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Marking Assignments

This page assumes the use of Desire to Learn and is current as of April 2012.

After a while, you will probably feel like the majority of your work involves marking (though to put into perspective, it is probably less than half). This is certainly one of our biggest tasks as far as students are concerned. With that said, there are many things to consider when dealing with marking assignments (other than the marking itself). We want to ensure that everything we are working with remains accurate, consistent and minimize any potential issues that students may have.

Creating a Marking Scheme

The tutors usually make the marking schemes for the assignments and go over them with the other tutors, the instructor and the IA’s at the marking meeting. You can use the past marking schemes for past assignments available to you on the course account in jcbserver for a template (ask your ISC if you cannot find it). Before you begin the marking scheme ask the instructor if they have any feedback about how the questions should be marked. Before the marking meeting, you should be looking at some students’ answers to make sure your marking scheme is fair and has no obvious mistakes. If any changes to the assignment were made that will affect the accuracy of the marking scheme, be sure make the necessary adjustments.

Consult your fellow tutors, your ISC, or the instructor if you are unsure of something. If there is a change you would like to make to the marking scheme that seems debatable, make a note of it and bring it up at the marking meeting. It is better to discuss it and have the entire marking team on board with your suggestion than to assume you are correct. Again, you should not make changes without a consensus.

Print out a copy of the marking scheme for each tutor and IA to bring to your marking meeting (make an effort to reduce paper usage). Remember, when you post the solutions to the assignments on Learn, do not post the marking scheme.