In this blog, I will highlight the benefits of having an Interchange account to help with the delivery of Cambridge Nationals. The qualification page is the main source of information and support material for Cambridge Nationals but additional support material can also be found on OCR Interchange.

What is OCR Interchange?

OCR Interchange is a free, secure website which offers a variety of services for exams officers and teachers.

Interchange supports every stage of the teaching and exams cycle, allowing exams officers to complete day-to-day administrative functions, e.g. make entries and claims, submit internal assessment marks, view results and assessor reports, and submit post-results service requests.

What are the benefits of having an account as a teacher?

Interchange is mainly used for the day to day administration of OCR qualifications by your exams officer but there is additional support material for teachers available on Interchange:

Past-Papers
The latest past-papers are added to Interchange within days of the examination being held; they remain on Interchange until they are replaced by the next series’ paper.

Mark-Schemes
Mark schemes are added to Interchange on results day and remain on Interchange until they are transferred to the public website with the question paper.

Examiners’ report
New for June 2018, examiner reports replaced our old ‘OCR Report to Centres’ and combines extracts from the question paper together with a commentary from the lead examiner (or lead moderator) for the unit. Where useful, exemplar answers are also included in the new style reports to help you. There is also a report for the internally assessed units, and we think this new resources will be useful for teachers and we encourage you to download them after each series.

Exemplar candidate work
Our latest exemplar candidate work for internally assessed units is available exclusively on Interchange so you can use them to help your marking without students having access.

Why are these resources not on your public website?

Feedback we have had from many centres is that they would like us to keep at least one paper away from the public site so that is only accessible to Teachers and not Students (so they can be used as unseen mocks). As the new style examiner reports contain questions from the exam paper, they are also published to Interchange alongside the question paper.

Are there other benefits to having an account?

The same login also provides access to Active Results, our free results analysis service and the OCR Repository, a secure portal where candidate work can be uploaded and submitted for moderation.

How do I get an account?

Your Interchange Centre Administrator, usually your exams officer, can set you up with a 'Tutor/Teacher' account. This access level will enable you to access the support material as well as candidate result reports from candidate results release day but will prevent you from doing other tasks that only exams officers usually perform, like making entries or viewing results on restricted results day.

If you are new to OCR and do not have an Interchange Centre Administrator or the previous administrator has left, an Interchange agreement form should be completed so we can set up a new administrator.

I’m in Interchange, where do I go to access the material?

From the main menu, hover over 'Resources and materials' and select 'Past papers and mark schemes'. Select 'Cambridge Nationals' as the qualification type and then select your subject. All files including examiners reports and exemplar material (and not just past papers) are in this section.

We have also placed links from the qualification page to the Interchange resources and if you are logged into Interchange when you click on a link, it will automatically open.

Keep in touch and stay up to date

I hope that the post has helped you know where to begin with Interchange and we welcome your comments below or you can also get in touch via our mailbox cambridgenationals@ocr.org.uk or follow us on Twitter @OCR_Vocational Also it takes less than two minutes to sign-up for our email updates to keep up to date with news and events.