Gradescope Faculty Use Cases

Mathematics

Father John Extejt was looking for an alternative to Speedgrader for his Math courses during the emergency remote teaching period. Gradescope allows him to upload student exams, give full access to TAs with set rubrics that can be changed on the fly,—the changes are automatically reflected on exams that have already been graded—and gives the option to grade by question or by groups of answers. According to Father Extejt, “I grade students work faster and better (more thorough and consistent) than I ever have. Faster and better means that our students are being better served.”

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics also uses Gradescope to provide consistency in assessment over multiple sections of the same course, which involve multiple lead instructors and TAs. This means that any change to the grading rubric will be applied universally across all sections, as well as provide valuable feedback about common mistakes students make, as well as identify problematic questions.

Computer Science

Professor Micah Sherr used it last year in CMSC435 to help grade the course's written exams. He said it helped in several ways:

“First, there was no longer a need to have hours-long grading ‘parties’ where everyone was stuck in a room; the TAs and faculty member could grade asynchronously on their own. Second, it sped up the grading process by automatically grouping answers.This was especially useful for numeric questions where the correct answers could quickly be weaned out and thus the focus could be on just the incorrect ones. Third was the ability to list out partial credit rationales and keep those entirely consistent (both in terms of explaining the partial credit and the points deducted) across all exams. The ability to also rethink the deduction and instantaneously apply it across all exams was also amazing.”

According to Prof. Sherr, “I found that the ability to look at statistics across questions was helpful in identifying both significant areas of student misunderstanding (meaning: areas in which I failed to convey something well) as well as questions that were probably poorly worded (and hence students uniformly did terribly on it).”

Data Visualization

Professor Wesley Joe uses Gradescope in his Data Visualization and Quantitative Methods in International Politics classes:

“In both classes, the tool squeezes the inefficiency out of document management and workflow. This is especially helpful in Data Visualization, for which there are 10 assignments. Students submit their work in Gradescope and it is returned in Gradescope. Although Canvas offers this capability, Gradescope offers far more power when it comes to creating grading rubrics. The advantages of the rubric and grouping features in Gradescope are numerous. They enable graders to grade more consistently, in less time, and provide extremely detailed feedback.”

“I find Gradescope to be a MAJOR productivity enhancer that enables me to provide significantly more feedback to students.”