electronic marking in mathematics – the marker and student perspectives

Electronic marking (e-marking1) of student work is now well established within UK education especially for GCSE and A-level assessment and in parts of The Open University (OU) the UK’s leading distance-learning university. However e-marking presents particular challenges for practitioners in symbolically rich curriculum areas (of which mathematics and statistics are prime examples). This is especially true when the marker provides extensive feedback as with the OU’s correspondence tuition open-learning methodology with its emphasis on individualized tailored feedback. Despite great advances in mathematical typesetting over the past 40 years the input of mathematical equations for most users is slow and laborious compared to text.