Grading Efficiently and Effectively using Gradescope

By Laura Carruth and Martha Fulk

Using authentic assessments is increasingly encouraged as one way to develop “cheat-proof” assignments. Authentic assessments are also much more effective measures of student learning. One complication though is that they may require more time to grade and provide timely and useful feedback. In addition, the pandemic has resulted in almost all assignments being completed and submitted digitally.  Even if your preference is grade hardcopies of assignments this is no longer a viable option (printing up hardcopies of student digital work is not an environmentally-friendly or efficient solution)—therefore being a more adept online grader will help!

Gradescope is a tool that CETLOE has recently introduced to the University community to help instructors deal with the avalanche of grading that can used for any course modality. Gradescope can be accessed as an external learning tool in iCollege and assessment documents can be created and administered directly with in the iCollege Gradescope portal.  The AI-assisted grading in Gradescope allows instructors to automatically group similar answers and grade all the answers in each group at once. This enables instructors to give better and more timely feedback, resulting in improved learning outcomes and improved consistency as well as transparency in grading. The types of questions that are supported within the software include paragraphs, proofs, diagrams, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, multiple-choice, and others.

Gradescope is fully integrated within iCollege and available to all GSU instructors. Accessing Gradescope through iCollege eliminates the need to create or use a separate Gradescope password, since both students and faculty will be authenticated via their iCollege credentials. The iCollege/Gradescope integration includes full sync of course roster (from iCollege to  Gradescope), creating assignments, grading submissions, and a gradebook integration (iCollege from Gradescope) with the ability to sync and send Gradescope assignment scores from Gradescope to the iCollege gradebook directly.

When you are ready to test out this software, please use some of these Gradescope resources or email for direct help: help@gradescope.com or help@gsu.edu.

Get started videos: https://www.gradescope.com/get_started

Written documentation and frequently asked questions: https://help.gradescope.com/

Creating and managing Online Assignments click here for guides:

https://help.gradescope.com/article/gm5cmcz19k-instructor-assignment-online

Instructor video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKQyhPsmPro