Automarking
Why aren’t all the questions automarked?
In our Secondary Science Onscreen products, all our questions are taken from previous AQA exam papers. These papers were designed as written, summative assessments, and the marking guidance relating to them is comprehensive, adding a unique dilemma regarding automarking.
On one hand, student responses vary significantly which leads to examiner or teacher judgement being relied on to accurately award marks. For example, multiple-step calculations can be answered correctly in many different ways, with the marks being awarded based on the working that a student has shown.
On the other hand, we want to reduce teacher workload as much as possible, and teachers having to mark students’ responses to questions has a major impact on this.
Considering these two factors among others, we review our content in detail and decide whether or not to automark each question. Front and foremost is our desire to reduce teacher workload whilst maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the question. We will continue to review new and previous content, as well as developments in software capabilities and AI technologies, and update our automarking accordingly.
How can I find only automarked questions?
You can now instantly search our question banks to find all our automarked questions in one list. Open the search tool by clicking Search,
and select Automarked from the list.
The list then presented only includes questions that are fully automarked, so you can use them in assignments and not have to do any teacher marking.
What questions are automarked?
In general, we provide automarking for:
- Multiple choice questions
- Dropdown list questions
- Matching questions
- Single word or phrase questions
- Calculations, except where error carried forward applies
Why isn’t question X automarked?
There are some questions that initially look like they should be automarked, however a deeper inspection can show that the markscheme is more complex or dependent on previous responses.
We regularly receive suggestions to include AI tools to provide automarking for longer response questions. Whilst AI in Education is developing rapidly, there is still a gap between the levels of accuracy we would want to deliver and what these tools can currently provide, particularly where bias needs to be avoided. However, we are committed to developing our automarking further, and continue to research AI solutions - as soon as we are confident in its accuracy, we will consider implementing AI solutions.
How do you automark calculations?
Calculation questions are automarked based on students’ final answers only, and in most cases award either full marks or none.
Whilst we provide a virtual keyboard to allow students to digitally input their working out, this is quite demanding to do and many students prefer to write their working out on paper. This means we are unable to evaluate their calculation method, so can only award marks based on their final answer. With this in mind, we recommend teachers review more complex calculation questions where students have been awarded 0 marks - if they included their working, they may have achieved some of the marks!
If you wish to amend the marks that the system has allocated, give credit for correct working out that may not have led to a correct final answer, or add comments for your students, you can do this by clicking Mark entry in the Onscreen Manager.
I think question X is automarking incorrectly!
Please let us know using the support page here.