Author: Edward J Berger

Ever wonder how a teaching team grades hundreds of exams in a fair, efficient way?

We face a bunch of challenges in assessing student work and providing feedback.

1. volume: there can be upwards of 700 students in enrolled in certain courses in a semester; now imagine an exam with 4 or 5 questions on it.
2. fairness: when grading is distributed across multiple people, it is crucial that they all have the same: (i) interpretation of the grading rubric, and (ii) attention to detail in reviewing student work, so that they can apply the rubric.
3. efficiency: grading often takes place at odd hours, squeezed in when we have a few minutes, rather than in large blocks of time
4. data entry: with 700 students and 4 problems to grade, that 2800 pieces of information that compose student grades. A data entry error rate of 0.5%, which is extraordinarily low, means we still make more than 10 errors in recording grades.

This team is attempting to address many of these challenges with Gradescope, an online grading tool that optimizing grading speed, amplifies fairness, and uses digital data entry. By grading scanned versions of student work, and specifying detailed rubrics inside Gradescope, grading becomes more convenient and efficient, fairness increases, and data entry is actually eliminated. We cannot solve the volume problem, but this tool addresses the other three challenges in a seamless and convenient way.