What runs at your college
Someone who does the job for a living checks the work
Your teacher sets the mark. Then a working professional from industry reads the same work and puts their name on it. That is the part an employer believes.
Why it matters
Why this matters to your placement office
A college that marks its own students and publishes the result is talking about itself. Employers know that, so they test every candidate again from scratch.
Now add a named professional in that industry who read the same work and signed it. The employer is not taking your word any more. They are taking the word of someone in their own field.
That is the difference between a claim and a reference.
The steps
What the professional actually does
- Your teacher finishes marking first. The professional never opens an unmarked pile.
- Your teacher emails them an invitation. It names the specific pieces of work, not the whole system.
- They set up their own account. They say what they do, where, how long they have practised, and any registration they hold.
- They open only the work they were asked to read. Nothing else on your installation.
- They score the same scorecard your teacher wrote, and write a few lines of feedback.
- Their name and their comments go on the student's record.
Three readings, one scorecard. The first draft score, your teacher's mark and the professional's score sit side by side on the record. Nothing is averaged and nothing is hidden.
Who counts
You decide who counts as a professional
There is no approved list, and the software has no view on which jobs qualify. Your faculty invite people they already know and rate.
An architect on a housing scheme. A lawyer on a contract. A journalist on a filed story. A teacher on a lesson plan.
The software does not know what subject it is being used for. Your department writes the scorecard, so the same screen works for any course you teach.
Most departments already do a version of this. The jury at the end of a studio project. The visiting examiner at a viva. The client panel at the end of term. That input is real, and today it is spoken out loud and gone by the evening. This gives it somewhere to land.
Every review carries a real name
Shared department logins for outside reviewers are not supported. That is a rule, not a setting an administrator can change.
An anonymous check is worth nothing to an employer. If no name is on it, it reads as the college marking itself twice, in different words.
The cost is real and we accepted it. Every professional has to accept an invitation and set up an account. That is slower than passing one password around a staff room.
Access
What an invited reviewer can and cannot see
| They can open | They cannot open |
|---|---|
| The brief and the scorecard the work is marked against | Any work they were not asked to read |
| Only the pieces of work named in their invitation | Any other student, class, course or department |
| A box for their own scores and written feedback | Your settings, staff accounts and admin |
Access is given one invitation at a time. A reviewer with no live invitation has an account that opens onto nothing.
Limits
What we do not do
There is no directory, no matching service, and no payment through the software. Whatever you agree with a professional, paid or unpaid, stays between you.
Credentials go on the record as the professional states them. We do not ring the bar council to check. The record says stated credentials, and means it.
This step assumes you already know professionals in the subjects you teach. If a department does not, that is the hard part, and no software fixes it. Sort that out before you install anything.
Next step
Get started
ReadyHo is free and open source. Start with one course, or run it across your departments.
The rest of what runs at your college
- Set the work Your teacher writes the project and a simple scorecard once, then reuses both every year.
- Collect the work Send a project to one student, a group, or a whole year. The actual work comes back in one place.
- First draft scores Every submission comes back scored against your scorecard, with comments. No student ever sees this part.
- Your teacher decides Your teacher sees the work and the draft side by side, changes anything they disagree with, and sets the mark.
- The proof The work, the scorecard, all three opinions, and who gave each one. One page an employer can open.
- Student control Nothing is published unless the student says so, and they can change their mind at any time.
- Cost control You hold the account, pick what it uses, and set a spending limit. Nothing is billed through us.
- Your servers One install on your own machine. Student work, drafts and marks never leave your college.