Measuring institutional achievement in Canada
Photo courtesy of University of the Fraser Valley This September over two million Canadian students are heading back to college and university to earn an education. There will be lots of learning, late-night study sessions, and assessments taking place at campuses to ensure students are graduating with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in […]
Improving feedback from high stakes testing
High stakes testing is a ubiquitous aspect of American education. At the macro-level their results have significant influence on education policy and funding, and at the micro-level they shape a student’s academic future. Unfortunately, while the assessments provide meaningful insights to administrators they fail to provide the same formative feedback to the students and instructors […]
Establishing best practices for grading writing in the UK
It’s no secret that the majority of educators regard grading as a tedium. While few argue against the merits grading has in fostering student knowledge, many educators find it difficult to balance their teaching and research duties while providing adequate feedback to hundreds of written assignments. In the UK for example, recent surveys find over […]
Introducing variable length assignments
The new student submission page We are very excited to announce that Crowdmark will soon allow for variable length answers for assigned assessments. This means that students’ answers to questions can be longer than one page. Our new workflow opens up opportunities for long answer and essay questions. These new changes will take effect on […]
Assessment analytics overview
The Crowdmark grading workflow generates a deluge of data owned by our university customers. Each question posed to a student by an instructor in a course, the student’s response, together with the associated scores, annotations and text comments left by the grading team are all captured and archived for detailed analysis. Our team is developing […]
Investing in technology and training
A recent study by KPMG finds only 41% of colleges use data for predictive analytics. Colleges are purchasing education technology but not allocating the necessary financial and human resources to properly use them. Historically, the college classroom was an inaccessible black box. Insights into student behaviour came from surface level observations of variables including attendance, […]
Balancing Technology and Tradition in the Classroom
Digital technology is becoming a ubiquitous part of the classroom. From kindergarten to university, teachers have access to myriad devices, applications, and learning management systems designed to enrich their students’ learning. However, it is important to recognize that educational technology is not a cure-all, but rather one of many pedagogical tools teachers use to support […]
How teachers are using data
Photo courtesy of dirkcuys Data from educational technology is shaping the future of classroom instruction. As part of the Teachers Know Best initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation surveyed over 4,600 K-12 teachers across America to understand how teachers use data and how technology can better meet their needs. The study finds all teachers rely on data […]
Technology should help educators work more effectively, not more
Photo courtesy of Sebastien Wiertz Educators and administrators in K-12 and post-secondary education have access to an ocean of data which can assist in providing personalized instruction and identify areas where students are struggling. Unfortunately, without proper training and support teachers often find themselves drowning in the very data designed to support their classes. The Bill […]
Growth of digital technology in school boards
Photo courtesy of Brad Flickinger An unprecedented number of public school districts in America are adopting digital technology. As of April 2016, 62% of districts have established digital content and curriculum strategies for their classrooms—up from 49% in 2015—and 33% of districts without are in the midst of developing digital programs. With the incoming funding provided […]
Educational priorities of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
During his keynote speech at the ASU+GSV Summit, Bill Gates outlined the three educational platforms his foundation will be prioritizing to best serve the current and future generation of American students. The latest high school graduate rates in America are at 81%–the highest levels in over 6 years—and are expected to reach 90% by 2020. […]
Introducing Courses
The new My Courses page We’re excited to announce that we have some changes coming to your My Assessments page in Crowdmark. In a couple of weeks you will be able to organize your assessments into courses. This will help to better organize your assessments and group them together in a way that makes sense for you. […]
New SAT is high stakes for students, college board
The new version of the SAT was administered for the first time on Saturday March 5, 2016 to over 450,000 students. The stakes are high for students hoping to be accepted to their preferred colleges, but arguably even higher for the College Board, the SAT’s developer. The College Board made significant revisions to the SAT […]
Benefit of graduate student instructors
