And if there are two or more markers, then it is very helpful to have a person who is supporting the markers and co-ordinating the marking process. The main things this person is responsible for are:
- Making the process run smoothly
- Ensuring consistency between the markers, ie that all teams are treated fairly.
Skills
Attributes and skills of a good marking co-ordinator:- Well-organized and methodical
- Teamwork - able to work co-operatively with a team of people
- Excellent attention to detail
- Able to cope with pressure
- Good general knowledge
- Good judgement about whether to challenge an official answer if "everyone" is getting something wrong.
Duties
The exact details will depend on how your quiz is organized, but probably the marking co-ordinator needs to:- Make sure that the markers get the the master-answer-sheet for each round
- Receive completed answer sheets, and assign them to the markers
- Advise markers what to do if they aren't sure whether an sheet matches the official answer. This includes taking common questions to the quiz-master for clarification.
- Spot-check the marking of each round
- Check that the correct score is put onto each answer sheet
- Write the scores onto the scoreboard
- Store the marked answer sheets in an organised way, so they can be found if a team raises questions about their score
- Provide interim results to the quiz-master (after every few rounds).
Hints and tips for organizing the markers at a table-quiz
Arrive early, and meet the team - both the oganizers and the people who have agreed to be markers.Understand exactly what the quiz-master and quiz-organisers want you to do.
Talk to the markers about how they would like to work - remember that your job is to make their job easier.
Try to organise the space where the markers are working so that they have some privacy. Ideally you want to protect them from interruptions and from teams who want to argue about how questions are being marked.
Make sure you understand the scoreboard that will be used:
- If it's a whiteboard, do you have pens and an eraser.
- If it's a computer and data projector, then make sure there is a file set up to record the scores and that you know how to use it and how to get progress reports.
Work out how you are going to file the marked question papers - either by round, or by team, and within that how you are going to sort them (by team number, team name) - keeping them in order makes it easier to find a paper later on if there is a dispute.
If you can, do a trial-run of practise questions, to see how the process will work.