In response to faculty demand, Academic Technology Solutions (ATS) began a pilot of the grading tool Gradescope in autumn 2019, to run through summer 2020. Faculty and instructors can use Gradescope to grade students’ handwritten work in an easier, more efficient, and more consistent way. They can also use this tool to provide better feedback for students and thereby cut down on requests for re-grading.
With Gradescope, faculty and instructors can create either positive or negative rubrics on the fly as they grade. If they choose to make a change mid-grading to a rubric, the change will be automatically reflected in questions already graded. Specific feedback for common mistakes can be reused, allowing for more consistent, higher-quality feedback to all students, regardless of when their assignment or exam was graded — those at the end don’t get short shrift. In cases where assignments and exams are graded by a team of faculty and/or teaching assistants, faculty and instructors find Gradescope an invaluable tool for ensuring grading consistency across all assignments and streamlining their grading workload. The logistical nightmare of sharing physical papers to grade one’s assigned questions is no longer an issue, and graders have the flexibility to grade wherever they have an internet connection.
Any faculty member or instructor can use Gradescope. By signing up for a Gradescope.com instructor account with a UChicago email address, they will automatically be placed into the UChicago enterprise account. The tool is also integrated with Canvas, which allows faculty and instructors to sync their course rosters and push grades directly from Gradescope into the Canvas Gradebook. Adding the Gradescope LTI to their course navigation also allows easy access to the Gradescope interface for instructors and students alike. The video below provides a quick and straightforward introduction to how to use Gradescope and Canvas together.
For other video tutorials on using Gradescope, see Gradescope’s Get Started page. Gradescope help can be reached by emailing help@gradescope.com.
ATS is happy to facilitate departmental demos or workshops on Gradescope for any interested faculty or instructors. Simply contact us with your request.
