Posted on 28 May 2011 at 16:43h

Not much time for blogging or writing new worksheets for the website since I am bogged down with e marking and the thought of spending more time at the computer is not so appealing (so I'll make this quick). The system we are using is called scoris and it seems pretty good. You basically download 20 papers at a time and then are able to mark them by candidate or question by using a selection of stamps. Before starting to mark you have to be able to be close enough to the chief examiner and that's not easy, of course everyone makes mistakes and that includes the chief himself so matching scores can be problematic. Every 10 scripts you get 2 already marked ones (seeds) if you don't match the chief examiner you get suspended. To be honest the whole process is quite stressful, much more so than the old method. the marking on the computer is fine but the big brother aspect isn't. Having said that system is pretty good I have to remark on one thing that is starting to get on my nerves. Since section B (I mark paper 2) has a choice of questions student leave 2 of them blank but the marker has to open every section of every question and acknowledge with an NR (No response). Why don't they programme the computer to do this. f a computer can read a car number plate it can surely tell if one of those boxes is blank. Also some of the questions just have a single number answer like 0 or 2V. I'm the computer could handle these too.

By the way, that screen shot is an actual exam question answer. I wonder if it's ok to reproduce copyright material as long as the resolution is low enough?