Mark exercises with marking aid

Rachael Stewart

Updated 11 May 2026 11:08

This page contains information relevant to the Enterprise package only.

If you aren't sure which package you're on, please check with your Customer Success Manager.
See Aptem Apprentice Pricing for information about the packages.

Watch the video

Prefer watching? Here’s a short video showing how to use marking aid as a tutor.

Overview

This page describes how the marking aid and feedback assistant features allow tutors to add personalised, structured feedback to learner exercises — enhancing the efficiency and quality of marking.

This functionality streamlines the marking process, reduces time spent on manual tasks, and ensures learners receive timely, high-quality, and consistent feedback.

Permissions required

Marking aid admin actions in the learning plan such as linking a new exercise, unlinking an exercise, or creating a new version are restricted by role. You need the Manage marking aid exercises role to perform these actions. Tutors and admins without this role can still view and mark exercises, but cannot change exercise links.

Key points

AI feedback assistant: Over time, the system learns from tutor feedback patterns for a specific exercise (not per learner). Once enough submissions are marked, it may suggest feedback items from the feedback bank with a confidence indicator. Suggestions always require tutor confirmation before being applied.

Shared feedback bank: The feedback bank is shared across all tutors marking the same exercise. Adding, editing or deleting feedback items affects all tutors and updates previously marked submissions. This supports consistent marking, so please make changes with care.

Marking an exercise

To mark an exercise, you can use the following steps:

Access the learner’s exercise
Review the submission and apply feedback
Complete marking for all questions

Access the learner’s exercise

Navigate to the relevant learner’s learning plan component in Aptem. You can also follow the 'Requires Marking' area of the 'Requires Attention' dashboard card to locate components that require marking.
Components that have exercises that need to be marked are in a status of 'Evidence Submitted'.
Select the ‘Mark Exercise’ button from the side panel.
This opens the learner’s submission in the partner interface for review and marking. Note that only the latest submitted attempt is available for marking.

Learner grid: exercise scores and overdue components

The marking aid management area shows a grid of learners for each component. The grid now includes:

Score: the learner's score for the exercise (marks achieved out of the maximum)

Overdue: a flag indicating that the component is past its due date

Primary tutor: the tutor assigned to the learner

Use the grid to identify learners who need attention without navigating to individual learner records.

Mark a learner submission

In the marking aid management area, find the learner and component you want to mark.
Select the learner's name or the submission link to open the marking interface.
When the marking aid exercise screen loads, a loading indicator is displayed while the interface prepares. Wait for the screen to finish loading before marking.
Review the learner's submitted text.
Highlight text and select feedback items from the feedback bank on the left to apply feedback.
Where a numeric value is required, enter the mark. Enter 0 where no mark should be awarded.
Once all questions are marked, select Mark as done.
Select Next to navigate between questions in multi-question submissions.
Once all questions are reviewed and marked, confirm the marking. The submission status updates in Aptem.

Review the submission and apply feedback

Before you begin marking, you may want to review information about feedback items, feedback groups and essay rubrics for marking aid, see: Edit feedback/rubrics for marking aid questions.

Review the learner’s submitted text.
Highlight a word, sentence or paragraph and select an applicable piece of feedback from the feedback bank on the left; multiple pieces of feedback can be applied.
- Where a numeric value is required but no mark should be awarded, enter 0, 0 can be added to positive and constructive feedback.
AI suggestions: When enough submissions of the same exercise have been marked, the system may suggest feedback items from the shared bank with a confidence indicator. These suggestions are per exercise (not per learner) and always require tutor confirmation. You can accept, modify, or ignore suggestions.
To add more individualised for the learner (e.g. SPaG):
- Highlight the applicable text and select the '+' option (Add one-time feedback) and complete the fields as you would for the feedback bank.
- Comments can be positive or constructive.
- To remove feedback applied to text, click the ‘X’ beside that feedback item.
- One‑time feedback you add for a specific answer is not added to the feedback bank and is not used by AI suggestions.
If you are using a rubric for the question, select the appropriate level for the learner’s answer. Rubric band titles and descriptions are shown to the learner and act as intended for the marking.
- For how rubrics are configured, see Configure feedback and rubrics for marking aid.
At the end of the submission, add feedback for any content that is missing by clicking: ‘Add feedback for the lack of something’.

Complete marking for all questions

Once feedback is added, click ‘Mark as done’ for the current question.
Use ‘Next’ to navigate multi-question submissions.
Ensure all questions are reviewed and marked.
Click ‘Mark as Done’ when finished:
- This updates the submission status in Aptem and redirects back to the learning plan.
- If needed, use ‘Unmark as Done’ to reopen marking before re-confirming.

Back at the learning plan level

Once you return to the Aptem learning plan component screen, you can add criteria, accept, or refer the learning plan component as usual.
Learners will see feedback when they view their exercise.

Handling re-submissions

If a learner submits a new attempt:
- Tutors can view previous attempts but cannot re-mark them.
- The tutor marks the new attempt as usual.
Auto-marking for unchanged answers: If a question is identical to a previous submission, the marking from that previous attempt is automatically applied, and the question is marked as done.
Tutors only need to mark questions that have been changed.

Multiple marking aid attempts under a single exercise evidence item

As a tutor, when you view historical marking aid exercise submission attempts, you can now find it grouped under just one evidence item, within the assessment reports grid.

Mark other supporting evidence

In some cases, tutors and learners add supporting evidence (e.g., presentations, meeting notes) at the component level in Aptem. This evidence is attached to the learning plan component (not the marking aid exercise).

A document version of each marked exercise is available to admins, enabling QA review workflows and recording of QA responses where required.

Click "Mark Evidence" to view the "Mark Evidence" screen - this will default to the first non-marking aid evidence.
If the marking aid evidence is in "Requires Marking" status, the marking aid interface (iframe) will open when navigating from non-marking aid evidence to marking aid evidence. This prevents the marking of marking aid evidence without actually marking the marking aid evidence in the iframe.
The marking aid iframe will not open if the status is anything other than "Requires Marking".

In such cases, the component is marked as “Completed” when:

Completion criteria are fulfilled, and
Marking aid evidence is in ‘Accepted’ status.

Marked and clean PDF versions

When exporting a marking aid exercise, two document versions are available:

Marked version (with feedback)

Includes:

Learner questions and answers
Tutor feedback and comments
Rubric selections
Applied marking data

Clean version (learner submission only)