MARK✓

Description

What is it?
'MARK✓' is an add-on for Google sheets. It allows a teacher to allocate documents via Google Drive to students. The student can then answer questions (‘free text’ responses) on their document and request (via a hyperlink) for the work to be marked. The marking is done on the student’s work (live by the add-on) and overall success ‘ticks’ with percentages written on the work and in the teacher dashboard (Google sheet with the add-on). Also, the teacher and student have access to a diagnostic report of student proficiency on the work marked, together with student reports which may be emailed or printed out as evidence for parents. The (Google Drive) documents are either question and answer type or, in the case of GCSE exam papers, an answer only type (with a link to the original exam paper within the document).

Why use it?
'MARK✓' can mark the answers to an exam paper in approximately 5 seconds. It is capable of marking ‘free text’ responses for any content based work which has an ‘exam standard’ mark scheme. The student can complete the work on a laptop or tablet device and can request the work be marked at any time (24/7). The add-on is aimed, initially, at past GCSE exam papers in: physics, chemistry, biology, history, geography, computing, IT, PE, technology and RE. The intention is to expand to other exam courses and more general curriculum materials; BTEC and A Level, for example and supportive assessments for ‘off the shelf’ curriculum materials at Ks3, and beyond.

When is it available?
The add-on is available immediately and a there is a demo (a few GCSE exam paper questions) on the resources website which may be allocated to students to test out its operation. It is anticipated that several GCSE science past paper documents will be available before the end of 2016. Further documents will become available as quickly as they can be created and mark schemes encoded to be read by the ‘add-on’. After an initial, free trial period, the ‘add-on’ will mark a student’s work with an on-demand charge equivalent to a double A4 side b/w photocopy i.e. 2.5p.