Photo courtesy of University of the Fraser Valley A recent study by researchers at Stanford and Harvard University has found that first-year courses taught by graduate students result in significant benefits for both undergraduates and the graduate instructors. To determine the value of graduate-student led courses, a longitudinal study of public universities in Ohio tracked the […]
Digitizing student transcripts
Conventional college transcripts are similar to resumes providing evidence of enrollment and grades. However, outside of the awarded degree, they are unable to provide tangible evidence of knowledge, skills, and experience. This may change soon through the Comprehensive Student Record Project. If successful, the conventional college transcript may become more similar to a LinkedIn profile. […]
Standardized testing in Ontario universities
This fall, several Ontario colleges and universities will be administering entrance exams that will assess the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills of incoming students. Upon graduation, members of this fall 2016 cohort will take the assessment again to determine whether post-secondary institutions are preparing students with the skills and competencies required for the workforce. If […]
A horizontal shift in education technology
Education technology is providing post-secondary institutions with more intuitive ways to capture and use data to support students. Traditionally, most post-secondary institutions subscribe to a number of products for data collection and scheduling; however, many of these programs are not compatible with each other so the data are often inaccessible to academic advisors. Fortunately, in […]
Teaching can be taught
Teaching is a skill that never plateaus; it requires diligent training and exercise to stay effective. While it seems intuitive that instructors who regularly participate in professional development will become more effective educators, this is not always the case. While there has been a paucity of research on the measurable outcomes of professional development, a […]
John King’s challenges in preserving the Common Core
Dr. John King became the United States’ acting Secretary of Education on January 1, 2016. During his one-year tenure, King is expected to face a number of challenges including overseeing the peer review of state assessment systems now that the Common Core standards are no longer mandatory. Dr. King’s appointment has generated some controversy due […]
Female students evaluated on attractiveness in higher education
A 2015 study has found the physical attractiveness of female students to be a statistically significant implicit factor in grade results. For male students there is no significant relationship between attractiveness and grades, and the results were consistent regardless of faculty members’ gender. The study was conducted at Metropolitan State University using data from 5,394 […]
Why Crowdmark is the Best Grading Solution
This article was updated on March 5, 2021. The Crowdmark platform transforms traditional assessment into an enriched dialogue between students and instructional teams. To further enhance distance learning success, Crowdmark consistently deploys new features to help learning institutions advance their teaching, learning, and research mission further. Independent research already validates the benefits of online collaborative grading. With input […]
The rise and fall of the Common Core
The introduction of the Every Child Succeeds Act (ECSA) on December 10, 2015 effectively signified the end of the Common Core standards in the United States. Introduced as a common academic benchmark for English and mathematics in K-12 education, the Common Core standards garnered bipartisan political support and were adopted by 45 states. This initial […]
Introducing Exam Matcher
We’re thrilled to announce our new Exam Matcher app is now available in the App Store and Google Play. Search for a student. Scan their QR code. The Exam Matcher app enables professors and exam proctors to match students to their papers during an exam. The benefits are twofold; the matching step is performed before […]
New features: Tag and filter evaluations
Out with flags, in with tags Flags were used to bookmark and share pages of student work with your team, but they were limited to a single red icon. This left many to wonder, “Why was this page flagged?” We’re happy to announce that we’ve replaced the flag feature with a more meaningful, flexible way […]
Holistic evaluations through contract grading
In order to emphasize the learning process over grades, a number of post-secondary instructors are foregoing traditional grading rubrics in favour of contract grading. Students are still evaluated based upon the demonstration of their knowledge and skills but instead of basing the evaluation on a single essay or test, contract grading takes a more holistic […]
Common Core’s unfulfilled goal
The Common Core Standards were introduced in 2010 in an effort to ensure K-12 students across each of the 50 states are being taught and evaluated using a common standard. Preliminary results from the first administrations of Common Core-aligned testing are showing that overall student scores have improved. Unfortunately, due to a number of states […]
Applied evaluation in New York
