Getting Started
1. What is Academic Marker?
Academic Marker is an online educational platform for achieving advanced English proficiency and academic success, combining self-guided learning resources with professional tuition and support. Our e-learning pathways and quality-assured teaching centres specialise in developing competence in a number of key areas.
➲ advanced English grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and skills
➲ English for specific and academic purposes (ESP/EAP)
➲ essay, exam, presentation and research skills and strategies
➲ learning methods and educational technologies
➲ autonomy, criticality and reflective learning
2. Who is the platform for?
Academic Marker’s e-learning materials and personalised services are designed to help students, tutors and business professionals prepare for the transition to university and beyond. Whether you’re a native speaker of English or are still learning the language, if you agree with at least one of the below statements, you are more than welcome to join our community and access free support.
✔ I wish to enhance my English ability and confidence
✔ I wish to improve my study skills and academic style
✔ I am preparing to enter an English-medium school, college or university
✔ I am a university student completing a BA/BSc, MA/MSc or PhD/EdD
✔ I am a tutor preparing to teach essay writing, academic skills or EAP
✔ I am a recent graduate whose job requires advanced English ability
3. What are the platform’s aims?
Academic Marker aims to offer a high-quality, online repository of free-to-access resources for developing communicative skills and strategies, one that tutors can confidently recommend and rely upon for in-class tuition, flipped learning activities, homework tasks, and reference and revision.
Academic Marker aims to develop a tailored-yet-affordable educational toolkit, targeted primarily at those institutions that lack the educational budget to invest in EAP and at those students who may struggle to meet fee requirements for foundation years and preparatory programmes.
Academic Marker aims to ensure that its platform is comprehensive, standardised, and simple to navigate, understand and explore so that it may reduce the pressures of in-house materials development among academic institutions and benefit as many learners as possible, particularly non-native speakers.
Academic Marker aims to curate an educational space that raises awareness about sustainable, equitable and diverse learning and offers developmental opportunities that encourage and foster learner autonomy, criticality, research and reflective thinking.
4. What are our guiding principles?
Academic Marker believes that learners should have free and equal access to high-quality, multimodal educational materials both online and offline and should be encouraged to engage with such resources frequently, autonomously, reflectively and critically.
Academic Marker believes that learning aims and outcomes should be explicitly stated in the materials wherever possible and should be informed by comprehensive needs analysis, discipline requirements, modern practice, current research and EAP/ESP theory.
Academic Marker believes that e-learning courses and activities should follow a self-guided, task- and genre-based “microlearning” approach, being bite-sized, flexible and recycled so that learners can set study schedules, guide progress and reflect on their development.
Academic Marker believes that learners should be offered frequent opportunity for peer-to-peer feedback and tutor-led feedback, ensuring an ability to ask questions, request explanations and receive critical commentary on progress and production.
5. Who founded Academic Marker?
Academic Marker isn’t a large corporation by any means – it’s a small family run platform, founded, developed and curated since 2019 by two caring, friendly and experienced English and academic skills tutors.
Head of Teaching and Learning
"As experienced students, tutors and educational leaders, Sarah and I know what it means to be part of an academic community and how demanding university life can be, particularly in a second language. That’s why we created Academic Marker - so that students around the world could improve their English, avoid common pitfalls, achieve academic success, and generally enjoy the university and working experience."
Deputy Head of Teaching and Learning
"Having studied and worked at a number of overseas schools and universities, Daniel and I have an excellent understanding of the expectations and challenges of academia and how important academic success is to a person's career. We're here as friends and mentors to reduce the pressure of high-stakes learning on students, tutors and business professionals by sharing our experiences, advice, skills and strategies."
6. How large is our community?
7. What does our community think?
"I like the purpose of this platform a lot. Before the online learning EAP I didn't know how I could improve my EAP. I think the platform is a really helpful tool and very engaging."
"I want to highlight that the tutor did a very good job: very engaging, good mood, competent feedback, good managing of time that was very scarce in the first place, was open to my questions and special concerns."
"I liked the 1-on-1 personal interaction with the tutor to go through and analyse the essay. I liked the feedback about my paragraph structure and sentence structure and how he rewrote some of my sentences to show how to improve."
Accessing Support
8. Is Academic Marker free?
While Academic Marker may charge fees in its teaching centres, our e-learning pathways are completely free for anyone who signs up, engages with the platform and collects Academic Marks. Marks unlock activities, tasks, videos, audios, and downloadable PDFs/PPTs, and are awarded for signing up, logging in daily, leaving feedback and testimonials or referring your friends.
Collect Academic Marks
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100 Marks for joining
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25 Marks for daily e-learning
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100-200 for feedback/testimonials
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100-500 for referring your colleages/friends
9. Why collect “Academic Marks”?
Academic Marks are designed to keep our content secure but accessible while encouraging engagement with our e-learning pathways through daily learning. Earned by interacting with the platform, Marks not only provide community members with free access to hundreds of courses, activities, assignments, forums and other resources, but they help encourage feedback from our community so that we may continually improve our services.
