Tutor-side automation
CourseDesk — course marking and teaching automation for tutors
It marks. It never writes the student’s work.
What it is
Assignment briefs, twelve-week schemes of work, lab sheets, quiz banks, lecture decks and a marking desk that decides each criterion and drafts the feedback — every output labelled DRAFT FOR ASSESSOR REVIEW. The no-ghostwriting rule lives in the system prompt, not the interface, so it survives edits.
The numbers
- Pipelines
- 4 + study coach
- Weeks of scheme generated
- 12
- Watched inbox
- Drop a spec, it runs
- Output formats
- .docx · .pptx
What is inside
- Spec parse → canonical learning outcomes and P/M/D criteria
- Marking desk: criterion decisions, draft grade, feed-forward
- Exemplars watermarked TEACHING EXEMPLAR — NOT FOR SUBMISSION
- Study coach that plans and teaches, and refuses to draft
In more detail
What arrives with the brief, besides the brief
The spec is parsed once into canonical outcomes and pass, merit and distinction criteria, and everything downstream is generated against that parse rather than a fresh reading. What comes back with an assignment is the paperwork around it: a scenario set in a real employer context, tasks mapped one-to-one onto the criteria, an evidence checklist the student can tick, a grading table carrying the command verbs, and an internal verification form already filled in.
How the marking desk reaches a grade
Each criterion comes back in one of three states — met, partial, or not addressed — and a partial names the thing that is missing rather than calling the work thin. A submission that reads unevenly raises a flag on the section it came from; the flag is a prompt to go and read that section, never an accusation and never a score. The label DRAFT FOR ASSESSOR REVIEW is on every page of every export, because the criterion decision belongs to the assessor.
Why it refuses to write the student's work
The original request was for something else: a system that would submit finished work under a student login. That was declined, and this is what replaced it. The refusal lives in the system prompt rather than in a screen, so editing a button cannot remove it and it applies to every pipeline that uses the prompt. Exemplars come out watermarked TEACHING EXEMPLAR — NOT FOR SUBMISSION on every page.
Where CourseDesk stands today
It is a working demo, built around a BTEC-style computing programme at levels five and six. What you can open runs one unit — a database design assignment marked across three submissions — with four pipelines and a study coach behind it. The criteria model comes from the unit specs it was built against, not from an awarding body's whole catalogue, and it has not been installed across an institution.
Built with
It boots in your browser and runs the real logic — no form, no sales call.
Common questions
Will it write assignments for students?
No. It marks, generates teaching material and coaches, but it does not draft student work. The study coach decodes a brief, teaches a technique from first principles with one worked example on a deliberately different scenario, and scores your own draft criterion by criterion — then tells you what to go and write. It does not hand over text you can paste.
Is the grade it gives final?
No. Every output is labelled DRAFT FOR ASSESSOR REVIEW. The desk decides each criterion, names the gap behind a partial, drafts the feedback and the feed-forward, and proposes a grade. The assessor reads it, changes what they disagree with, and awards. It decides what to read first; it does not decide the grade.
What does it produce, and in what format?
Word and PowerPoint files, written directly by the generator rather than exported from something else, so they open in what a department already uses without a conversion step. Alongside the teaching material there are pass and merit exemplars with assessor commentary, so a student can see the shape of an answer without being handed one.
Can it be fitted to our own syllabus?
That is the build. CourseDesk is a working demo shaped around a BTEC-style computing programme at levels five and six, so another awarding body means parsing its specs into the same outcome and criteria model. Scope decides the figure: a call, then a written scope with one fixed figure and its payment stages.
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JD Software Solutions — a four-person software studio in the United Arab Emirates. We build the system, hand over the code, and stay on to run it.