Exploring teachers’ intention of using a mobile marking system for written assignment and test for facilitating assessment for learning strategy in schools

Traditional marking for written assignment or test involves complex work flow such as marking of paper as well as sequencing, verifying and recording of scores and distributing the marked paper to students by the teachers. Given such time-consuming work and tight teaching schedule, teachers can hardly give timely feedback on the performance of their students or to adjust their teaching to suit the needs and abilities of their students as informed by the notion of Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategy. Furthermore, although there are various automatic assessment tools like those embedded in the Learning Management System (LMS) or semi-automatic electronic assessment tools such as the Optical Mark Reader available in the market, the assessment activities are confined to yes-or-no, single choice or multiple-choice format only. For the assessment which requires open-ended or non-standardized answers, it remains a hurdle in an on-line system as feedback can hardly be pre-set. There is definitely a gap between the aim of AfL and the current school practice at the present time. Hence, a mobile marking system (S-Mark) along with clear implementation procedures has been developed in this study to address the current problems in traditional marking faced by school teachers. The system will simulate the complex work flow of paper based marking and allow student-to-student as well as teacher-to student interaction with its social feature like ordinary LMS. However, although this innovative system may have a positive impact on the implementation of AfL strategy, its actual use depends much on the acceptance of such technology by the teachers. Hence, the aim of this study is to explore the teachers’ intention of using this mobile marking system for facilitating AfL strategy in schools and to identify factors that promote or hinder their use of such system. Through the finding of this study, the usefulness of this new system can be validated and the experiences gained and suggestions made by the participating teachers can be shared to the education community. This study adopts the Technology Acceptance Model as the research framework. Quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted to address the identified research questions. The data are collected from multiple sources which include an on-line survey for all participating teachers as well as semi structured interviews and reflective journals with selected teachers.