Beating Marking Challenges in the Online Environment

COVID-19 created many challenges (and opportunities) in teaching and learning, including how we could assess our students ‘normally’ in an ‘abnormal’ environment. Taxation (as was the case for several other modules) was faced with the predicament that the format of professional examinations related to this field currently requires students to write out the answers to complex calculation and theory questions physically when answering case-study-type questions. Lecturers had to somehow retain this way of answering assessments to prepare students for these professional examinations.

The e-learning-related solution to this conundrum was for students to scan in their handwritten answer scripts in PDF format using smartphones and other devices and to upload these to clickUP. The uploaded scripts were then

Tanya Hill

marked using an on-screen marking tool. During 2020, lecturers successfully used this tool to mark test scripts from off-campus assessments that closely simulated the format of ‘normal’ assessments. For the on-campus, invigilated third-year examinations, the students used the same scanning and uploading technique just before they left the examination venues and lecturers then used the on-screen marking tool to assess the scripts.

The main benefits of the on-screen marking tool are that it can be used off-line by individual markers at different locations without distributing physical papers and that it allows markers to mark directly on the student’s PDF script and to insert individualised comments on scripts to assist students in their learning process. It also automatically totals the student’s mark and transfers the marks from all the individual scripts into an Excel document used to upload all the marks simultaneously to the Grade Centre in clickUP. The time saved by not having to add up and manually capture marks is

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substantial, and the tool also enhances security during electronic perusal of papers.

In addition, UP acquired the Advanced Assignment Tool under licence from Blackboard. This tool enabled lecturers to do a bulk download of all the scripts uploaded to clickUP by students, mark them off-line with the onscreen marking tool and then do a bulk upload back to clickUP so that each student could see their marked script on their profile.

The taxation lecturers regard this on-screen marking tool as the new norm in marking e-assessments. It saves valuable lecturer time, which in turn saves costs for the University, improves the ability to provide commentary on marked scripts, reduces the risk of COVID-19 infections (at this point in time) by eliminating the physical handling of students’ scripts, and enables lecturers to mark from literally anywhere. It is clearly a versatile solution to many vexing issues in the online assessment arena.