Jury ‘is still out’ on online marking

My university uses an online marking system built within blackboard, and it astounds me how staff can complain about having to do marking online rather than on paper copies. I save my student submissions as PDFs after download and add audio comments throughout that work, thereby adding context and tone and explanation to my feedback so that they better understand it and know where you're coming from so that they can improve. The staff that still download online submissions print them out, write on them, then scan them in and upload them completely baffle me. But it's often these people who also complain about having too much work to do and not enough time to do it.

There is substantial pedagogic research on the accuracy of online marking carried out in the US which UK university administrators have ignored in their focus on neat solutions that vide verifiable records.

I find that having to mark online gives me headaches when looking at screens for long periods of time, and don’t like that I am tied to a computer to do my work.