Am I required to use Gradescope?

No. 

Can I use Gradescope for only some (but not all) assignments?

Yes! Gradescope just an additional method to submit and grade assignments. 

When you create an assignment in Canvas, you just set the submission type to use Gradescope for that assignment. It doesn't restrict how you can grade other assignments. 

• You can still have students submit some assignments in Canvas that you can grade with Speedgrader. 
• You can grade some assignments outside of Canvas (for example, for student presentations) and manually add their grades to the Gradebook. 
• You can use Canvas quizzes for some assignments. 
• You can use iClicker and important scores into Canvas.
• You can use discussion boards in Canvas. 

All of the other ways you evaluate students are still available to you.

Can my GEs grade student work in Gradescope?

Yes! You can add TAs to Gradescope just as you would add students. Gradescope has a lot of benefit to teaching teams as it helps spread the work out between team members and keeps their grading aligned through shared rubrics. There are a few limitations on TAs in Gradescope (they cannot, for example, delete your course by accident), but they can definitely help grade.

My course has multiple discussion sections, labs, etc. Should I make a separate Gradescope course for each section or just a single Gradescope course for all?

It depends on how you plan to deal with assignments for the discussion sections/labs. 

If all students complete the same assignments regardless of which discussion section or lab they are in, you can just use a single Gradescope course and have all assignments in it. Lab and discussion section work will mixed in with your other assignments (exams, homework, etc.). 

If you use just one Gradescope course, You, or others in your teaching team, can assign students in Gradescope to different sections. This lets you sort student submissions by section so that you could, for example, have labs leaders only grade lab reports for students in their section.

If students in different sections might do different assignments, you might want to have separate Gradescope pages for each section so students don't get confused about which assignments they need to do for their section. If there are some assignments shared between sections, you can duplicate an assignment from one Gradescope course into another. 

If you have a Gradescope course for each section, Gradescope recommends that you do not link all the courses in Gradescope to one main Canvas site. For example, if you have one lecture Canvas site and four discussion section Canvas sites, do not link all the discussions sections in Gradescope to the lecture Canvas site. Instead, you should link each the Gradescope course for each section to their appropriate Canvas site. 

If you have a Gradescope course for each section, grades will also be stored in separate places in Gradescope. You can export Gradescope grades and then combine the results from all sections. If you wanted to add these to Canvas, you'd have to import the combined results (link goes to Canvas instructions on importing grades to the Gradebook).

I am teaching multiple sections of the exact same course (same course number but different CRNs). Can I use one Gradescope course for all the classes?

You should not. Students may be able to see who else is in the Gradescope course (for example, when adding others to group assignments). If a student in one class can see the names of students in your other classes, that would violate FERPA privacy protections for the students in the other classes. You also cannot link one Gradescope course to multiple courses in Canvas. You would not be able to automatically synch all student rosters nor directly import grades from Gradescope into the classes' individual Canvas gradebooks.

You should use a separate Gradescope course for each section. You don't have to re-do all your work in each Gradescope course; you can duplicate assignments from one course to another. So make the assignment in one course, and just copy it into the others. If you've started a rubric for the assignment, it will copy over as well. If you create or update the rubric after you copied the assignment, you can copy just the updated rubric over to the other classes to use for grading.

Do I need to give students instructions about using Gradescope if I don't plan to have students use it any way?

You might be in this situation if you plan to only use Gradescope to help you grade student work that you upload to Gradescope. For example, you might use Gradescope to grade Bubble Sheets (in place of Scantrons) and just a final score is sufficient to share with students, or you might use Gradescope to grade final exams or papers that you won't return to students after the term ends. 

To help you decide if this is you, consider these questions:

1. Will students ever upload their own work to Gradescope?
2. Will students ever see a digital copy of their work that you have uploaded to Gradescope?
3. Will students ever review your grading or feedback through Gradescope?

If your answer to all of these is no, students probably don't need to know about Gradescope because they won't engage with it.  The only results students will see from your grading of work in Gradescope is a numeric score imported to Canvas. You can probably never mention Gradescope to them at all.

If the answer to any of those three questions is yes, you should at least give students instructions on how to log into Gradescope to review their work and your feedback. If students will also upload work to Gradescope, you should give instructions for how to do that. You don't have to write any of these instructions yourself—instead see our Instructions for Your Students page to find instructions that you can copy and paste into your syllabus and into Canvas.

Can I use Gradscope for <specific type of assignment>?

See our page on Gradescope for Different Assignment Types. If your assignment type isn't there, please reach out to us to talk about what sort of benefits Gradescope might have for that type of assignment.

