Gradescope Instructor Guide

Request and set up Gradescope for your Canvas course

1. To use Gradescope, you will first need to contact us at the LT Hub to request Gradescope access for your Canvas course.
   • Please note that funding for the course must be approved by your faculty or department. If you can include the name of a financial contact with your request, it will expedite the setup process.
2. Once we have given you access, you will need to turn on Gradescope in your Canvas course:
   • Log in to your Canvas course with your UBC CWL (Campus Wide Log-In) and click Settings in the Course Navigation.
   • Click the Navigation tab.
   • Find the Gradescope menu item, click the options menu (the 3 vertical dots), and choose Enable.
   • Click Save.
3. The Gradescope menu item will now be available for you and your students. Click Gradescope in the Course Navigation to open the Gradescope interface.
   • If you are teaching multiple courses with Gradescope, you will be prompted to create a new Gradescope course or use an existing course to link with your Canvas course. Select A new Gradescope Course and click Link Course.
   • A new Gradescope course will be created that is linked to your Canvas course. Edit any important course details and click Update Course when you are ready to save your changes. You can edit these details at any time by clicking Course Settings in the Gradescope navigation menu.
4. Once the Gradescope course is created, reply to your LT Hub ticket and ask us to run an initial sync to enrol students from your Canvas course.

Collect student work in your Gradescope course

You will collect work in Gradescope by creating what is called an assignment. All work in Gradescope is called an assignment, whether you would like to collect an actual assignment or an assessment (e.g., an exam).

These instructions cover setting up the assignment in Gradescope. If you would like to also connect specific Gradescope assignments to Canvas (so that students can access assignment links directly from Canvas and grades can be passed between Canvas and Gradescope), the next accordion section will cover that.

1. Log in to your Canvas course, and click Gradescope in the Course Navigation.
2. In your Gradescope course, click Assignments in the navigation menu, then click Create Assignment.
3. Select the Gradescope assignment type:
   • Exam / Quiz - for collecting assessments for manual grading.
   • Homework / Problem Set - for collecting assignments for manual grading.
   • Bubble Sheet - for collecting multiple-choice assignments or assessments for automated grading.
   • Programming Assignment - for collecting code-based assignments.
   • Online Assignment - for creating questions that students respond to online (because this type is currently in beta, we recommend using Canvas quizzes instead).
4. Click Next.
5. Give your assignment a name. Depending on the assignment type, you may be prompted to select a PDF file to act as the assignment's template. A template is a blank copy of your assignment or a copy of its instructions, such as a list of homework problems. The template will be used as the structure to apply grades.
6. Complete the rest of the assignment details, and click Create Assignment.
   • If you don't see this option yet, click Next. Choose the sections you would like to assign the assignment to (or leave this blank to assign to everyone), and then click Create Assignment.
7. The newly created assignment will open and you can begin editing it by adding questions (for online assignments) or creating a Gradescope assignment outline (for other scanned assignments). An outline shows Gradescope the areas of each page where you want grades applied by the teaching team and the areas where students' names will appear. Once you are finished, click Save Outline.

Link a Gradescope assignment to Canvas

To allow grades to be sent between Gradescope and Canvas, you will need to link each Gradescope assignment to a specific Canvas assignment. This linking can be done by creating either an "External Tool" submission assignment or a "No Submission" assignment in Canvas that links directly to the Gradescope assignment. We recommend the "External Tool" option, as it provides students with direct access to a specific Gradescope assignment through Canvas.

Set custom rubrics for grading with Gradescope

Before or after your students have completed an assignment, you can create question-level rubrics in Gradescope for your entire teaching team to use in grading. These rubrics can be applied with written comments and submission-specific adjustments (i.e., assigning points for individual answers, outside of the rubrics), when grading student work.

You can modify your Gradescope rubrics at any time. For example, if you would like to increase the weight of a rubric, you can adjust the points value directly. Gradescope will automatically apply this change to all student submissions that have been graded using the rubric.

