What Is Gradescope?

Gradescope is a tool designed to streamline and standardize paper-based, digital, and code assignments. It supports problem sets and projects as well as worksheets, quizzes, exams, and papers.  

Why Use Gradescope?

Students can

  • upload pen-and-paper problem sets that will be graded by an instructor or teaching assistant,
  • easily see points breakdown for the score received, and
  • get feedback more quickly and consistently.

And instructors can

  • create on-the-fly feedback and grading rubrics for assignments and problem sets;
  • easily adjust rubrics at any time and retroactively apply changes;
  • grade assignments anonymously;
  • standardize grades across instructors, teaching assistants, and graders, particularly in large classes;
  • grade and provide detailed feedback more quickly and consistently across students and sections;
  • get detailed analytics on an individual and on the whole class; and
  • grade handwritten assignments, such as problem sets, online.
Important Considerations for Using Gradescope

It is important to determine whether Gradescope is going to provide any benefits to you as the instructor and your students because there is an initial learning curve when creating and grading assignments. Gradescope is used primarily by instructors in the physical and life science disciplines in LAS (e.g., Chemical Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics, and others) as well as in Engineering. Most needs in other disciplinary categories seem to be covered adequately by the various systems—for example, Moodle and Compass—already in use on our campus.

As of February 2021, Gradescope is not integrated with Moodle or Compass. If sufficient interest is there, we will seek to implement integration. For now, instructors must manually transfer grades from gradescope.com into Moodle or Compass.

We recommend that you talk to faculty members in your department who already use Gradescope, take Gradescope for a "test-drive," or consult with a member of the Teaching and Learning with Technology team in ATLAS (atlas-tlt@illinois.edu).

If you are a first time user, we strongly suggest that you first test Gradescope with your students in a low-stakes or extra-credit or a practice assessment to ensure that it works well for you and them prior to delivering a high-stakes exam to ensure that you have figured out how to use Gradescope.

Learn to Use Gradescope

Support

Grainger College of Engineering Resources by Professor Amos

Tutorials from Gradescope.com