MARCKS is a method of providing feedback to students on how to improve their exam technique without using written prose. This is particularly important for peer marking so that students cannot leave inappropriate comments to each other but can still provide useful feedback. It also allows teachers to leave focused feedback while reducing workload.
MARCKS is essentially a comment bank from which students and teachers can indicate one or more reasons why an answer was not awarded full marks.
M - Maths. The student did not calculate the correct answer or show their working.
A - Application. The student did not apply their answer to the context and/or stakeholders in linked lines of reasoning.
R - Read. The student did not read the question carefully enough.
C - Communication. The student did not write a clear, coherent answer and it was hard to follow or did not address the command word appropriately.
K - Knowledge. The student did not give an accurate answer.
S - Statements. The student did not make enough statements to match the number of marks available.
After marking an answer, if full marks were not awarded, the student or teacher must tick one or more statements to indicate why.
After the task has been fully marked the student can review the marking, including their MARCKS feedback statements against each answer. They can also see an overview bar chart for the whole task showing the total number of each statement indicated.
Teachers can view a bar chart for the whole class indicating how students need to improve their answers in future tasks.