‘Marking’ can be one of the most time-consuming of a university teacher’s responsibilities – and one of the least productive. Do students actually learn from your comments? Or do they go right to the grade and ignore the remarks? Do they reflect on end-comments and revise? Or have they heard it all before? (You need to work on your organisation …. Your ideas are good, but ….)

One technological method of rapid response to student essays is with Adobe Acrobat Pro. Working with electronic versions of the students’ assignments, a teacher can easily embed audio comments, offering a “readerly,” collegial means of responding to student work, and prioritizing comments and corrections with electronic markers.

Student papers are easily converted into PDF format. Adobe Acrobat has the ability to drag and drop customized comments (for example, corrections that you commonly make such as comma splices, lack of transition, etc.)

For more information, please check out this article: Evaluating Student Writing with Adobe Acrobat Pro