Time-saving & effective marking strategies for teachers

In this guide

• Why effective marking strategies matter for student learning
• Common marking challenges and how teachers can overcome them
• Using success criteria or checklists as an effective marking strategy
  • Holistic checklist
  • Analytic or descriptive checklist
  • Single point checklist
• Digital marking strategies for teachers to save time
  • Digital checklists
  • Forms for marking
  • Digital platforms and apps
  • ClickView interactive videos
• How students can help with marking
  • Peer editing
  • Student developed success criteria
  • Self-assessment

Why effective marking strategies matter for student learning

Effective marking strategies are mutually beneficial for both staff and students. They save time and energy for teachers and benefit students through timely feedback and resolving misconceptions. 

Timely feedback is important for students’ academic growth. Students are then able to make adjustments to their work in real time while the information is fresh in their minds. 

For example, if an essay that focuses on persuasive techniques is marked effectively and efficiently, students will know what it is that they must prioritise and learn to make their work clearer in subsequent essays. 

Timely feedback can also relieve grade and achievement anxiety for many students. Often, students worry about their grades and how well they did on an assessment- this can be student, peer or parent-based. Timely feedback gives students a realistic idea of how well they did in that snapshot in time, what they may need to do to improve upon and how they can face this personal challenge and improve their work for the future. 

Efficient and timely marking is important for clearing up misconceptions and misunderstandings. This is vital for both students and teachers. It is ineffective to get to the end of a unit or a major assessment and realise a student could have performed better with one skill or piece of information had they had the opportunity for clarity earlier in the unit. 

When effective marking occurs, teachers can identify misunderstandings quickly and employ strategies to address student needs as required. Instead of exclusively using formative assessment, utilising check-in points throughout the unit can allow staff to drive instruction and address student needs as they arise rather than simply grading their abilities with a cumulative task.

Common marking challenges and how teachers can overcome them

As an English teacher, I understand the burden that marking can become. Marking essays for over 120 students takes a lot of time and is exhausting! Even marking multiple-choice tests can also be a huge task with a large number of students. 

Teachers face three primary challenges when it comes to marking- 

1. Time, 
2. Consistency, and the 
3. Use of AI or plagiarism. 

Time

This is perhaps the biggest challenge teachers face when it comes to marking. A teacher’s school day is full of so many activities – teaching, planning, meetings, tutoring, small groups, testing, marking, lunch or break time duty, and then exotic, and somewhat unheard of activities such as eating lunch, and going to the bathroom! Time is a hot commodity in the world of education!

Teachers can overcome this obstacle by employing a few techniques to minimise the time it takes to mark papers. 

• Using digital resources (such as those outlined later in this article) can be helpful. 
• I have also found that checklists help me to identify important aspects of what needs to be graded and when (to meet deadlines). 
• Another strategy that can help teachers overcome time constraints is to batch grade. 

Batch Marking

What is batch marking and how can I make it work for me? 

It simply means that the teacher groups similar types of tasks together. 

This increases efficiency and consistency because the teacher does not have to change their thinking process for grading. It allows the teacher to focus and grade more assessments in a tighter time frame or over a series of sessions without missing focus and consistency with marking. 

Checklists

Consistency when grading may not be of the greatest concern, but it is still an issue. I teach secondary school English, and at times I can be grading over 100 essays at a time. When marking these essays, it can be difficult to remain consistent, especially if I do not have a tool to help me focus my grading. 

To improve consistency, using success criteria or a checklist can help. These help the teacher to focus on the specific elements of an assessment that contribute to a student’s grade. Some curriculum has success criteria and checklists embedded into the platform. However, a success criteria or checklist can be teacher-created as well. I have found that using AI to help me create success criteria or marking checklists can save time and allow me to focus clearly on specific aspects of the task rather than being bogged down in excessive writing, bad spelling and unfocused skills.

AI

As artificial intelligence’s abilities increase, more and more student work is being flagged as written by AI. I have even experienced it with my own writing! I do not have the answers, but there are a few things that teachers can do to mitigate the issue of plagiarism using AI for their students. 