High schools in New York State are providing their students with opportunities to earn their diplomas through research projects and oral evaluations as an alternative to standardized tests. Research has shown that these evaluation methods administered under the New York Performance Standards Consortium yield higher graduation and college-enrollment rates. The consortium evaluations are designed to […]
Aiming for higher standards with AzMERIT
The unofficial results from Arizona’s first administration of the AzMERIT standardized test show that most students scored below proficient in English language arts and math. However, these low score results are not evidence that the AzMERIT is ineffective; rather, they demonstrate that the previous assessment, AIMS, set the bar too low. In 2010, Arizona adopted […]
Crowdmark supports two stage exams
Interface for matching two stage exams Crowdmark is a collaborative online grading and analytics platform. Until now collaboration has been focused on facilitators and graders who use the platform to grade student work. With the launch of support for two stage exams, we have extended assessment collaboration to include students. This most recent product improvement […]
Grading activity timing in Crowdmark
Crowdmark provides real-time insight into grading activity. Real-time means that at all times, the data displayed in the assessment dashboard is current. We track a velocity (evaluations per hour) metric related to questions as a whole and also for each grader within a particular assessment. How it Works In order to support real time analytics, […]
New features: Reusable comments, assessment locking, and more
New feature highlights Our team has been working hard over the past 4 months to bring new features to Crowdmark to improve your experience. The ideas for these new features came directly from you, our community of graders and instructors. Here is a recap of the new features with links to more information. Crowdmark looks […]
Teach less, learn more in Singapore
Singapore’s education system may produce students who lead in reading, mathematics, and science, but they receive failing grades when it comes to innovation. In order to remedy this Singapore’s Ministry of Education implemented the “Teach Less, Learn More” policy in 2006 to alleviate some academic pressure and produce more well-rounded students. While Singapore’s education policy […]
New York’s proposed teacher evaluation has the wrong criteria
Photo courtesy of Ivan T New York’s proposed reform on teacher evaluation policies is heading in the opposite direction of other states’. The legislation, which was approved in March and has until June 30 to be approved, will have the student performance on standardized tests account for one half of teacher evaluations. The effects of this […]
The panopticon of predictive analysis
There is no question that we live in a world of big data. As users of social media, every comment we publish, connection we establish, locations we check into, and pages we visit are mined to present us with tailor-made advertisements. As consumers, every purchase made with a credit card is analyzed to determine spending […]
Over 1,000,000 pages evaluated on Crowdmark
When we started Crowdmark in 2012, I never imagined that we would be building a solution to change the dialogue between students and educators. We were simply building a platform to ease the pain of grading thousands of pages of handwritten student work for a math competition. Fortunately our solution resonated with educators and our […]
Competency-based education 2.0
The University of Texas offers a unique approach to the model of online competency-based education in order to position it as a legitimate form of education. As it stands, the structure of competency-based education is widely regarded – and implemented – as being completely online, self-directed, and self-paced. As a result of this, competency-based education […]
No more hunt and peck
Santa Clarita Valley students will be trading in their pencils for keyboards on their standardized tests this year. One of the key reasons for this transition is to help students become more familiar using QWERTY-standard keyboards. While most students are digital natives with access to computer technology since early childhood, their reliance on texting through […]
Boys more likely than girls to underperform academically
A recent study by the OECD found that across 30 countries 14% of boys and 9% of girls did not meet baseline-levels of proficiency in mathematics, science, and literacy. These findings are very troubling due to the emphasis of post-secondary credentials in many industries and the impact that education has on the economic and social […]
Moving ahead with competency
In Washington State, there are over one million people who have earned some college credits but not a degree. Online competency-based programs are being developed to close this gap. The flexible online platform of competency-based education allows any person to earn their degree regardless of their age, employment, and familial commitments. Courses are offered on […]
University of Maryland punts on athletics reform
Photo by Daniel Hartwig Football scandals have, for better or worse, become part of the new normal on large college campuses: sexual abuse at Penn State, brain damage at Michigan, and cheating at UNC. In response, the University of Maryland has tried to combat a bad image in two ways: first, by offering “lifetime scholarships” to its student athletes, rather than limiting the life […]
Finnish schools: Great education policy? Or great economic policy?
When I was 17 years old, I ‘studied’ abroad (it was only for the summer) in Finland. This is an experience that my mother has never let me forget, mainly because I found Finland to be such a wretched place that I came home a month early. It’s always a surprise to me, then, when […]
Long papers, short lines, tough decisions
Photo courtesy of Nic McPhee It’s hard to believe, but as October starts I’m staring down the deadline of my first writing assignment. And I don’t mean anything that I have to turn in, but rather a ream of papers that I have to give back. Students often don’t realize that what seems like a painful task to […]
What’s the point of assessment, anyway?
As we reach the end of the first month of school, many students are facing their first test of the year. This can be nerve-wracking: a new set of instructor expectations, unfamiliar material, and potentially high stakes. All of this raises a question: what’s the point of assessment, anyway? The rhetoric around standardized testing would have you believe that there […]
Why the turnaround on the Common Core?
Although the standardized tests are months away, students, parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians are already mired in debate over the Common Core Standards (CCS). Websites are popping up to help teachers find and adjust to new lesson plans, new standards, and new materials. While some teachers favor the new standards, others increasingly oppose them, as do education luminaries like Diane Ravitch. But regardless of your stance on their efficacy, […]
Where are the humanities going, where have they been?
The debate over the place of the humanities in the modern curriculum continues without any sign of resolution. We’ve seen lamentations for the death of the humanities a call for the elimination of popular programs (like business schools) to save the humanities; a rebuttal that the humanities are alive and well😉 and that uncertain savior, the hybrid discipline of Digital Humanities. And this is only a small selection of available topics. And yet there’s more […]
Tried and true? The new face of assessment
US educators increasingly recognize that students have differing needs and goals for education. The most controversial may be compentency-based learning, which offers instruction and credits based on skill, rather than on time spent in the classroom. Several companies are capitalizing on this idea to offer new means of assessment. Among the most popular is the portfolio assessment, which allows […]
New standardized tests will change this year’s instruction
It’s the start of a new school year, and that means that everyone — from students to parents to teachers to administrators — is worried about standardized testing. For some, it may mean jobs or admission. Whatever the source of anxiety is, one thing seems certain: test scores in the US are probably going to go down. This year marks the rollout of the Common-Core aligned […]
Career education starting earlier
A major reference point for many educational writers is the 1950s. In the US, this was an era when you didn’t need any education after high-school: with strong unions and the post-wat manufacturing boom, many men went to work in trades, while women either stayed home or worked in nursing, schools, or offices (think Mad […]
Plagiarism, Paper Mills, and Student Success
Plagiarism is getting a lot of attention lately. From professors at Brown and Arizona State universities to politicians in Montana and Germany, a school board official in Toronto, and even a textbook writer on plagiarism, it seems like no one can keep track of their notes, words, or even ideas anymore. We are not Turnitin, and I’m not going to lecture about the importance of quotation marks, the […]
‘Simple’ isn’t always ‘right’: why more educated workers doesn’t make a more equal society
Photo courtesy of Texas A&M University Commerce Last week’s New York Times featured an article by Eduardo Porter that laid the historical background of the US educational landscape out quite clearly, and yet drew a surprisingly inept conclusion. Porter rightly points to a longstanding American goal of educating its populace (mainly future citizens), and draws attention to a number […]
Sinking, swimming, treading water
One of the more controversial books on higher ed released in the 21st century was Arum and Roksa’s Academically Adrift. The researchers studied a cohort of students at 24 different schools in the US in a variety of ways: through questionnaires, standardized testing, and transcripts. The results were, to put it bluntly, depressing: as far as the […]
PISA scores and “tiger mothers”
We’ve received comments from readers before about the PISA: how it isn’t an accurate test for judging differences between populations, how it’s a surprisingly good test for measuring change (or lack thereof) over time, how it shouldn’t be used to support cases for academic reform or teaching efficacy. Others have pointed out that low PISA scores don’t […]
Following the leader?