I have assignments in Canvas already. Can I copy my Canvas assignments into Gradescope?

Gradescope doesn't allow you to copy assignment information from Canvas. You can leave the assignment in Canvas as it is, but update the Submission Type in the assignment's settings to use an External tool and then choose Gradescope. Then you build the assignment in Gradescope by selecting the assignment format and setting up a few options and details about the assignment. You do not need to copy all assignment directions to Gradescope; all the instructions can stay in Canvas and Gradescope is just used for students to submit the assignment.

I have quizzes in Canvas already. Can I copy my quizzes or question bank into Gradescope?

Gradescope does not have this ability. But you are able to do some assignments in Canvas quizzes and some in Gradescope. There is not a need to use just one method for students to submit work. So you could leave the quiz in Canvas and use Gradescope for other assignments.

If you wanted to replace the quiz with an assignment in Gradescope you could use either the Online Assignment format or the Homework/Problem set format.

• For the Online Assignment format, you will have to recreate the questions individually.
• For the Homework/Problem set format, you need build the assignment in Gradescope by telling it the number and types of questions in the assignment. You do not add questions prompts to Gradescope, so you will also need to share the question prompts with students through Canvas.

I have a rubric for an assignment already (either in Canvas or another format). How do I get my existing rubric into Gradescope?

You will have to manually add it to Gradescope; you cannot import it to auto-create, but you can just copy and paste text from your rubric into a rubric in Gradescope. See Gradescope's instructions for Grading submissions with rubrics.

I am using the Homework/Problem Set or Exam/Quiz assignment format in Gradescope. Where do I put in the question prompt?

You do not enter the question prompts to Gradescope. For both of these assignment types, you can create a fixed-length or variable-length assignment, which have slightly different ways to handle creating questions for the assignment.

• If you create a fixed-length assignment, you must upload a pdf of your assignment when you create it. For each question, you will just draw boxes on the PDF to label where student answers will appear for each question. The prompts will be in the PDF you upload, although they aren't used for anything by Gradescope.
• If you create a variable-length assignment, you will create an outline of the assignment that has you name question (just using the question number is fine) and tell the number of points each question is worth. You do not add question prompts at all. 
  
  You will need to share the question prompts with students in another way. The easiest way is to add them to your Canvas assignment, much like you would if students were submitting work on paper or uploading their work to Canvas instead of Gradescope.

Find out more about fixed- and variable-length assignments from Gradescope's website (or in the next question!).

When should I use fixed-length or use variable-length assignments?

It depends on if you have a template with space for students to fill in answers.

• Use a fixed-length assignment if you have a template for the assignment that students will fill in. This could be an exam with individual questions or a worksheet with space to write in answers. You can add the template to Gradescope and tell it where on the template each answer is. This lets Gradescope can easily identify where answers are to each question when students upload their completed template.
• Use the variable-length assignment if you do not have a template. This could be for an essay or a list of problems to solve. When students upload work, they will be prompted to mark where each answer is in their submission. They can mark regions of a page or picture, or even upload a different picture for each question.

Also check out Gradescope's descriptions of submission types.

How does Gradescope use AI to assist in grading?

TEP has been told by Gradescope that its "AI" is just applied optical character recognition (OCR). OCR scans text in an image or a PDF and turns it into digital text. Gradescope then matches short text phrase between students to form groups of answers (see the next question on grouping answers). Gradescope also uses its "AI" to digitizes the text in the "Student Name" area of an assignment and matches that name to students enrolled in your course. It can do the same thing with student ID numbers if you give students a space to write their number. You'll be asked to double check Gradescope's matching and to identify student names that Gradescope was unable to process. Once this matching is complete, when you finish grading work in Gradescope you and export grades directly to your Canvas Gradebook without having to manually enter.

 Gradescope has had the ability to convert hand writing to digital and match it to other answers or student names for many years. It's now called "AI" because that is what is currently marketable in the tech-world.

How does grouping answers work in Gradescope?

When you begin to grade each question in an assignment using the Exam/Quiz or Homework/problem formats, Gradescope will ask if you want to grade each result individually or have it form groups of answers for you. If you form groups of answers, you only need to grade one student example in each group. Then everyone in that group gets the same score and feedback for their answer. If 90 students gave the exact same answer, you only grade that group once, not 90 times for each student in the group.

