What runs at your college
Write the project once. Use it again every year.
A teacher sets a real task and a simple scorecard that shows what good work looks like. Everyone who marks that work uses the same scorecard, so a grade means the same thing every time.
What it does
What your college gets
- Staff work drops after the first year.
- The first project takes real hours to write. Setting it again next semester takes minutes. Change the deadline, change the scenario, send it out.
- Marks stop depending on who marks.
- Two teachers can grade similar work very differently today, with nothing written down to compare. A scorecard gives them the same named points to mark against, and puts any disagreement in one visible place.
- Students know the standard before they start.
- They get the scorecard with the task, not after the mark. Fewer arguments at the end of term.
- One installation covers every subject you teach.
- The software doesn’t know or care what the subject is. Law, journalism, and music can run side by side.
The brief
Four things, written down before the work starts
A project brief is short. It says four things.
- The task. A real piece of work, the kind the job actually involves.
- What to hand in. A document, a drawing, a form, a piece of writing, or several of these together.
- The deadline.
- The scorecard. What you are marking, and what each level of work looks like.
The scorecard does most of the work. Each point on it has to be narrow enough to point at in the student’s work. “How the risk is shared between the two sides” is a point you can mark. “Quality” is not.
The student gets it with the task. The same scorecard is then used three times: for the first draft score, by the teacher who decides the real mark, and by the professional who checks it. Three answers to one question, instead of three opinions.
The scale
Four levels, used everywhere
The same four levels appear in every scorecard, every mark, and every finished record. A score means the same thing wherever someone reads it.
- 1 Not yet competent
- Something the task asks for is missing or wrong. Judged on the work, not the effort.
- 2 Developing
- Part of it is there. Something important is missing.
- 3 Competent
- What a real job of this kind needs. This is the level a graduate is expected to reach.
- 4 Strong
- Everything competent asks for, plus one named extra. It’s meant to be reachable, not saved for work that impresses the marker.
Four levels rather than a percentage. A percentage on a contract draft suggests a precision that human judgment does not have. Each level describes what you can see in the work, not how the marker felt about it.
How it works
Setting one up
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Step 1
Start from a published scorecard, or from nothing
We publish starting scorecards for common tasks. The ones written so far cover law, architecture, and design, because that is where we began. Use one, change it, or write your own. The software treats all three the same.
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Step 2
State the task, the format, and the deadline
What you ask for shapes what gets marked later. It can be a document, written text, a form, a drawing, or anything else you ask students to hand in.
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Step 3
Name what you are marking, then describe each level
Four to six points works best. More than six stops being markable. This is the slow part, and it is what makes three separate markers agree later.
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Step 4
Save a version, then send it out
Every change gets a new version number. Each finished record keeps a copy of the scorecard it was marked against, so a record issued three years ago still reads correctly today. From there the project goes out to students.
Any subject
Any subject you teach
Nothing in the software knows the subject. A scorecard is a list of things you are marking, each with four short descriptions. A teacher in music, agriculture, or civil engineering writes one the same way a teacher in law does, and one college runs every subject it teaches on a single installation.
Licensing
Free to use, and yours to keep
The software costs nothing and there is no licence fee. You keep it.
The scorecards are published under an even more open licence. Anyone may use them, change them, or build on them, in any subject, including for commercial work, as long as they credit the original. That includes colleges that never install the software.
What it does not do
What this part does not do
Writing a project produces no score, no comments, and no record. It produces a task and a set of things to mark against. Scoring happens after the student hands work in.
- Not a course. No lectures, reading lists, or content. It doesn’t replace Moodle or anything like it.
- Not a gradebook. It doesn’t work out final grades or write to a transcript.
- Not an approval. A published starting scorecard carries no accreditation status. It’s a starting point, not a stamp.
Get started
ReadyHo is free and open source. It runs across your departments, and a college can start with one course or roll it out widely.
The rest of what runs at your college
- 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.
- An industry signature A working professional checks the same work and puts their name and credentials to it.
- 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.