By now you’ve probably heard of William Deresiewicz, the controversial former Yale professor whose new book, Excellent Sheep, has been making the usual promotional rounds. Before you ask: no, I haven’t read it (it was only released last week). I am going to do what I always tell my students not to do, which is criticize it anyway. As I understand it, the […]
Foreign students are a cash cow for universities — and a threat to some
Two stories about foreign students made the Canadian headlines this week. This is unusual, both because most of the time Canadian news outlets pay little attention to who is actually attending their universities, and also because I think most Canadians consider themselves open to immigrants (unlike, say, their southern neighbors). But this seems to be about to change as more […]
Rag in A major
Controversial columnist Jeff Selingo made his own headline this week by suggesting that colleges eliminate majors. Why? Well, they’re so last century. Since I suspect that I may know more about curricula than Selingo (I have certainly been teaching longer), I’ll be honest: I think that this is not a particularly helpful idea, and since he doesn’t […]
Assessment + Personalized Instruction = Learning
It’s a truism that there are few aspects of education that everyone can agree on. It seems likely, however, that most people would agree that the prospect of better outcomes without additional expenditure is a pretty good bargain. This is where differentiated instruction comes in. Differentiation is not a new idea. It’s been around since […]
Promises and pitfalls of predictive analytics
Predictive analytics has long been seen as the next big thing in education. Several different learning-management systems have the option of analyzing student progress included in them; there are also standalone systems (see “read more” for some of these options). The allure of being able to pinpoint which students need further assistance is obvious, although […]
Assessment without exams
No one likes testing. Students don’t: some get too nervous, others don’t like to study. And their teachers and professors don’t: good exam questions are hard to come up with, hard to recycle (thanks to online exam repositories), and a huge pain to grade. Unfortunately, students are also learners, and they need to be assessed […]
Computers in the classroom are here to stay
Photo by Wikimedia / original article Advances in technology are generally seen as a good thing in our society. Remember the adding machine? Remember the calculator? For the most part, these tools have moved aside for newer models (such as the smartphone). But there are still a few last frontiers where technology is seen as, at […]
Lovers, dreamers, students
Students are often divided up for statistical purposes. When they apply to school, they may be asked to select a race/ethnicity. They will be asked for their geographic location and parental income. While they are at school, various offices will be categorize them by gender, roommate preferences, degree progress, and major. Sallie-Mae, a large American […]
Minerva vs. mentor
It’s not news that the university (as an institution) is in trouble. This headline has been making the rounds for years, as prices creep up, student employment drops down, and well-publicized scandals (bankruptcy; child abuse; mistreatment of athletes) seem to be on the rise. Most attention has been focused on a few discrete issues, such as student debt and adjunct faculty. But one entrepreneur […]
Collaboration vs. Solitude in Teaching
When you imagine a classroom, you probably think of a single instructor with many students. Sometimes there are separate TAs, but they rarely teach the full class; instead, the classroom has a single leader. This solitary teacher is at least partially a myth, as faculty do meet to discuss classroom challenges. And a number of […]
College tests announce major changes
In a turn of events that perhaps isn’t surprising, the ACT announced in June that it would revamp its tests. This move follows the ACT’s assessment rival, the SAT, who announced a facelift for the test in fall 2013. The SAT had previous announced changes in the types of reading and vocabulary that students would […]
Can personality characteristics be assessed?
Angela Duckworth has been getting a lot of press lately. The researcher, who is best known for her pioneering work on ‘grit’, is at the center of a new controversy on whether it is appropriate to evaluate students on non-academic qualities. This is surprising for two reasons: first, because Duckworth’s work is not new (her […]
The promises of adaptive learning
Adaptive learning is polymorphous. Some of it is familiar to all of us from school, even from a pre-digital age. For example, I remember the glorious two weeks of third grade when a substitute let me learn fractions from a book with a classmate named Ryan while the rest of my class moped through their […]
State achievement tests incite controversy in Texas
The Texas state achievement tests have been given annually for the past three years. Although schools were expected to post improvements in results, so far lower-income districts have fallen further behind upper-income districts. Suggested reasons for this discrepancy vary: the education commissioner claims that instructional content has not increased in difficulty to match test content, […]
How useful are PISA scores? It depends what you’re measuring
Declining PISA scores across Canada should be a concern to everyone, not just educators, says a new report from think tank The C. D. Howe Institute. The study found that Canadian students’ average score has been steadily slipping, but its author draws particular attention to the downward trend in math and science. Quebec was the […]
What is the goal of assessment?
A recent column in The Atlantic takes up the issue of grade inflation yet again. As recently leaked data from the University of Virginia law school shows, student grades on average have been going up over the past decades — in other words, grade inflation is no longer anecdotal, but proved. But the author Oliver Lee Bateman, […]
We don’t need no educators
Photo courtesy of Roger Blackwell In Ontario this past week, the big news was the election of a Liberal majority to Parliament. This led to a wide-ranging debate on various campaign promises, including the promises about (de)funding higher education. Ontario’s situation mirrors that of many US states, the UK, and Australia: per-capita spending per student is doing down, tuition […]
How do you solve a problem like a rubric?
Photo courtesy of Laurie Sullivan There often seems to be a great divide between the humanities instructor at the post-secondary level and the K-12 teaching staff. This divide is called the rubric. Based on what I’ve learned in my own education classes and from mini-courses at various Centers for Teaching and Learning, the grading rubric is a […]
How to make grades work in a flipped classroom
One of the most enjoyable series of blog posts this year on the Chronicle of Higher Education has been Robert Talbert’s Casting Out Nines. The columns address experiences he’s had and issues he’s faced in implementing a flipped math classroom. One of the more recent columns approaches the issue of grading and how to better ensure […]
Why should we care about aliteracy?
Image courtesy of Reading Rainbow A big news story this week was the campaign to fund a free version of LeVar Burton’s popular public television show (now an app), Reading Rainbow. Burton’s goal is to deliver the program as a multiplatform app to underserved public schools throughout the US (see LeVar Burton On Reading Rainbow’s Kickstarter And The Love Of […]
Assessing assignments: Essays, papers, and other works
Every year at about this time, I start drawing up syllabi for new classes. (It sounds early, I know, but because our textbook orders are due in mid-July, it’s more efficient for planning.) And each year, I’m seduced by the possibility of what we can call the non-traditional assessment — something like the diorama approach, […]
Retired MIT writing professor questions value of SAT-Writing test
Les Perelman has written a program that can mimic a perfect-scoring SAT essay. Unfortunately, it’s gibberish. His software, appropriately called “Babel” after the famous biblical tower, can generate an SAT-length essay in under a second. It uses a combination of length and “SAT words” to receive high marks from automated essay-grading software. Content is not […]
Predictive Analytics Hold Great Promise for Improving Student Performance
Software analytics can identify struggling students and get them help faster, proponents claim. The increase in digital data is spurring the trend, as well as “consistent marking systems” across different classrooms. The amount and type of data institutions gather about their students is quickly proliferating. In the past, this data may have been limited to […]
Students in the UK find that their educational experience does not meet expectations
A survey of over 15,000 UK undergraduates found that the majority of students attending universities in England were unsatisfied with the value of the degree. This is an abrupt departure from earlier measures of satisfaction (undertaken in 2012) and contrasts with the judgment of students in Scotland, where university is free for many students. Over […]
New study indicates that student test scores are only weakly correlated with perceived teacher quality
The study was carried out by researchers based in California and Pennsylvania and was partially funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It attempted to assess the accuracy of the “value-added model” — that is, based on a mix of student test scores, teacher assessment, and observation, how much did a teacher contribute to […]
Crowdmark named “Most Innovative” at SIIA Conference
Crowdmark was recently named the “Most Innovative Product” at the SIIA awards in San Francisco. Our collaborative online grading platform was chosen among 50 applicants by both industry leaders and educators in classrooms across the country. “Crowdmark is very pleased to have been chosen as Most Innovative by the attendees at the SIIA Education Industry […]
PISA tests: Equal assessment or creative block?
