This paper focuses on a traditional educational skill, namely the assessment of student work. Whereas ICT has left a considerable mark on, for instance, the administrative support of educational activities and on the use of legal sources, other parts of legal training have seen almost no alterations in the past few decades. One such area is the grading of essay or open question student assignments. The CODAS Text Grader tool, described here, can be used to alleviate the task of marking this type of student work. Teachers still have an essential role with this. What changes is the ‘level’ at which the assessment of the student work takes place: from individual to survey, from marking to ranking. The CODAS software can also be used for a related task: it can assess the assessors. It contains functions to assess – and if necessary correct – the marks for comparable essays awarded by one specific teacher or even by a team of several teachers. Bringing transparency to the process of grading can only be of benefit to the education system.This paper was originally published in the proceedings of the 2005 BILETA conference (Belfast, 6-9 April 2005)