Having easy access to a world of online information has made it easier for students to plagiarise content. The ability to quickly copy and paste information into a document or input simple words and phrases into ChatGPT and have a whole response made for them in an instant is amazing. However, students need to learn that unless they are citing their sources appropriately, their work must be their own. 

One way to reduce the prevalence of plagiarism and the use of AI is to give activities that require students to write using pen and paper. However, this is not always feasible. Modern learning does not always lend itself well to pen and paper. Therefore teaching students how to use AI in a way that is correct and does not plagiarise content is a vital skill for today’s students. 

Clear expectations

Maintaining clear expectations regarding the use of artificial intelligence can help students to learn how to use it appropriately. For example, I suggest in this article to use AI to create success criteria, however I would never suggest that it be used to write an essay that was to be graded. Set parameters and help students to learn to use it in a way that does not plagiarise content but so it assists them in their learning and skill set.

Most importantly, demonstrate academic integrity for students. Show students how to re-word texts in their own words. Include lessons that help students learn how to properly cite their sources. Allow students to practise correctly including quoted texts within their writing and projects.

Using success criteria or checklists as an effective marking strategy

A success criteria is a scoring guide that outlines how an assessment will be assessed.  Success criteria, or checklists, can be used for many different types of assessments – presentations, essays, creative or artistic assessments, one-pagers, etc.  

A success criterion is an effective marking strategy because it lessens the amount of time it takes to grade an assessment that is longer or one that is more subjective in nature. Checklists help outline what is required for a specific grade on an assessment so that students know exactly what they need to do and where the marks lie. They do not limit a student’s creativity, but they provide a road map for them to follow. 

There are three types of checklist that can be used.

1) Holistic checklist

A holistic rubric takes into account the student’s entire assignment. Rather than focus on multiple components, a holistic rubric focuses on the entire work. This type of rubric would be most helpful for assignments that do not have a specific, correct answer (maths or science for example) or if the students are being asked to respond to an overall idea, concept, event or novel (english or history). 

2) Analytic or descriptive checklist

This type of success criteria requires a bit more work to create. I often use AI however to help me create something more quickly, then I edit and adjust according to my needs. 

This checklist breaks down the different parts of the assessment and provides descriptions of the levels of performance for each component. Oral presentations, group projects, and creative assessments would be most appropriate for this type.

3) Single point checklist

A single point checklist is similar to an analytic/descriptive checklist because it breaks the assessment down into separate parts. This type of success criteria only elaborates on the components at the proficient level of completion. 

One benefit of this type is that it allows for the grader to give specific feedback regarding areas of strength and weakness. A single point checklist is great to use for peer-to-peer feedback and or when assessing a specific part of an essay like the thesis statement. 

Regardless of the type of success criteria used, it is important to expose students to it before grading. I always give my students a copy of the success criteria I am going to use to grade essays and other projects at the start of the unit. This helps them to know what they need to do in order to get a good grade in the assessment. 

Success criteria also allows for less ambiguity in an assessment. Students know exactly what is expected of them and I know precisely how to mark the task. They save time because the person doing the marking knows what to look for and can quickly identify the level of proficiency.

Digital marking strategies for teachers to save time

Saving time is a top priority for every teacher. There are ways to use digital tools that can make marking an easier and more efficient process. The following ideas can be used to help teachers to grade faster. 

1) Digital checklist

We have already looked at the use of checklists to save time when marking. Digital checklists take this strategy and make it even faster. 

They can have drop down boxes, check boxes, and reusable feedback comments. Many platforms such as Google Classroom and Canvas have checklists already built into their system for teacher use. 

Digital success criteria can save the teacher time by allowing them to quickly click boxes or use drop down menus. They also save paper which is always a win!

2) Forms for marking

Using forms/quizzes for marking can make grading faster. Google and Microsoft forms can also help to make grading faster. These forms are a great way for students to take multiple choice and short answer assessments. These can even be set to grade themselves or their peers!