It’s the middle of 2014, and that means that educators’ eyes are turning to the big hurdle of the next academic year: the newest round of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) testing. This test, which is administered by the OECD, takes place every three years with a rotating group of topics. Students in countries […]
Are you Suffering from Grading Nostalgia?
Many professors still prefer the red pen and paper approach to grading, because it seems like a simple, proven and effective way to grade. That perception may still be true for those professors whose class sizes are small, and in particular if they aren’t required to work as part of a grading team. As class […]
Exams Returned Faster with Crowdmark
Physics Instructor Jason Harlow explains how exams can be returned to students faster using Crowdmark. “Last year, I had a big stack of tests that had to get passed around physically between eight TAs. They had to finish with that stack and then pass it to the next TA. It would take sometimes two weeks […]
Better testing with Crowdmark: Using open-ended questions in large courses
Alfonso Gracia-Saz, an instructor who teaches a 1,000 student calculus course at the University of Toronto, explains how Crowdmark allows for testing of higher level learning. “When doing a mega course like this one and designing the tests, there’s always the concern of ‘Am I going to be able to grade this question?’ and ‘How […]
“How would you feel if you could no longer use Crowdmark?” An Engineering professor reports
Dionne Aleman, an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, explains how she would feel if she could no longer use Crowdmark. “It would be a travesty if we were no longer allowed to continue using this tool.” Professor Aleman explains how Crowmdark boosts her productivity and improves the quality […]
University students share thoughts on digital grading
Have you noticed how even as more students show up with a laptop in hand, some of them still use a notepad and a pen? They just can’t seem to choose. That’s exactly what’s happening with grading. Yet regardless of the format of assignments, test results and types of questionnaires, certain common themes emerge when […]
Seven grading strategies to improve your students’ writing skills
There is no magic EdTech wand you can wave to make your students become better writers. The way to become a better writer is by writing. In my last post, I calculated that the amount of time required to grade a class-full of essays was overwhelming for most instructors, and noted that this could result […]
Can Technology make Grading Easier?
Let’s face it. Grading isn’t easy, because it takes a long time to read and assess assignments, provide useful feedback to the students, and keep track of everyone’s progress. Can technology make grading easier? That notion many of us have of teachers carrying heavy bags stuffed with papers home to sit down with a cup […]
New features: Freeform scores, text annotations, upload status list, and extra exams
Freeform scores You can now enter any number as a score (including fractional points as decimals). With the new keypad, type or tap any number and hit Enter (or OK on the keypad) to submit. Text annotations Provide contextual, formative feedback anywhere on the page. Double-click or double-tap to create a comment. Comments can easily […]
Opinion: The ugly truth behind faculty workload and student outcomes
Photo courtesy of velkr0. In this post, I want to focus on the time commitment required to grade student writing. I think it’s worth doing this for two reasons: first, as a counter to the “teachers are lazy” canard, and second, as a reminder of how decisions about teaching loads affects the learning outcomes of students. […]
Opinion: The New School: Separate, unequal — and unashamed?
You don’t become a pundit because of non-controversial ideas. In his interview with The Atlantic, University of Tennessee Professor of Law and Instapundit blogger Glenn Harlan Reynolds offers his opinions on the American educational landscape from kindergarten through university. Yes, this is an interview, not an article — yet he still provides no support for his ideas, […]
Crowdmark announces agreement with Ricoh Canada Inc.
