Just found out all marking for general maths is going to be digitally marked. Meaning all our booklets are going to be scanned on to a computer harddrive, not just the multiple choice. Just a random bit of information i found out. :d
Digital marking (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter HMF
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A while ago, multiple choice questions are scanned by scanners that are not digital as such. They put a thick stack of sheets on the scanner tray. These scanners look at the sheets and locate on the precise locations "dark" and "white" blobs. They produce a text file telling the question number and the A,B,C,D, ... Then operators have to manually sweep eyes over an entire page of text to see if the page looks kind of right or wrong. if it looks bad, the page must be found and rescaned manually.
Obviously, now they have models that will do both kind of outputs. Capture and produce the answers for multiple choice in text format, and store the digital images of the pages for archive purpose. Then the digital images are stored into a database so that teachers can mark the portion that are not multiple choice.
It does not mean the non-multiple choice part will be marked "digitally". It is still hand-marked (on the computer screen) and saved into a database to be consolidated with the multiple choice part. Multiple choice question format really save money but are much easier for students to get higher marks.
You may have noticed or heard that there was a change in the "answer booklets" last year. Previously there were the standard 4-page BOS exam books. Last year they brought in special A3 sheets for Q23-Q28 where everything including student number was pre-printed on the sheet.
It is this A3 sheet that is scanned. And we're talking industrial-strength scanning. Pages 2, 3 and 4 are scanned as a PDF file with some sort of record number rather than student number - so markers never ever know the name NOR the student number of the paper they are marking. All the PDFs are stored on a central database. The markers which mark a particular question do so on line and papers are allocated randomly, so markers never know which school the papers are coming from either.
If you need to use more than one "booklet" for a question, that's no problem. Just use an extra "booklet". The scanned PDF file will have 6 pages rather than 3 pages.
Students are still writing out their answers using pen and paper, and the markers are still marking each question by reading through it. They just can't write the mark on the exam paper any more. But since you never get your HSC exam back, it's not really a big deal.
It is this A3 sheet that is scanned. And we're talking industrial-strength scanning. Pages 2, 3 and 4 are scanned as a PDF file with some sort of record number rather than student number - so markers never ever know the name NOR the student number of the paper they are marking. All the PDFs are stored on a central database. The markers which mark a particular question do so on line and papers are allocated randomly, so markers never know which school the papers are coming from either.
If you need to use more than one "booklet" for a question, that's no problem. Just use an extra "booklet". The scanned PDF file will have 6 pages rather than 3 pages.
Students are still writing out their answers using pen and paper, and the markers are still marking each question by reading through it. They just can't write the mark on the exam paper any more. But since you never get your HSC exam back, it's not really a big deal.
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