1. Log in to your Canvas course, and click Gradescope in the Course Navigation.
2. In your Gradescope course, click Assignments from the navigation menu, and then click the assignment name.
3. Rubrics in Gradescope can be created before or as part of the grading process. Click Create Rubrics in the navigation menu, and click the question that you would like to set rubrics for.
4. The grading rubric will be displayed. The rubric default is always a negative scoring rubric (points are subtracted from the maximum scoring amount).
5. Click Rubric Settings to change the default scoring, if you would like:
   • Positive Scoring - start from zero and subtract or add points by clicking rubric items
   • Negative Scoring - start from the total points available for the question and subtract or add points by clicking rubric items
6. Click either Add Rubric Item to create a single rubric or Create Group to create a group of similar rubric items together. For each rubric you add, set a description and the points.
   • You can use what is called Markdown syntax to format your rubric items (e.g. insert images, links, code blocks, tables, lists, bold or italicize text). In the description box, select one of the Markdown icons.
7. After you finish setting up rubrics for a question, continue through the assignment until you have added all the custom rubrics you would like the teaching team to use.

Grade student work in your Gradescope course

Once available, student submissions will be organized by questions in Gradescope. You can divide up work in a team of graders so that each grader focuses on one specific question at a time.

1. Log in to your Canvas course, and click Gradescope in the Course Navigation.
2. In your Gradescope course, click Assignments from the navigation menu, then click the assignment name.
3. Click Grade Submissions in the navigation menu, and click the question that you would like to grade.
   • If prompted to choose a grading method, choose Grade Individually, so that you and your teaching team can divide up the questions more easily. Click Grade Individually to apply these settings.
4. The student's submission will be displayed on the left and the grading rubric(s) will be displayed in the rubric panel on the right, or you may need to click Grade at the bottom of the screen to see this. You can click inside the numbered box for any rubric item to apply it, but you may find it faster to use the corresponding keyboard number or letter (whichever is in the box for the item).
   • Note that you will need to apply at least one rubric to each question for Gradescope to consider the student's submission graded.
5. Add any submission-specific adjustments (to change points for individual answers, outside of the rubrics) and, if appropriate, write a custom comment or add an existing comment from the drop-down.
6. If a student wrote an answer on a different page than expected for a question, you can hover over the submission and use the left and right arrows to navigate to other pages of the submission.
7. PDFs and images also include annotation tools for grading, in the top right when you hover over the submission:
   • Navigation icon - click and drag to move around the submission.
   • Text icon - type comments directly on the submission.
   • Pencil icon - mark directly on the submission.
   • Box icon - draw boxes to highlight areas of the submission.
   • Star icon - select emojis to leave directly on the submission.
   • Eraser icon - remove any annotation you have added.
8. Click Next Ungraded to see the next student’s submission for the same question. Continue until you have completed the available submissions.

Review and release Gradescope grades to students

After grading is complete, you can review and return the graded submissions to students by publishing the grades.

1. Log in to your Canvas course, and click Gradescope in the Course Navigation.
2. In your Gradescope course, click Assignments from the navigation menu, then click the assignment name you would like to release grades for.
3. If there are submissions that have not been matched to a student (i.e., you uploaded scanned exams and these have not yet been identified), click Manage Submissions in the navigation menu.
4. Once all submissions are matched and graded, click Review Grades in the navigation menu.
5. At the top of the page, you will see an overview of how your students did on the assignment. Below this, you can click any student name to view that student’s graded submission. Students will see a similar view once you publish their grades.
6. For students to see their grades via Gradescope, grades must be published. From the "Review Grades" interface, click Publish Grades at the bottom.
   • If you change your mind, you can unpublish grades by clicking Unpublish Grades. You may need to click More first to see this option.
7. Publishing grades makes graded work visible for students to review, but publishing does not notify students that their graded work is available. To notify students when their grades are available, click Compose Email to Students (which appears after grades are published), customize the message to be sent, and click Send Email.
8. Gradescope will send an email to each student containing a link to their graded work, which includes their submission, scores, and feedback.

Send Gradescope grades to your Canvas course

Gradescope cannot send grades to Canvas automatically, but you can manually send grades from a Gradescope assignment to Canvas, provided it has been linked to Canvas.

When sending grades to Canvas, student scores of zero will remain blank in the Canvas Gradebook. Blanks may therefore reflect that the student has not attempted any answer, the student has answered incorrectly for all questions, or the grade has not saved correctly in Gradescope. You may want to review grades of zero prior to sending Gradescope grades to Canvas.

1. If you have not already, link the assignment to Canvas by following the instructions in our earlier accordion section.
2. Log in to your Canvas course and click Gradescope in the Course Navigation.
3. Once the assignments are linked, click the assignment name that you would like to send grades from in Gradescope.
4. Click Review Grades in the navigation menu.
5. Click Post Grades to Canvas.
6. Verify the information in the pop-up window, and click Post Grades.