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Gradescope

Gradescope is an online system that uses artificial intelligence to help grade exams, problems and assignments that students complete on paper. That work is scanned and submitted to Gradescope, which groups similar answers together, allowing instructors to see patterns in students’ work and to grade that work quickly with an online rubric. Instructors who have used Gradescope say that it saves time, allows for better coordination with GTAs, and allows for more sophisticated questions on exams and assignments. Here are a few suggestions for setting up Gradescope and helping the process go smoothly.

Assignment Design

  • Identify a space for student name and KU ID at the top of the page.
  • Number or title individual problems.
  • Include a line or box for final answers (leave adequate space between boxes or lines).
  • Use bullet bubbles or boxes for multiple choice answers (or use the Gradescope bubble sheet).
  • White, yellow, or cream paper works best for scanning large numbers of papers.

Scanning Assignments

  • Use a multi-functional device (like an office copier/scanner) for fast scanning of many pages.
  • Cut off any staples from multi-page assignments.
  • Small files can be emailed but larger files are best saved to a flash drive or a local server folder.
  • Single-sided documents scan faster than double-sided.

Using Gradescope

Create your course and upload your student roster (see Gradescope for help with this).

From the assignments page in your course, click on the create assignment icon at the bottom of the page. Once this is created, a duplicate assignment can be made for multiple versions of a single exam.

  • Choose the blank assignment PDF to upload from your documents.
  • Title the assignment and determine instructor (in-class assignments, quizzes, and exams) vs. student upload (useful for homework or group assignments).
  • Edit the grading outline. Here is where you identify the name/ID boxes and answer spaces as well as assign point values to the grading rubric.
  • Drag and drop the scanned documents as PDF files into the program on the manage scans page.
  • Check the manage submissions page for any student work that was not auto-assigned to a name in the roster.
  • Grade submissions by identified question (from the grading outline) answers or groups of question answers using the grouping function. On the main grade submissions page you can see the grading progress by question and who has grouped and graded each question (useful for large classes with multiple TAs).
  • During grading, rubric points (+ or –) can be added and will be visible to all graders of the same question. Rubric points can be imported from any other assignment in your Gradescope program.
  • Comments or highlights can be made on individual (or groups) of assignments using the Gradescope tools.
  • On the review grades page you can see the overall scores and check individual student scores. Use the publish grades icon at the bottom of the page to release scores to students. Download or export grades from here as well.

Helpful Tips

Within each assignment you can change settings:

  • upload a new assignment template (be sure to check the outline again to align question boxes)
  • adjust rubric scoring to count negative or positive points and adopt a ceiling or floor maximum boundary
  • adjust rubric visibility to show all, hide all, or show only applied items to students

For more detailed instructions see the Getting Started with Gradescope website.

From Lisa Sharpe Elles, chemistry