This guide applies to you, as a single Grader, who will mark all submissions independently. The process is simpler because you will not need to align grades with co-graders. 

This article walks you through the standalone marking process, including how to navigate the workspaces, assign marks, and officially confirm your grades.

Sign in to Inspera Assessment

Sign in to Inspera Assessment the usual way. When you are invited as a Grader on a test, you will receive an email about this, and the email also contains a link to the test which you are invited to mark. 

1. After signing in, select and open the test you are going to mark from the list.
2. The first workspace you encounter the first time you open the test is the Grading overview workspac . This is where you start.

Before you start marking

Before you begin marking, it is important to familiarize yourself with the different workspaces and the layout.

Brief explanation of the Header

The header at the top of the panel shows the test name, your name, what user roles you have in the context of the test, and optionally which committee you belong to. 

You can read more about the header in this article.

Overview of the candidates in the Grading Overview workspace

Go to the workspace Grading Overview under Workspaces if you are not already there.

The Grading overview displays a complete list of candidates and provides key details, including:

• Flagged
• ID (Candidate ID)
• Attachment
• Your grade
• Grades
• Workflow status
• Final grade
• Marking status 
• Total marks
• Committee
• Marking deadline

In this workspace, you can assign a grade directly if you prefer not to mark individual questions.

Brief explanation of the Marking workspace and navigation

When you begin marking, start by selecting the Marking workspace. 

In the Marking workspace you can look at the candidates' submissions question by question and mark them.

• Marking workspace layout

  The tabs over the question gives the following choices:

  • 152369 / 2: The answer to the selected candidate and question. On automatically marked questions, correct answers are also displayed. 
  • Question: Here you can see the question as it was given on the test. Correct answers to automatically marked questions will also be shown. 
  • Attachment: If there is an attachment attached to the candidate, you will see this here. A PDF will be displayed directly, while other file types can be downloaded and opened in a suitable program.

  • Similarity: Question types such as Essay and Upload Assignment can be checked for similarities, and if anti-similarity is enabled you will access the similarity report here. Read more about Similarity reports.  

    

  The panel to right (see image below) shows, among other things, which question type and how many marks the candidate has been given on automatically marked questions.

  

  In the candidate answer on the question, you can do the following:

  • Write and view comments and annotations on the question. Read more about how to read and write comments and annotations. 
  • Set marks on the question (this will be described in more detail in Step 1 - Select the candidate and mark the first question).
  • Mark scheme: If a mark scheme has been written to the question itself, it will appear here. 
  • Question private notes: Write a private note on the question. This note is only visible to you as a grader and is not shared with anyone. 

• Navigate between candidates and questions

  At the top of the page you can, you can navigate between candidates and questions that you are marking.

  1. In the example below, candidate 001 and question 1 are selected.

     

     For more information, see the article how to navigate between candidates and questions.

  2. In the example below, candidate 001 and question 1 are selected.

     

     For more information, see the article how to navigate between candidates and questions.

Start marking

• Step 1 - Choose if you want to mark by candidate or question
• Step 2 - Select the first candidate/question and start marking
• Step 3 - Proceed to the next questions/candidates and continue marking
• Step 4 - Go to the next candidate/question and continue marking
• Step 5 - Review the marking
• Step 6 - Confirm the marking
• Step 7 - Write notes, explanations, and comments in the submission

Step 1 - Choose if you want to mark by candidate or question

1. If Mark by Question is not activated, skip this step.

2. This option requires activation, please reach out to your account manager.

   Some Graders prefer to mark a single candidate from the first question to the last, before moving on to the next candidate. We call that Mark by Candidate. 

   Some Graders prefer to mark all the candidates on a single question, before moving to the next question. We call that Mark by Question.

   You select your preference on the left side of the navigation bar in the Marking Workspace. 

   1. 

Step 2 - Select the first candidate/question and start marking

1. Select the first candidate/question you want to mark. By default the first from each list is selected.
2. Mark the question. See how to mark different question types in the section Marking different question types.

Step 3 - Proceed to the next questions/candidates and continue marking

1. 1. Proceed to the next question of that candidate.
   2. Repeat until you've marked all the questions of that candidate.

2. Marking by Candidate:

   1. Proceed to the next question of that candidate.
   2. Repeat until you've marked all the questions of that candidate.

   Marking by Question:

   1. Proceed to the next candidate of that question.
   2. Repeat until you've marked all the candidates of that question.

Step 4 - Go to the next candidate/question and continue marking

1.  

   • Click next candidate to move to the next candidate
   • The question selected for the new candidate will remain the same
   • If you want to select the first question of the candidate, manually select that question. If you're interested in having the behaviour automatically, reach out to your account manager about activating "Mark by Question".

   Please take into consideration that for tests with candidate selected or randomly pulled questions, when moving to the next candidate, you will move to the next candidate who submitted the selected question, not to the next candidate in the list. If you want to change this behaviour, please reach out to your account manager to enable Mark by Question in your tenant.

