Zip Grade - the marking app to make your life easier

Marking takes a lot of time. It's something we all teachers have a love-hate relationship with as we know how important it is for the students' progress but at the same time it can be extremely time consuming. There are tools, however, that can save us a lot of time and provide quick feedback for our students. One of the marking apps that has been working extremely well for me is Zip Grade. It's perfect for marking multiple choice tests.

Once you download the app on your phone or tablet you are given free 100 scans each month. You can, of course, purchase unlimited number of scans. The yearly subscription costs $6.99.

You start by creating the answer key for your test:

Your students answer the test questions on special answer sheets which you can download from the website. It offers grids for 20, 50 and 100 questions. However, you can also create customized answer sheets on your profile and have the exact number of answers your test has.

Scanning a test takes a second. I like to use a highlighter to mark the questions my students got wrong. You can also print out the screen shots of individual review sheets (but that's just being extra :)

I found the app to be extremely useful to mark paper 1 of the IB Chemistry course. After some time of using the app you can easily create a nice bank of tests ready for marking. To find what you need easily simply add a tag while creating the answer key and you can later use it to filter your test bank:

An extremely useful feature is item analysis which allows you to see how your class did as a whole and identify the questions that you need to revisit:

You can also create individual learners' profiles and monitor the progress throughout the year. It also gives you useful data for parents' evening conversations.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina