How to Use Gradescope

How to Use Gradescope

This page has six steps to using Gradescope. The first two set up your class for Gradescope and need just done once. The last four, you will do to set up and grade each assignment that you assign through Gradescope. Each step includes links to useful information from our website and Gradescope's Instructor Guides. You can also see some actions on Gradescope's Get Started page. 

If it comes up as you explore Gradescope's instructions, UO is using LTI 1.3. The links in our Gradescope material always point to LTI 1.3 instructions.

Steps to Use Gradescope

1. Plan How You Will Use Gradescope

There are just a few questions you need to answer to determine how you will use Gradescope. 

  1. How will you add students to your course in Gradescope?
  2. What types of assignments will you use Gradescope for?
  3. Who will upload assignments (you or students)?
  4. Will students ever submit group assignments?
  5. Will students be able to request regrades for their work? 

These questions will guide the rest of your work flow. These questions will also help define what you need to communicate with students about Gradescope, specifically when sharing information about Gradescope in Canvas.

You aren't, of course, committed to your answers for each of these. As you explore Gradescope and learn more about it you can change your answers. 

To help answer each questions, learn more about:

  1. Enrolling students
    • TEP recommends synching Gradescope and Canvas
  2. Assignment types and formats
  3. Uploading Submissions
  4. Group Submissions
  5. Regrade Requests
    • TEP recommends allowing regrade requests (learn more in our pedagogy FAQ)

2. Build your Course in Gradescope

It takes just a few minutes to get Gradescope going. You'll need to enable Gradescope in your Canvas site, create the course in Gradescope, and link it to your Canvas course. 

Lastly you'll want to add students to Gradescope (the first planning question). TEP recommends synching Canvas to Gradescope and importing students that way. There are other ways to enroll students, but syncing your roster is easiest for students, lets you easily update student lists (if new students join after you synch them), and allows you to export grades directly back to Canvas.

You should also communicate with your students about how you'll use Gradescope. Talk about it in your syllabus, in Canvas and in class. See our Introducing Your Students to Gradescope page for more.

3. Create and Link an Assignment to Canvas

For each assignment, you will want to create a Canvas Assignment  and then link it to an assignment in Gradescope. The Canvas Assignment preserves due dates in Canvas and holds space in the Canvas Gradebook for a student's score.

After creating the Canvas Assignment, you'll be able to link it to a Gradescope Assignment - either by making a new assignment or connecting it to one that you already created in Gradescope.

Gradescope has five different assignment formats that you can choose from. You can mix and match these used to cover many different assignment types. See our page on Gradescope Assignment Types and Formats to help decide which Gradescope format works for the assignment types you wanted to use Gradescope for in your second planning question.

4. Submit Work to Gradescope

Both students and instructors (including TAs) can submit work to Gradescope for grading. You considered who will do it for your course in the third planning question. The fourth planning question also considered if students can submit group work for any assignments. 

Instructors submitting assignments for students may be most useful for uploading exams to Gradescope. You can upload one PDF of a stack of student exams and Gradescope will separate the exams and match the exams to individual students (or ask you match some exams where the name is too messy for Gradesope to read). 

When students work for a Gradescope assignment, they can upload PDFs to Gradescope from their computers just as they could to Canvas. Gradescope also has an app that allows students to take photos of their work to upload directly to Gradescope, for example to turn in homework rather than handing you a stack of papers. 

If students are making a group submission, they add group members to the submission after they submit it.

5. Grade Submissions in Gradescope

6. Release Grades and Feedback to Students

After grading an assignment, you can quickly release grades to students. They will be able to review their score and your feedback, see details of how you've graded, and (if you allow it) request regrades if a mistake was made. 

If you've connected your Canvas site to Gradescope, it is also a single click to exports scores to Canvas's Gradebook after grading.

After grades are released, you can allow students to request a regrade if you've made a mistake (this was the fifth planning question). You can also view statistics for the assignment, including details about total sccore, individual question results, and even how often (and for whom) you used each feedback statement.