Toronto, Ontario (January 20, 2014) – Crowdmark Inc., a software company that delivers an ultra-scalable collaborative assessment platform to educators worldwide, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Ricoh Canada Inc., to support Crowdmark’s customers, and with plans to explore additional enhancements to the relationship that will deliver additional client benefits. Today’s […]
New paradigms for assessment
A crisis in assessment The huge expansion of education broadcast methods has provoked a crisis in assessment, with educators taking polarized positions. We review some of these conflicts and show how online collaborative grading with Crowdmark can unify groups of opposing stakeholders, add rigor to massive online courses, and generate a stream of data to […]
Read our white paper — Rigorous Online Courses: Ontario Reach Ahead
Reach Ahead opportunities in public secondary schools have many benefits. Students who earn a university credit during high school are more likely to finish university, and can complete their degree sooner, reducing the demand on the higher education system and reducing student indebtedness. In this white paper, Crowdmark presents an online course scenario with rigorous […]
Dr. Abdul Waheed Khan joins Crowdmark as an Advisor
Dr. Abdul Waheed Khan, an internationally recognized leader in the application of information and communications technology for education and development, has joined the Crowdmark Board of Advisors. Dr. Khan will advise Crowdmark on strategy and on opportunity creation for students, instructors and institutions. With his vast experience leading technology-driven change in the global education system, […]
Introducing freeform annotations and keyboard shortcuts
We’ve added two new features to boost and enrich your grading experience, with efficiency and better student feeback in mind. Freeform annotations Feedback is no longer limited to text comments. Check, circle, and write on exams to provide your student with rich, contextual feedback. It’s easy to draw and delete annotations as you go—one click […]
Crowdmark expands team with three key hires
Crowdmark announces the hiring of three new employees to our team: Jamie Gilgen, Murray Marven and Sandra O’Reilly. Feedback from early users improved our online collaborative grading platform and allowed Crowdmark to recently graduate from beta deployment. Jamie, Murray, Sandra and the rest of the Crowdmark team are advancing our solution to the assessment bottleneck plaguing the global education […]
Crowdmark graduates from beta
We are excited to announce that Crowdmark has moved out of beta today. Crowdmark helps educators, working alone or in teams, to evaluate and respond to student work better. Crowdmarking provides a cloud-based workflow that makes grading faster, more reliable, and easily referenced in communications among students and educators. Here are some of the features: […]
The incredibly high cost of grading
The annual global cost of grading student work exceeds $60 billion. I reviewed reports from UNESCO, OECD, the Gates Foundation, National Science Foundation and other sources to learn the following statistics. Global context Grading Salary The lower bound On average, each of the 28 million teachers and the majority of the 11 million graduate student teaching assistants spend 100 hours per […]
Crowdmark hires Lyssa Neel as Chief Operating Officer
Crowdmark hires Lyssa Neel as Chief Operating Officer Dr. Lyssa Neel, formerly with MaRS Innovation, has been recruited to join the Crowdmark team as Chief Operating Officer. Since the launch of Crowdmark through the University of Toronto Early Stage Technology (UTEST) incubator, Dr. Neel has been the key business advisor to founders Dr. James Colliander […]
Crowdmark presents at LAUNCH
Crowdmark was demonstrated at the LAUNCH Education & Kids 2013 event in Mountain View, California. We thank Jason Calacanis and the Launch team for the opportunity. Here’s a video of the Crowdmark presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9XM4fyY3z4
Crowdmark to save teacher marking time and government dollars
Ed-tech start-up completes successful EQAO and Canadian Open Math Challenge pilots TORONTO, June 11, 2013 /CNW/ – Crowdmark Inc., a Canadian education technology start-up, is positioned to save cash-strapped Departments of Education millions by making massive-scale testing more efficient. Crowdmark has raised $600,000 in seed funding through the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program, MaRS Innovation and U […]