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Grapevine Learning Support

Overriding a mark

Also in Assistants

Every mark can be changed, including the ones Grapevine awarded itself. This is not an escape hatch — it is how the scoring is designed to work.

Why automatic marking is deliberately strict

Five of the six question types mark themselves, and they do it without judgement:

  • Fill in the blank forgives capitals, surrounding spaces and a trailing full stop. Nothing else — not a synonym, not a different spelling, not the right answer with an extra word.
  • Choose all that apply, put in order and matching pairs are all or nothing. Five pairs right out of six scores zero.

The alternative — a machine guessing at partial credit — would be unpredictable in a way neither you nor the learner could argue with. Keeping it black and white and letting a person override it means the generous decisions are made by somebody who can explain them.

Doing it

  1. Open Manage → Gradebook.
  2. Find the cell and open it.
  3. Enter the score you want to give. It cannot exceed what the question is worth.
  4. Add feedback — worth doing, because a changed mark with no explanation looks like a mistake.
  5. Save.

Your mark replaces the automatic one.

The cases worth looking out for

  • A blank answered in different words. The commonest by far. If several phrasings are right, also add them to the question so the next learner is marked correctly without needing you.
  • An all-or-nothing question nearly right. Decide in advance whether you give partial credit on these — doing it for some learners and not others is worse than a strict rule consistently applied.
  • A question that turned out to be ambiguous. If two readings are defensible, the question is at fault. Mark everybody who took the other reading correct, and fix the wording.

Being consistent

Overriding is where consistency slips, because each decision feels individual. Two habits help:

Work by question, not by learner. Walk through every answer to one question in turn and the standard stays in your head — see One question, every learner in turn.

Write the rule down before you start. “Partial credit on matching if they got all but one” takes a sentence, and means the fortieth answer is marked like the first.

Assistants can override marks. That is the role working as intended — marking is the whole of it.