WebMark—A Fully Automated Method of Submission, Assessment, Grading, and Commentary for Laboratory Practical Scripts

The traditional (manual) method of checking and grading student laboratory practical scripts is time consuming and therefore can cause long script turnaround times; it is labor intensive, especially for nonuniform quantitative data; there is potential for inconsistency, and, for large student groups, a great deal of tedium for the checker. Automation of checking such scripts has the potential to alleviate these disadvantages. This paper describes a strategy adopted by the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Brighton, UK, to automate the submission, assessment, grading, and commentary of laboratory practical scripts. Student evaluation and feedback is also reported. Students enter their results into a Web-based form via the school intranet. Their results are linked to a Filemaker Pro database, which calculates the "right" answers on the basis of the primary data used, compares them with the students' answers, and grades the scripts. The database detects where students have made errors in calculations and calculates the grade, which it sends to students with qualitative feedback. Students receive their grade and feedback by email immediately upon submission of their results, which gives them the opportunity to reflect upon and discuss their results with the instructor while the exercise is still fresh in their mind.