10. What does enrolment include?
11. What are the e-learning pathways?
Academic Marker has hundreds of hours of independent study in its three e-learning pathways, designed to help students and professionals develop English proficiency, academic skills, autonomy and criticality. Each activity, task and assignment can be unlocked by our community by collecting and spending Academic Marks.
Academic courses and units, with videos, activities, quizzes, assignments and more.
Short interactive lab tasks that practice skills such as listening, writing and grammar.
Learning through reading, with hundreds of academic topics, chapters and worksheets.
12. Why visit the teaching centres?
To better support our community in developing English language, study skills and entrepreneurship, Academic Marker offers three centres of teaching excellence. With each providing a wide variety of quality-assured services to suit all educational budgets, community members can book personalised services with ease.
Tuition and workshops, available for all levels of English language learner.
13. Any advice for students?
High school students, undergraduates, postgraduates and business professionals alike can benefit from Academic Marker’s e-learning pathways and teaching centres. If you’re unsure about how to get started with the platform, try following these seven steps.
Reflect on your strengths, weaknesses and learning needs before exploring the platform. Consider what you already know, what you most need to improve upon, and how you have succeeded or failed in the past.
Join the community so that you may begin accessing free educational resources. Learn how to collect Academic Marks to facilitate your learning or consider enrolling for full, unrestricted access.
Complete activities in our three e-learning pathways that target the areas you most need help with. Keep a reflective journal of your progress, new vocabulary and any questions you might have along the way.
Remember to bookmark and download any particularly helpful activities for future revision and practice, returning to them periodically to refresh your memory and check your understanding.
Share experiences, opinions and assignments in the community forums, offering constructive support to other students and tutors wherever possible – remembering to communicate politely and in English.
Consider requesting personalised support in our teaching centres – you can always contact us to discuss any difficulties you may be facing. Also explore our extra resources for further educational tools.
Apply the knowledge and skills you’ve developed to real-world situations and tasks. Authentic experience is a great way of checking progress and understanding – just don’t worry too much about making mistakes.
14. Any advice for tutors?
High school teachers, EAP tutors, academic skills lecturers and university professors can also benefit from Academic Marker’s e-learning pathways and teaching centres. Explore the below steps if you’re looking for guidance about how to get started.
Reflect on the strengths, weaknesses and learning needs of your students before exploring the platform. Consider how you have succeeded or struggled when developing these concepts or skills in the past.
Encourage your students to join the community to access our repository of educational resources. Either enrol your classes for full, unrestricted access or inform them of how to collect Academic Marks.
Identify the courses or activities in our three e-learning pathways that target the skills your students need the most need help with. Integrate these into your classroom, homework and flipped learning tasks.
Remind students to bookmark and download any particularly helpful activities for future revision and practice, encouraging periodic refreshers to facilitate knowledge recycling and compounding.
Share your experiences, opinions and expertise in the community forums. Offer constructive support to other tutors wherever possible and request peer-to-peer guidance where helpful.
Consider requesting personalised support for yourself or your students in our teaching centres – you can always contact us to discuss learning needs. Also explore our extra resources for further educational tools.
Encourage students to apply the knowledge and skills they’ve developed to real-world situations and tasks, and remind your classes to continue to interact with Academic Marker beyond your courses.
Further Information
15. Can resources be shared?
Community members are welcome to link directly to our e-learning pathways should doing so benefit classmates, students or colleagues. While our content may be printed and shared freely provided that no financial sum is charged and our branding remains visible, downloadable resources should not be shared digitally without written permission. Thank you for your help.
Tutors and academics who wish to link to Academic Marker via email, within course materials or through a Learning Management System are welcome to do so. Community members may also adapt and reuse our materials for academic purposes provided no financial sum is charged, our branding is visible, and a reference and hyperlink is provided. Thanks for understanding.
16. Is the platform accessible?
To help improve the user experience, Academic Marker provides an Accessibility Statement which details what is and is not achievable in our e-learning pathways, thereby saving our community time and frustration. We aim to continue to improve the accessibility of our services and appreciate your feedback.
17. Which policies are key?
One of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors and of ensuring transparency of service. Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service documents therefore outline the key areas of relevant law, constituting a binding agreement between you and Academic Marker – one that should be checked periodically for updates. By accessing the site, it is assumed that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these policies and conditions of service. We thank you for ensuring this is the case.
18. What’s in development?
Our small team of developers is working hard to provide you with the best learning experience possible. Community members can expect to see the following improvements by early 2024.
2. automated enrolment functionality
3. student tracking and analytics
4. improved search functionality
19. Which updates are next?
We prioritise platform updates based on feedback from our community. If you feel strongly about any of the updates listed here or would like to recommend some that we’re missing, please contact us with your thoughts.
✓ automated enrolment functionality
✓ automated tuition scheduling
✓ student tracking and analytics
✓ enhanced search functionality
✓ improved site logo and design
✓ increased diversity of presenter accent
20. Can the community help?
We warmly thank our community members for their continued trust and feedback as it’s only through the support of students and professionals that we can improve Academic Marker. If you’re new to the community and would like to say “thanks” for having free access to our e-learning pathways, please consider…
✔ enrolling for full access to the platform
✔ recommending your friends, classmates and colleagues
✔ writing feedback or leaving a testimonial
✔ following Academic Marker on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
