eMarking: Word documents

Snap, zooming and navigation

You can save time and work more comfortably by taking advantage of certain features of Windows and Word. To use these features your computer needs to have at least Windows 7 as operating system and Office 2010. You can contact the IT Support Centre to request the upgrade of your workstation or to borrow a DVD to install Office 2010 at home or on a personal laptop.

Snap screen windows

You can effortlessly arrange 2 documents (or even 2 different applications) side-by-side on the screen with a simple dragging motion:

• › Click and drag the title bar of a window to the left or right side of the screen.
• › Release the mouse button and that window will fill half of your screen.
• › Repeat the above steps to fill the other half of the screen with another document or application.
• › You can also resize those 2 windows individually.

You can watch a video on how to arrange windows using the Snap feature.

Zooming

You can increase or decrease the appearance of a document on your screen with a single click and without altering the formatting of the document. The zooming controls are at the bottom-right of any Word 2010 document.

Simply click on - or + to decrease or increase the zoom, or drag the zoom slider left or right.

Navigation

Word 2010 has a Navigation Pane that helps you save time while searching or moving through different parts of a document. It is particularly useful when working with long documents. To activate the Navigation Pane simply click on the 'View' tab on the Word 2010 ribbon and then tick 'Navigation Pane'.

You can watch a video on how to use the Navigation Pane.

On-screen handwriting

Word 2010 supports on-screen handwriting (also referred to as 'inking'). If you want to be able to write on your screen you will need to purchase an interactive touch screen device (see Equipment section of our Top Tips for details).

If you just want to be able to write ticks, marks or highlight parts of the document with your mouse, you can do it by installing some free software on your computer.

• › Download and install inking drivers for Windows 7.

Once you have installed the inking drivers you will be able to use the inking features in Word (and all other Office 2010 applications). See next section for more details.

Adding comments, ticks and linked notes

MS Word 2010 has a whole set of review features that allow for easily adding feedback and marking submissions. The more you use these features the more adept you will become at on-screen marking and over time you will see a significant reduction in the time it takes you to mark a document.

Simply click on the Review tab across the top of your MS Word application to see all the review tools and features available.

Adding comments

Adding comments to a Word document is very straight-forward. It allows you to add your comments in the context of the students' work, and you can easily navigate from comment to comment.

• › Open the document you want to mark and click on the Review tab.
• › Place the cursor in the location of the document where you want the comment to appear, or select a portion of text that you want the comment to apply to.
• › Click on New Comment.
     
• › Type your comment.
     

You can download the above steps as a reference document.

Remember that you can easily navigate the Word document using the Navigation Pane. You can also increase the size of the comments using the Zooming feature.

You can also navigate from comment to comment by clicking on Next and Previous.

Ticks, marks and highlights

You can use the 'inking' features of Word 2010 to easily add ticks, marks, signs, highlights, etc., to a document. You can do this with your mouse or with an interactive touch screen device. See above On-screen handwriting section for details.

• › Open the document you want to mark and click on the Review tab.
• › Click on Start Inking or on Ink Comment.
          
• › If you clicked on Start Inking you will see a new set of tools across the top of your MS Word application.
     
• › Simply click on the inking tool you want to use and start writing on the screen.
     

You can download the above steps as a reference document.

Linked notes

You can use this feature if you require your comments to be together in a separate document but you also want to easily refer each comment to its location on the student's submission.

• › Open the document you want to mark and click on the Review tab.
• › Place the cursor in the location of the document where you want to create a link to a note.
• › Click on Linked Notes.
     
• › OneNote 2010 (part of the MS Office Suite) will start and the screen will get reorganised automatically with the Word document on the left-hand side and the Notes file on the right-hand side (covering about 20% of the screen). You will be prompted to name the section of Notes you are starting. Simply type a name and click OK.
• › And you can start typing your comments on the Notes file.
     
• › You can carry on reading the Word document and every time you want to add a new Linked Note simply put you cursor in the location to be linked and then click on the Notes file and start typing.
• › If you want to navigate to a particular linked location hover your mouse over the comment on the Notes file and click on the Word icon that will appear.

You can download the above steps as a reference document.

Using a feedback knowledge base

One way of ensuring that the time you spend marking students' online submissions decreases over time is to build your own feedback knowledge base. You will realise that there are recurrent instances of feedback that you want to give to many students.

You can easily grow your feedback knowledge base of common instances of feedback as a Word document, Excel spreadsheet or OneNote workbook. You can categorise the instances of feedback by themes and levels.

When you are marking on-screen you can display the student submission and your feedback knowledge base side-by-side (see section above on how to Snap screen windows) and easily copy instances of feedback from your knowledge base and paste them on to the student submission as a comment (see section above on Adding comments).

You can also consider to share your feedback knowledge bases with other colleagues or to maintain a consolidated single one as a team. You can easily share documents with other members of your course team by uploading them onto the Field Content Area of Blackboard.