 November 2013

Grademark resource


What is Grademark?

Grademark is a digital mark-up tool which allows you to mark assignments through an online document viewer. This means that students can submit assignments and receive feedback through the KLE. Access to this tool is through the creation of a Turnitin assignment dropbox.

What does Grademark offer?

The mark up tools offered through Grademark can broadly be separated into two areas, marking features that annotate the assignment and marking features that can be used to provide feedback alongside these annotations. A numeric mark can also be entered alongside these features. The features within these areas are explained below,

Main features
Annotating the assignment 


  • A range of pre-set floating comments (Quickmarks) can be dragged and dropped on to the assignment.   These pre-set comments are customisable and you can create your own. Quickmarks can also be exported and shared between markers.
  • You can type comments directly on to the assignment.
  • You can highlight text in different colours, linking a comment to the highlighted text. This is useful for multiple markers
  • You can strikethrough text, and add comments to this action

Features for feedback alongside annotations


  • You can provide short audio feedback, the students can listen to this whilst reading feedback on their assignment
  • There is a specific general comments area to add additional comments and you can also copy and paste text into this area
  • Both quantitative and qualitative rubrics can be developed, which can be exported and shared with other tutors.

In addition to the features above Grademark has a reporting function built into it. This reporting function gives you details about the frequency of use in relation to the comments (Quickmarks) you have used and more detailed statistics in relation to the assignment. This information can be downloaded to a spread sheet

Why should I use Grademark?

Grademark can be useful for staff and students for a number of reasons. Using Grademark allows for feedback to be delivered to students automatically as students are submitting and collecting feedback from one central point, the KLE. Staff can work more flexibly as assignments are stored in a central point and accessed via the internet. Less paper needs to be processed and stored.

Tips for providing feedback using Grademark


  1. Build your own bank of comments (Quickmarks) gradually
  2. Try using Grademark with a small number of assignments at first
  3. Tell the students what you are doing
  4. Rather than replicating your paper marking style try and think what the tools offers you.
  5. The statistical reporting features could be used to help determine future interventions
  6. The assignment inbox displays an icon once a student has accessed the feedback for longer than 30 seconds
  7. Remember rubrics and comments (Quickmarks) can be shared
  8. Descriptions can be added to comments (Quickmarks)
  9. Familarise yourself with the system, look at www.keele.ac.uk/lpdc for details about workshops
  10. Firefox is the recommended web browser to use when using Grademark. A list of supported browsers is here http://tinyurl.com/Grademark-Browsers
  11. Try it out

Resources and further information





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