I moderate online support forums for distance learning and often see postings starting with “will I get penalised if…”, and others with a detailed textual analysis of the question.

In all of these cases there seems to be an assumption that markers are evil creatures looking for reasons to mark students down if they don’t submit exactly the “right” answer.

That certainly isn’t how markers see themselves, which made me think about how different these views are, and came up with this cartoon to illustrate the ideas…