Grading by group can be done for or short answer questions. To do this, Gradescope translates written words to digital text, and then matches identical digital text.  For example, your quiz has a hand-written, fill-in the blank question to name the first US President. After you upload a scan of your students quizzes and you let Gradescope group students answers on this question for you. Gradescope would tell you that 

• 11 students wrote "Washington",
• 6 students wrote "George Washington",
• 2 students wrote "G Washington",
• 1 student wrote "George W. Washington",
• 1 student wrote "George Wasington",
• 1 student wrote "Ben Franklin", and
• there are 3 answers that Gradescope did not understand (so you will need to figure out what it says).

Each of these responses will be put into its own group, even though most of them have the same meaning. Gradescope does not analyze answers more than matching text; it doesn't know that the first three or four groups are (probably) the same answer. This limits grouping to just short answer questions that are a few words long (or are numbers or equations). After Gradescope suggests groups, it turns over the interpretation of the groups and answers to you. 

1. You must double check the grouping done by Gradescope. While reviewing, you can reassign answers to different groups, create new groups, or combine existing groups as needed. The unclear answers, you will be able to assign to groups manually.
2. After grouping answers, you must assign a grade and feedback to that group.

All Gradescope's "AI" did was form the original groups by matching short phrases, words, letters, or numbers that it digitized from handwritten responses. It does not appear to do any other analysis for student work.

This is helpful because's Gradescope's OCR does a very good job turning short hand-written answers into digital text. It struggles, just like you might, if student handwriting is not clear. Letting Gradescope form the groups, reviewing them, and grading just one example from each group is often much quicker than grading every student response to a short-answer question.

Should I allow regrade requests in Gradescope?

It is good practice and can be useful to you. Students will probably email you anyway if you've made a mistake in grading them. Using the regrade requests in Gradescope keeps a record of student requests (and your replies to them) in Gradescope, rather than spreading individual student emails about it throughout your inbox. 

If you allow for regrade requests, you should let students know about them. Leaving them for students to discover on their own may unfairly benefit students who do happen to know about them. Students who don't know about them may not have the same access to fixing their grade if you've made a mistake while grading.

When communicating with students about regrade requests, you should be clear that they are for fixing mistakes in grading they've found. For example, maybe you overlooked a section of their answer that had key information, just clicked the scoring option when grading, or you didn't notice their answer continued on a second page. The regrade requests should not be used for students to argue their answer is better than you think it is and they should get get points. If students want to discuss the quality of their work with you, doing so in person during office hours or a meeting is a better route than using a regrade request.

Can I use Gradescope if I don’t use a rubric to grade my student’s work?

You certainly have some rules you use for grading, even if it’s not a “traditional” rubric arranged in a grid. Gradescope calls all grading rules a “rubric.” All of these examples are possible grading strategies and how you could use of Gradescope's rubric for them. 

• If you ask students to solve problems, your rubric in Gradescope for each problem may just be a list of common errors students make and the number of points they’ll lose for making that mistake. As you grade, you just select what errors students made (or select a “-0 points, excellent work!” option).
• If you have students answer multiple questions choice questions, your rubric in Gradescope maybe have one entry for each answer choice that describes why that answer is right/wrong along with a score. As you grade, you just select the matching rubric entry to a student's answer. When students review their grade, they’ll see that their answer of D earned 0/1 points and see your note for why D was incorrect.
• If you have students complete short answer questions, you rubric in Gradescope may be a list of the key ideas students need to reference along with a point for each one. As you grade, you just check off which ideas appeared in the answer.
• If you use a traditional rubric to grade essays, projects, etc, you can build your rubric in Gradescope as a grid or as a list of rating descriptions grouped by the criteria they evaluate. As you grade, you can select items in the rubric just as you would on paper or in Canvas's SpeedGrader. 

Even though most of these are not "traditional" rubrics, all of them can be set up to grade using Gradescope's "rubric" structure.

Can I copy work that students submit in Canvas into Gradescope?

No, there is no "import student work from Canvas" feature. If you've set up an assignment in Canvas to use Gradescope, there shouldn't be a way for students to submit anything to that assignment in Canvas.

A student could, though, accidentally upload a Gradescope assignment to a different Canvas assignment. To fix that, you could manually fix it for them by downloading their assignment from Canvas and re-uploading it to Gradescope. You could also reach out to the student and ask them to correct their mistake themselves. If the deadline for the assignment has passed, you can give them an extension to resubmit the work. 

Does Gradescope check if students copied work from other students?

In general, no. Gradescope doesn't "read" student work except for identifying short phrases for fill-in-the-blank questions. However, for programming assignments only, Gradescope does offer a code similarity check tool.

Does Gradescope check if students used AI, copied answers from somewhere, or otherwise plagiarized?

It does not.