Just follow the link on the sales page called “Sign Up”,

Click Sign Up

then add your personal information to the sign up form,

Fill in your contact information here

and you are in for the one-month free trial.

First you must have signed up for the trial account (see above question), then, at any time during your trial or even after your account has become a limited, free account, you can subscribe by:

From the dashboard, click "Account"

then

Click "Upgrade to Subscription"

then

Click "Subscribe"

and enter your payment information at paypal.  Once you have completed the subscription at the paypal site, you will be returned to COMARKER™.

The minimum subscription term for a COMARKER™ administrator account is one year, paid in monthly installments of $10 (Canadian Currency).  This subscription will auto-renew on on the anniversary of its creation, unless the subscription is cancelled at least one month before the anniversary.

When an administrator adds a marker account, the minimum subscription commitment for the marker is only one month.  The subscription will auto-renew  every month until the administrator removes that marker from their account.

Once you have signed up for your free trial of COMARKER™, what next?  In order to use your trial effectively you need a few spare email addresses. These email addresses are necessary if you are going to create student and marker identities for yourself.  You cannot create an account without a unique email address. If you do not have a few email addresses to spare, you should create a some using gmail, hotmail, or your preferred webmail site.  When I do a demo for new clients I use gmail. The sign in page looks like this:

Gmail's create account page

Just fill in the boxes according to the instructions on that page and make sure to use a unique login name. Repeat this process twice if you want to test COMARKER™ with one marker and one student account; repeat it three times if you want to test it with a teacher account as well (note that a teacher account is identical to the marker account, but was built in case there need to be more than two sets of eyes on a particular student’s documents).
Once you have created your additional email addresses you can go on to create student and marker accounts as explained in these other frequently asked question tutorials. When you create accounts in COMARKER™ the system sends the login details to the email account that you provide.

Your fresh gmail account

And after that, you can play with COMARKER™ by uploading, marking and evaluating documents, as explained in those FAQ tutorials

Once you have created your COMARKER™ administration account, you will want to give your students accounts so that they can submit their documents to you through COMARKER™ (obviously). First, login to COMARKER™;

Fill in your username and password

second, scroll down and click add student;

Click the add student button

third, fill in their name and email address;

Fill in your student's information

select the marker and teacher you want to assign for them (if you aren\’t going to be marking for them and teaching them yourself);

If you have markers and teachers

click add.

Click

COMARKER™ will send them the username and password for their newly created account by email.

To bring a marker into your institution you need to know their name and email address.  On the COMARKER™ dashboard you will see the add new marker button on the bottom left of the screen.

Click the add new marker button

Click that button and fill in your marker’s name and email address.

The add marker form

Then click add marker and close the window. COMARKER™ will automatically send the marker an email notifying them that an account has been created for them and providing instructions on how to log in for the first time.

First you click the “Add New Document” button.

Add a new document.

Then you have to choose whether you want to create a document inside Comarker, or you want to upload a document that you have already written in another program.

Either create a blank document or upload one created in another program.

If you choose to upload a document, you click the browse button and select your document.

Browse for your document

Once you have selected the document you can rename it if the title is different from your document title.

Change the title of your document

Click “Upload File” and the document will be converted from its original type, to a type that is usable in Comarker™.

Converting the file

The document will appear on your screen like this:

Comarker's Text Editor

Once your document is in the system, you can edit it and submit it to your teacher and marker.

Submit your document

If you choose to create a document inside Comarker™, just give the document a title, and then start typing in the text editor.

Blank document

When you are finished writing you can either save the document and close it, or, if you are finished writing, you can submit it to your teacher and marker.

Submit your document

If you open one of your students documents and find that you cannot make comments or put highlights on it, you have probably already returned it to your student (you may have see this alert pop-up).

alert pop-up

This is how COMARKER  manages document version control. While your student is editing their work you cannot mark it,  and while you are marking their work they cannot edit it.

If you can’t mark their work and you haven’t seen this pop-up then there may be something wrong with your internet connection, or, God forbid, a bug in our system.  Please let us know by emailing a screenshot  to contact (at) acovan (dot) com (hit printscreen on your keyboard and attach it to the email).

Once your students have submitted their documents to you using COMARKER™, to mark them up (hightlight and comment on them) you must first open one of the documents.

Double-click the document that you want to open.

The document will open like so:

A marker's view of the document

When you find some text you would like to comment on, simply select  the text by clicking and dragging  the mouse over it.  You can start typing your comment immediately.  Your comment appears in the “comment” box at the top right of the document.

Type your comment here.

Once you have started to type, COMARKER™ will begin returning probable matches from the database: first by predicting what you want to say and automatically completing the comment based on results in the comment database;

Auto-Complete comments

second, once you have finished typing the first word and hit the space-bar, COMARKER™ will assume the word is a key word and return the list of search results accordingly.

Searching comments by keyword

Once you have applied the comment, you can click the blue text to open the comment window.  This is what the student will see when they open their document and open the comment.

Comments pop-up above the text with which they are associated

If you want to alter a comment once you have attached it to the text, you can either remove it completely by clicking inside the open comment pop-up with the right mouse button, or you can edit the comment by right-clicking inside the comment.

Right-click inside the comment to find the delete comment function

Adding comments to your student’s work is the best way to give them feedback, but if you just want to draw the author’s attention to part of the work, then you can add a highlight without a comment by checking the “highlight only” button at the bottom of the text editor window.

Click the box to add red highlights without any associated comments

When you select text with this tool, the highlight colour changes to red, and there is no comment associated with the text.

Red highlights on text