Your first marking run

A marking run is one pile of completed papers, marked against one test. This is the loop you’ll repeat every time: scan, upload, match, review, commit.

Find your place

Today shows work waiting for you and a getting-started card for a new account. Use its links to make a test, add students or start marking. Adding a roster first helps matching, but you can also add a missing student while identifying papers. The account menu’s Getting started item reopens the welcome card without resetting your work. You can dismiss a tour and continue using the page.

1. Scan the papers

Put the completed class set through a scanner or copier and scan to PDF. A whole class set in a single PDF is fine.

What makes the difference:

Scan the full page, not a cropped or trimmed version.
Keep pages straight in the feeder.
Aim for sharp and legible. Check the saved file on screen before uploading; a legible scan still needs your review when AutoMark cannot verify a reading.
Keep each student’s pages together, and don’t mix in pages from another test.

2. Start a run and add the papers

On the Marking page, choose Mark a class set, pick the test you printed, and start. Then drop the scans in — you can add several images or PDFs at once.

If one PDF holds several students’ papers stacked together, tick the option that says so before you upload. AutoMark then splits the file into one paper per student using the names on the pages. Without that tick it treats the file as a single paper.

When everything’s in, choose Run marking.

Pages are estimated and checked against your remaining credits before anything is read, so a run either starts or tells you it can’t. Credits are reserved for the admitted work, so another run cannot use that capacity while it waits. A reading or upload error can still need your attention.

Marking then runs in the background. Papers appear as they finish; you can leave the page and come back.

Check a combined stack

If AutoMark asks you to check the assembly, inspect each student’s group of pages. Check the page order and place any loose pages with the correct paper. Resolve the pages the screen says need placing, then choose Confirm assembly. This confirms the grouping; it does not record marks. Return to the run to review its answers. If you cannot establish which paper a page belongs to, check the original class set before confirming.

To change a confirmed grouping before results are recorded, choose Reopen to adjust. Review the proposed groups and confirm again when ready. Unchanged papers retain their work; changing a student’s group can require that paper to be marked again. Recorded results block reopening the assembly.

A failed paper should be investigated before you retry it. Check the run’s error and use its retry action when you have resolved the cause; do not start another whole run merely because one paper failed.

3. Match each paper to a student

AutoMark reads the name off each paper and matches it against your roster. Confident matches are filled in for you; everything else is handed over rather than guessed at. Each paper shows how it was matched — automatically, from a suggestion, or not yet at all. Printed identification marks can also supply a match; check those against the actual paper too.

Check the list. Any paper can be changed: pick the right student from the dropdown.
Suggestions can be accepted in bulk once you’ve eyeballed them.
A student missing from the roster? Add them from the same dropdown without leaving the run.

Resolve every paper that will be included in the recorded results. While the run is open, every match stays changeable — this is the step that protects the thing that matters most, a mark landing on the wrong student’s record.

If a student already has a paper in this run, resolve the duplicate instead of assigning a second paper to them. If the list excludes the right student, check the run’s class selection before creating another roster entry.

4. Review what’s flagged

Every answer AutoMark reads is checked back against the handwriting on the scan. That check passes or it doesn’t: verification is pass or fail, not a dial, and an unresolved reading needs your decision.

Answers that pass are marked automatically against your key.
Anything that doesn’t is flagged for you to check.

A flagged item is shown with the cropped piece of the real scan beside what AutoMark read and the mark it would award. Your job is a glance and a decision:

Confirm (C) — the reading is right, take the mark.
Override (O) — the mark needs your judgement; set it yourself.
Also correct (A) — the student’s answer is a fair one your key didn’t list. It’s added to the key and everyone in the run is re-marked against it.
Press E to enlarge the scan, and ↑/↓ to move between items.

When a run comes back clean there’s nothing to do: you’ll see All marked — nothing to check. If a run comes back with almost everything flagged, the scan is worth checking — see Troubleshooting.

For a mistaken reading, use Enter answer to record what the student wrote, or No answer given when the paper is blank. This differs from changing the mark. Check the proposed result and confirm any answer returned to the queue. The review queue guide explains grouped decisions, enlarged crops and checking every answer before committing.

5. Record the marks

Commit results is what writes marks to your students’ records. It stays locked while required marking, identification or review work remains.

Committing isn’t one click, deliberately. You get a digest first — Record these results? — listing each student and what’s about to be written, with anything unusual (a failed paper, a zero) called out. Read it, then confirm.

Until you do, nothing has been recorded: a run in progress is a draft, and every mark in it is yours to change. That’s not a technicality — it’s the reason marks out of AutoMark are teacher-confirmed rather than solely automated.

6. After the run

Committed results show up on each student’s record, and on the run itself you can see how the class went question by question — which is usually the more useful half of marking. Both a student’s record and the run can be exported to CSV for your gradebook.

Spotted something wrong later? Individual marks and readings can be corrected, and a paper that turns out to belong to another student can be reassigned. Both are recorded as your change rather than a silent edit, so the record shows what happened.

What to do differently next time

After one run you’ll have a feel for two things: which answers your key should have accepted, and whether your scan was good enough. They’re the two biggest levers on how much lands in your review queue next time.