Marking Scheme and Feedback Assistant - Help - Introduction

Feedback tab

The Feedback tab previews and sends the feedback generated from the grades and comments entered on the Results tab. Select an assessment from the list, then a student from the list on the left, to preview that student's combined feedback.

Covering note

Text entered in the Covering note field is included at the start of the feedback sent for the selected assessment - useful for a general comment that applies to every student (e.g. common issues seen across the cohort).

How marks are reported

Three radio buttons control how the overall assessment result is expressed in the feedback:

Numerical % mark - the raw percentage.
Coarse grade - a simple A-F band based on the rounded percentage.
Fine grade - a finer-grained lettered scale (A++ down to F-) based on the rounded percentage.

The Include numerical task marks option additionally shows the numerical mark alongside each task's grade, rather than just the grade name.

Sending feedback by email

Set the Mail host (your institution's outgoing SMTP server) and Tutor email address (the sender, and the recipient for the tutor-summary option) before sending. Three send options are available:

E-Mail all feedback - sends every student in the cohort their individual feedback for the selected assessment.
E-Mail feedback to selected student - sends only the student currently selected in the list - useful for a one-off resend.
E-Mail summary to tutor - sends every student's feedback to the tutor address only, without emailing any students. Use this first to check connectivity and how the feedback will look before sending to the cohort.

The Include html version in E-mail option sends a multipart message with both HTML and plain-text versions of the feedback, so it displays well however the student's mail client renders it. You may need to be connected to your institution's VPN for the mail host to be reachable when off campus.

Attaching marked-up PDFs

Before sending, the Feedback tab automatically looks in the same folder as the currently open marking scheme for a marked-up PDF for each student - matching a file whose name starts with the student's ID, e.g. the filename format produced by Turnitin's bulk-download feature (studentID Name (email).pdf). No extra configuration is needed - just place the downloaded PDFs in that same folder.

If a matching file is found, you will be asked to confirm before it is attached - for E-Mail feedback to selected student this is a per-student confirmation naming the file found; for E-Mail all feedback it is a single confirmation covering however many students in the cohort have a matching file. If you decline, or no matching file exists for a student, that student's e-mail is sent as normal with no attachment. To stop a particular file being sent, simply remove it from the marking scheme's folder before mailing.

Welsh feedback

The fixed wording around each student's feedback (headings like "Your Marks"/"Task", the footer, and similar) is generated in English or Welsh automatically, per student - not a setting you choose yourself. MFA looks at the actual text of that student's individual feedback comment (or the assessment's default feedback, if there's no individual comment) and counts how many of its words are recognised as English vs. Welsh (the same dictionaries the Spell Check feature uses); whichever language has the majority is used for the surrounding wording. Write your comment in Welsh and the rest of that student's feedback follows in Welsh; write it in English (or leave it blank) and it stays in English, same as before this feature existed.

Every piece of wording this affects is stored as a pair of properties - see the Settings help page's properties table (FeedbackText.* / Feedback.*) for how to correct or improve a translation.