During the time of lockdown, visualisers became a necessary device for being able to provide clear and detailed feedback.  In Chemistry, we wanted to continue setting detailed and thorough assessments, but this led to a difficulty in workload when it came to marking and feedback.  Using Google Classroom was helpful, but often involved repetition of comments when students were making the same mistakes on their work. Often, these mistakes were simply corrected, and in lesson would have required minimal time, such as unit conversion or rearrangement of equations.  However, the time taken to type this out many times was both tedious and often lost in the bigger picture of curriculum understanding.

A solution to this was to use the visualiser to record a member of staff completing the work.  In doing so, we were able to talk through not only what the correct answers were, but also tips and hints over the correct approach to the work.  We were then able to mark the work, with a basic breakdown of where the marks were scored.  Students were then asked to watch the video mark scheme tutorials and discover for themselves where they had gained the marks.  They could also comment on whether they took the most efficient route to the answer.

What we found was that the system worked!  So much so that we have decided to continue its use for A-Level marking of tests.  In a win-win-win situation, the quality of feedback became greater, students engaged with their improvements to a deeper level, and workload was reduced. Students commented that the ability to revisit the explanations helped them both to understand their misconceptions and misunderstandings, but also that they could use the tutorials when approaching similar questions for revision.

We are hoping to expand the use of visualisers for video mark schemes to other year groups.