2. Marking by Candidate:

   1. Click next candidate to move to the next candidate.
   2. The first question of that candidate will be automatically selected.

   Marking by Question:

   1. Click next question to move to the next question.
   2. The first candidate that submitted that question will be selected

Next steps:

3. Continue until you've marked all your candidates and questions.
4. When you have marked all the questions of a candidate, you will receive a message that the grade is calculated and which grade the candidate received (if the Planner chose a grading scale and defined thresholds).

Notes on grades:

• When using grades instead of marks on questions, the grade will not be calculated automatically. We recommend that you go to the Results workspace where you get an overview of all grades set on questions and can set the main grade.
• If you choose to reset the marks on a manually marked question after you have marked all of the questions, you will receive the message "Calculated grade was removed. Since the question marks was removed for (candidate ID)"

Step 5 - Review the marking

When you have completed the marking for all questions for all candidates, continue to the Grading overview workspace.

This workspace provides an overview of the candidates, and includes:

• The grades that have been set (both yours and the final grade)
• Marking status (complete/incomplete)
• The total marks
• Committees

1. Filter candidates

   It is also possible to filter candidates. For example, by clicking the list Ungraded candidates, you filter the candidates by whether they have been given a grade or not. 

   

2. Default view vs Results view

   At the top right corner, the Grader can choose between the Default View (as in the image above) and the Results View.

   The Default View focuses on the status of each candidate.

   The Results View focuses on analysing the marks for each question of each candidate. Similar to what is available in the Candidate in Focus workspace.

Step 6 - Confirm the marking

The final step in the marking process is to confirm your marking.

1. Click Confirm in the header. 

   

2. You will be presented with a window where you can confirm your marking. 

3. You will start in the Not graded list. If some candidates are missing a grade, they will appear in this list. 

   You should make sure all candidates have been graded before continuing. 

   

   The list Incomplete marking shows an overview of the candidates who are missing marks on answered questions. 

   All candidates shows the list of all the candidates, regardless of marking or grading status.

   In each tab, you'll see the list of the corresponding candidates with their ID, committee, Grades, Total Marks, Final Grade and Marking deadline. 

   

4. If you need to make any changes, click the Close button on the top right corner.

5. When you are ready to confirm your marking, click Confirm now. 

   

6. By confirming, marks and grades are locked, and the grading protocol becomes available. You can still edit comments and explanations. 

7. After clicking Confirm now, you will receive confirmation that the marking is approved and the confirm now button will be disabled. 

   

8. Click the Close button in the top right corner to return to the marking module. 

• Download the grading protocol

  You can download the grading protocol by clicking Download grading protocol in the header. 

  

  The grading protocol will open in a new tab.

Step 7 - Write notes, explanations, and comments in the submission

You can write private notes, explanations and comments in the submission throughout the marking process.

Private note fields are available on each question, and you can choose to add them to the explanation field. 

For more information, see these Help Center articles:

• How to comment on a submission
• How to write and send explanations

Marking different question types

• Automatically marked questions

  Automatically marked questions are marked by Inspera Assessment once the candidate has submitted the test. These questions are marked with a lightning icon and have the text Automatically calculated in the upper right corner.

  By filtering for Automatic marks in the footer, you can choose to only navigate through the automatically marked questions. 

  

  As a Grader you can override the automatically calculated marks. To do this, click Override.

• Manually marked questions

  On manually marked questions you, as a Grader, have to set the marks. 

  Questions that have not been awarded marks are marked in the upper right corner with Not set. 

  

  To the right of the question, you will find the option to set marks. 

  1. Select the number of marks by clicking the dropdown, or type the number of marks. It is possible to set marks with up to two decimals, for example 2.5 or 2,5.

  2. Once you have set marks, the status of the question changes to "Set by you a few seconds ago". 

     

  3. By clicking Reset, you can reset the marks that you have given. 

  Some tests are set up with grades on questions instead of marks. In which case you choose from the available grades in the dropdown menu.

• Unanswered questions and attachment

  An unanswered question contains no answers from the candidate. To be absolutely sure that a question is unanswered, you can check under the column Response in the candidate list on the Results workspace. 

  Be aware that in some cases, unanswered questions may still contain a response as an attachment. If there is an attachment added to the submission, this will appear in the toolbar under Attachment. 

  

  To view the attachment click Attachment.

  If the attachment is a PDF file, it will appear directly in the view, while other file types must be downloaded. A download link will then appear when you click Attachment. 

Filter Not Marked Questions

If you want to only navigate within questions without a mark, you need to select the "Unmarked Questions" filter in Marking.

This filter is only available to Graders and if the possibility of selecting Mark By Question is activated. Please reach out to your account manager to activate it.

Candidate Selected/Randomly Pulled Questions

The navigation in these type of assignments depend on whether Mark by Question is available.

If Mark by Question is not available in your tenant, the navigation is as described here.

If Mark by Question is available in your tenant, the navigation is the same as described in the current article and is more detailed here. Please reach out to your account manager if you want to to activate this behaviour.