Another way to use forms is to create a form for students to complete after taking a test. If students take a test on paper or do a lengthy assessment, they can input their answers into a form that will be graded quickly. In this form, students only input their answers, and it is answered on the spot giving feedback in real time.

3) Digital platforms and apps

Platforms like Quizizz and Kahoot provide digital quizzes that are graded by the program. There are two ways to use these with students. A teacher can search already created quizzes – these can be great for a quick assessment Teachers can also create their own assessments with their own content – this is more specific and can be altered year by year for similar topics.

There are also apps that can help to reduce the time needed for marking. I have used an application called Zipgrade which allows the teacher to scan student assessments for quick and easy grading.

4) ClickView interactive videos

ClickView interactive videos are a great way to reduce marking time. There are a variety of interactive video lessons already created! Teachers that have (free!) access to the ClickView platform can create their own interactive videos. 

Interactive videos make grading super easy. Students can answer questions about what they are watching and get quick feedback. Interactive videos are a great way for students to access content and ClickView gives teachers the ability to create content for a variety of videos.

How students can help with marking

Years ago, when I was in school, we used to grade each other’s work. I think this system caused more issues than it solved however. Students cannot always read each other’s handwriting. Students are not always objective, especially if they do not get along with another student. It can also result in bullying and put downs as well as student anxiety about others seeing their ability levels. 

Students grading other students’ work is not considered best practice any longer. However, there are ways that students can contribute to marking that makes the process smoother and more efficient. 

1) Peer editing

This strategy takes some work ahead of time, but can help students to learn how to give constructive feedback as well as the editing process which allows them to fix errors before final submission. 

The first thing that must be done to prepare students to peer edit is to model for students. Show them how to edit and what a good editor does. Perfect work is rarely achieved the first time (a fact that drives my A-Level students crazy when it comes to exam time!)

Give students checklists and success criteria to help them when peer editing. Students need to know what they are looking for when marking someone else’s assessment. Checklists that outline the editor’s marks or ideas of how to revise texts are helpful. You can even use the marking criteria that you will be using at the summation to show them the differences between grade bands and to pick up missed criteria areas before submission. 

Creating a positive classroom environment can help peer editing to be more successful. One way is to give students sentence stems that help them to know what to say or write are also beneficial.

Example sentence stems: 

• One thing that I noticed in your writing was…
• I think your conclusion is strong because…
• Have you thought about adding…?
• This sentence could be stronger if you…
• Can you clarify what you mean in this section?
• How does this sentence relate to the rest of the paragraph?
• This sentence is a little repetitive. You might try…

2) Student developed success criteria

The use of success criteria has already been discussed in this article. However, student developed checklists can allow for students to have a say in the  marking process. 

When they help develop the marking criteria, they are more likely to write answers that meet that criteria.

3) Self-assessment

Self-assessment of their own learning allows students to identify their own strengths and weaknesses. They can then take this information and improve their work. 

Like peer editing, success criteria and checklists can assist students when assessing their own work. Through self-assessment students can catch missed sections of work or make adjustments to their assessment before submission. . 

Not only does self-assessment benefit students, but it also benefits teachers. Student work that is more closely aligned to the expectations set by the teacher is easier to grade. 

Marking can seem like an overwhelming task, especially when a teacher has large class sizes. However, with a few simple changes, a teacher can tackle marking and create a system that works for them.

Resources

1. Kemi, O. (2025) ‘Evidence-based evaluation of student and marker performance in assessment and examination’, Advanced Physical Education, 49, pp. 240-250. doi: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00202.2024
2. North Carolina State University (2025) Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates. Available at: https://teaching-resources.delta.ncsu.edu/rubric_best-practices-examples-templates/ (Accessed: 22 April 2025). 
3. Richards, G. and Richardson, R. (2020) Reducing Teachers’ Marking Workload and Developing Pupils’ Learning: How to create More Impact with Less Marking. New York, N.Y.: Routledge.