A post-secondary institution is, fundamentally, a business. In order to succeed, it has to stand apart from its competitors. Differentiation that attracts students can be hard to come by, but we can help. Our testing and grading services and technologies can help your school enhance the overall student experience, and in turn increase your bottom line. Here’s a few ways we’ll help separate you from the crowd.

Easy accessibility

When tests are completed on paper, instructors and teaching assistants are resigned to grading on paper. This means dealing with all of the other problems associated with working with paper. Paper documents are prone to damage, can be easily lost, take up a lot of space, and can even lead to paper cuts. Grading on paper also often requires that markers be available at specific times, in specific locations, to grade together.

Schools with the Ricoh Advanced Testing and Grading Solution have a different experience. Competed tests and assignments are scanned to our cloud based testing and grading platform, where upon tests can be accessed and marked anywhere, anytime. Grading is done more efficiently, while providing students with rich feedback– meaning a better student experience. 

Optimising teamwork

If your schools grades paper exams you know how incredibly busy Instructors and teaching assistants are incredibly busy and it can be very complicated to set up times for them to meet and exchange information. Confusion may also arise as to which tasks are assigned to which person, leading to longer turnaround times for students.

In schools with the Ricoh Advanced Testing and Grading Solution, documents are stored digitally, so teams can easily collaborate. Instructors can also assign different students or even different portions of the assessment to different teaching assistants, making grading more efficient and effective. Teams can also see each other’s comments in real-time, leading to improved collaboration and quicker response times. Markers can even tag content for professors to review at their leisure. 

Better Feedback

When grading paper tests, graders usually provide feedback using checkmarks and written comments – which can sometimes be difficult to read and comprehend. Graders may have to write the same comments to hundreds of students, meaning inefficient duplication of the same effort. Also, with paper tests graders can see whose paper they are marking which may bias their feedback or marking.

The Ricoh Advanced Testing and Grading Solution provides schools with an online grading and analytics platform that more efficiently and effectively grades student tests and exams. Graders can efficiently copy and paste written comments and use built in short cuts to grade faster. Students receive richer feedback including links to further reading and will have better one-on-one access to professors and teaching assistants who will have freed up time through a more efficient grading process. In addition, student identities are hidden from markers eliminating any marking bias.

Valuable analysis

Other than the final grade, there is usually not much data schools can capture from assessments without heavy manual intervention. This can make it difficult to know how students are really performing. There may be a specific question or question type that a student has missed repeatedly, but without data this can’t be remedied.

Schools with the Ricoh Advanced Testing and Grading Solution have grown to appreciate the value of analytics. Our solutions allow educators to view data at both the total test and individual question levels. It also breaks down an individual student’s scores compared to the class average. This data can be represented in a number of graphical formats to make it easier to digest and, in turn, share with students. This allows instructors to understand their students better and to create more targeted assessments and lectures going forward.

Improving your grading and analytics processes can help your institution improve the student learning experience and improve your ability to compete for the students you want and need.

Talk to a Ricoh representative about how we can help you stand apart!