I graded 2500 answers in 15 minutes, and so can you.
Anna Victoria Martinez-Saltzberg, PhD, is a Chemistry instructor at San Francisco State University. Gradescope is an online platform for grading handwritten, digital, and code assignments.
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Grading papers never came without its hassles, until I discovered a tool called Gradescope. It has allowed me to grade my (scanned-in) paper exams in significantly less time. Here are a few ways Gradescope has helped make my life easier and my grading more efficient.
I’m freed from the pile.
In the Spring of 2015, I had 200 final exams to grade. They went everywhere I went. They came with me in a huge cardboard box to get an oil change. My husband and I traveled from San Francisco to Boston, and 92 exams came with me on the plane. Carting around exams is awful. Then someone told me about Gradescope. All of a sudden, I could easily grade my exams at home, at the airport, while traveling, anytime I had downtime and a decent internet connection. Gone were days of carrying exams across the country!
I can really focus in on grading one problem at a time.
Gradescope is amazing. Being able to grade one question at a time across all assignments has helped me create more specific grading criteria for each problem. I’m able to grade students’ work more consistently with a rubric for each question, which I can update as I go.
I can see helpful statistics about what mistakes my students made.
During or after grading, I can look up and see exactly how many (and which) students made a particular mistake. Did those students lose 3 points because they didn’t know how to convert units properly or because they made a small math error early on in their calculation? Gradescope has all that information.
Gradescope’s Answer Grouping and AI-Assisted Grading capabilities are game changers.
*Answer Grouping is available for all question types. AI-Assisted Grading currently is available for multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank math questions.
Gradescope was already saving me considerable time over grading with a pen. Then Gradescope introduced AI-assisted grading. This feature automatically groups multiple choice questions by answer selection. Last spring, I graded 10 multiple choice questions for approximately 250 students in 15 minutes. The grouping feature can also be used manually, allowing the grader to group exam questions depending on what mistakes have been made. Once the answers are grouped, you only have to check off the rubric items once to grade all the answers!
If you are looking to use your time and energy as an instructor in more productive ways than flipping through stacks of paper, rewriting the same feedback over and over, or adding up scores by hand — I cannot recommend Gradescope enough!
Learn more about Gradescope and how it can help you streamline grading in your course.
