GradeMark is a tool within Turnitin that allows instructors to provide electronic feedback and marks on student work. It offers various types of feedback such as in-text comments, rubrics, and general comments. Students and instructors found benefits to electronic feedback such as more detailed and positive comments. Students felt it helped them understand where to improve, while instructors could more easily link feedback to criteria and share comment libraries. Both groups preferred electronic feedback over traditional written comments. The project aimed to engage students in the marking process and received positive feedback from participants.

1. Using GradeMark to Improve Feedback
and Involve Students in the Marking
Process
Alison Graham, Sara Marsham, Jon Goss and Christie Harner
Biology, Marine Science &Technology,
Electrical & Electronic Engineering and
QuILT

2. • To provide feedback on coursework that links
directly to marking criteria
• Use GradeMark to develop libraries of feedback
comments that can function much like dialogue
with students.
Aims of project
Engage students in the entire marking process from the setting of
marking criteria through the receipt and feed-forward application
of feedback.
Trialled on two pieces of coursework:
• BIO3020 (Bioremediation) – grant application
• MST2017 (Graduate Employability Skills for Marine Scientists)
– reflective log.

3. GradeMark
• Part of the Turnitin software.
• Allows you to provide feedback
and a mark on-line.
• Types of feedback:
o In-text comments
 Bubble comments
 Text comments
 QuickMark comments (drag and drop from pre-made set)
o Rubric
o General comments
• Student uploads their work through Blackboard.
What is GradeMark?

4. • Access through Blackboard.
• Get to Assignment Inbox.
• See submissions, similarity score and marks (once graded) for the
whole class.
• Have the students viewed their feedback?
GradeMark

6. Bubble comments

7. Bubble comments

8. Text comments

10. QuickMarks

11. QuickMarks

12. QuickMarks

13. Highlighting/colour-coding

14. Mark against rubric

15. Turning criteria into comments
S/T
A
R
1 2 3 4 5 6

16. Creating own library
• Each comment linked to one of the marking
criteria with letter and number
For each component, comment on:
• How student meets criterion
• What student could have done to achieve
next grade boundary
R 4
R 5

17. Mark work using criteria

18. General comments
• Voice (up to 3 minutes)
• Text (up to 5000 characters)

19. Final mark

20. • Number of students that receive different types of grammatical
comments – identify common errors e.g. punctuation.
• Number of students that fall into each mark range for each
criterion.
GradeMark analysis

21. What did the students think?

22. BIO3020 post-feedback session
• 75% found it useful to have the marking criteria in advance.
• 100% thought it was useful to see how they performed against the
marking criteria.
• 100% preferred electronic feedback to feedback on a pro forma
or mark sheet.
• 100% thought electronic feedback makes it easier to understand
comments about grammar.
• 100% thought electronic marking encourages more positive
feedback.
• 100% found the comments to be specific to the piece of work.
• 100% would like to have received more electronic feedback in
other modules.

23. BIO3020 v MST2017
• 75% found it useful to have the marking criteria in advance (75%).
• 100% thought it was useful to see how they performed against the
marking criteria.
• 100% preferred electronic feedback to feedback on a pro forma
or mark sheet (53%).
• 100% thought electronic feedback makes it easier to understand
comments about grammar (69%).
• 100% thought electronic marking encourages more positive
feedback (80%).
• 100% found the comments to be specific to the piece of work
(50%).
• 100% would like to have received more electronic feedback in
other modules (79%).

24. “This [the rubric] was the most useful aspect of
the electronic feedback as this helped me to
gauge which areas of the assignment I was
lacking and therefore where I would need to
focus my improvement for future work.
It also helped me to understand why I had
received the mark I had in relation to the
marking criteria for each section and thus why
my overall grade was within a certain grade
boundary.”
BIO3020 questionnaire
“I felt like it was easier for the marker to provide positive
comments and this is also important feedback - it is good
to know when a specific section is very good in order to
use this style/technique in another piece of work.
I think the automated comments and marking rubric
make the marker more fair as it ensures they connect
each section of work to the relevant criteria section.”
Overall, the
students voted that
the electronic
comments were
more positive, more
fair, more thorough,
more helpful, easier
to understand and
specific (compared
to other feedback).

25. Student’s perspective
Benefits
• Can read the writing!
• Private – no need to go to the School Office to pick it up.
• Feedback is more detailed.
• Can access from any computer - won’t lose it/always to
hand.
• Work with comments can be printed.

26. Marker’s perspective
Benefits
• Can give more detailed feedback (e.g. rubric, not limited by space).
• Can edit comments.
• Can skip between QuickMarks and rubric and general comments.
• Can easily switch between submissions.
• Can carry out analyses of marks/comments.
• Can check originality as you go.
• Libraries of comments can be shared (uniformity across multiple
markers).
• Could colour code comments according to type.
• Can be used for any type of work that can be made electronic.
• Don’t need to carry piles of work around.

27. Marker’s perspective
Challenges (or things to think about)
• Initial time input (but this can be reclaimed with time savings later
and is only required of one person).
• Need an internet connection.
• No spell-checker in some browsers.
• Highlighting can be tricky. Difficult to highlight one or two letters.
• Can’t include italics in comments.
• Can’t search for previous comments that are not QuickMarks.
• Can’t have two submissions open at once.
• Can’t change the rubric after you start marking.
• Need to read on screen.

28. Acknowledgements
• Thank you to all of the students who took part
and shared their opinions.
• Thank you to the Newcastle University
Innovation Fund.
• Please get in touch if you would like to find out
more or would like a demo in your School
(alison.graham@ncl.ac.uk).