Grading a Handwritten Assignment

Scoring Criteria, Point Adjustments, and Scoring Settings

Grading with Scoring Criteria

When grading each question, you will make a list of scoring criteria or items as you are grading. Scoring items allow you to grade quickly and consistently, applying the same set of feedback to every submission. You can apply one or multiple scoring criteria when grading. For each question, you’ll need to create a new set of scoring criteria to use in your grading checklist.

Formatting Scoring Criteria

You can use LaTeX to add math symbols in scoring items, comments, text annotations, answer group names, and regrade requests. For more information and a full list of functions, visit KaTeX’s documentation.

Creating and applying scoring criteria

When you get to the grading page, there are some auto populated scoring criteria to help you get started. You can edit or delete this scoring criteria as needed as well as create as many new ones as you desire. 

1. To start grading the question, select Add Scoring Criteria. A scoring item will be listed and numbered chronologically as it appears in the grading list).
2. Enter the Points and a Description.

3. To reorder a scoring criteria, drag and drop the item where you want it.
4. To apply a scoring criteria to a submission, select the checkbox next to the score.
5. To make an edit to the score on one submission you will have two options depending on whether you’re grading answer groups or individual answers:
   1. For grading individual answers, use the Point Adjustment field in the side panel.
   2. For grading answer groups, go to the Review Grades page, locate the student’s submission, and select Adjust Score or the pencil icon next to their score. You will be able to make Submission Specific Adjustment.
6. To edit the points or description of a single scoring criteria, you can make the desired changes. 

7. To move to the next submission for the same question, select Next Ungraded. 

8. To move to the next submission, whether graded or ungraded, select Next.
9. To go back to the previous submission, whether graded or ungraded, select Previous.

Creating and applying a Scoring Group

Scoring Groups allow for your grading criteria to be organized and structured in a variety of ways. You can batch similar scoring criteria together, provide more qualitative feedback on a sliding scale, easily grade multipart questions at once, and better communicate how points are awarded or taken off by providing more specific scoring criteria.

1. To create a scoring group, select Add Scoring Group.
2. Once created, you can give a description for the group and create sub-items. 
3. To add a sub scoring criteria to a scoring group, select Add item to group to group.

4. You can drag existing scoring items in and out of a scoring group.
5. You can expand or collapse the scoring group by selecting the arrow in the top-left corner.

Submission or Group Adjustments

Submission Specific Adjustments

While you’re grading a question with an Individual grading method or ungrouped answers, you can use a Submission Specific Adjustment to change the score on one student’s answer.

Any newly applied points will be added or subtracted to the student’s original score for the question, and can’t exceed the scoring bounds, or they won’t be applied. If the points would cause the total score to go outside the allowed scoring bounds, you can edit the ceiling or floor scoring bounds setting anytime in the Scoring Settings. 

We recommend adding or subtracting points for a student’s answer via a submission specific adjustment instead of editing an existing scoring criteria because doing the latter will retroactively modify the score on every submission where the scoring criteria was previously applied. 

Group Specific Adjustments

While you’re a question with answer groups, you can use a Group Specific Adjustment to add or subtract points to the total score of one answer group and not have it affect every other answer group in the question. This is useful to apply things like bonus points or extra credit to a specific group. When you make a group adjustment change, it applies to every submission in the answer group. 

Any newly applied points will be applied to the total score and can’t exceed the scoring bounds, or they won’t be applied. If they do, you can edit the ceiling or floor scoring bounds anytime in the Scoring Settings.

We recommend adding or subtracting points from an answer group via a group adjustment instead of editing an existing scoring criteria because doing the latter will retroactively modify the score wherever the scoring criteria was previously applied. 

Using the Scoring Settings

With Scoring Settings, you can set defaults for the scoring method and scoring bounds you want to use for grading each question. 

Positive and Negative scoring

• Positive Scoring (the default scoring method) means that scoring criteria defaults to adding points, starting from 0 for that question.
  • For example, for a question that is worth 3 points the scoring criteria would look like the following:
    • Correct - add 3 points. Final score: 3/3
    • Partially correct - add 1.5 points. Final score 1.5/3
    • Incorrect - keep the student’s score at 0 and no need to apply points. Final score 0/3
• Negative Scoring means that the scoring criteria defaults to subtracting points from the total points available for that question. 
  • For example, for a question is worth 3 points the scoring criteria would look like the following:
    • Correct - keep the student’s score at 3 points and no need to apply points. Final score 3/3
    • Partially correct - subtract 1.5 points from the total score. Final score 1.5/3
    • Incorrect - subtract 3 points from the total score. Final score 0/3

Scoring Bounds

• Ceiling - imposes a ceiling or maximum point amount to prevent scores greater than 100%. 
• Floor - imposes a floor or minimum point amount to prevent scores less than 0%. 

Changing the scoring settings

1. In the grading side panel, select Scoring Settings. The Scoring Settings modal will open. In the modal, you can change:
   • Total Score - set the total points possible for this question.
   • Scoring Method - positive or negative. 
     1. Positive scoring - add points starting from zero. 
     2. Negative scoring - subtract points from the total points.
   • Scoring Bounds - Ceiling or Floor
     1. Ceiling - set a ceiling or maximum point amount to prevent scores greater than 100%. 
     2. Floor - set a floor or minimum point amount to prevent scores less than 0%. 

Grading with Annotations and Feedback 

Create a comment or annotation

1. Select anywhere on the submission page to create a comment or annotation. This will open the comment tool. 
2. You can:
   1. Enter a comment and change the size of the text.
   2. Change the color of the text to Blue, Green, or Pink.
   3. Delete the comment with the red trash icon.
3. To edit a comment, select on the text.
4. Your comment is automatically saved when you click away from the comment tool.

Submission Navigation 

Submission View

In the Submission View, you have various options that let you navigate the submission.

In the top left, you can choose between two views: the full page view and the question-only view. The Question Only view allows you to change your view to the specific question regions that you set up during the Questions step. The Full Page view allows you to see the whole page of the submission.

In the bottom-left corner of the page, select the page counter to navigate between and jump to other pages of the submission. You can also rotate, zoom in, or zoom out on the current page.

Grading Questions with an Individual Grading Method

1. From the Grading Dashboard, select a question that has the grading method set to Individual. You are immediately taken to the grading page o begin grading. 
2. To create a list of scoring criteria for grading:
   • Select Add Scoring Criteria. Each scoring criteria will be given a number in the order they were created. 
   • Add the Points.
   • Add a Description of the scoring criteria.
3. Repeat step 2 to create as many scoring items as you need for grading the question.
4. Once you have scoring items, you can select the checkbox next to scoring criteria you want to apply to the answer. This submission is now graded and the student's score should be updated.
5. Select Next to move to the next submission irrespective of whether it’s been graded.
6. Select Next Ungraded to move to the next ungraded submission.
7. Save Changes. 

Grading Questions with Answer Groups

Using Answer Groups Dashboard

For the questions you’ve chosen to grade with answer groups, there are two parts involved in the grading process: 1) Reviewing and confirming the answer groups and then 2) Grading Answer Groups

From the Answer Groups Dashboard, you will see all the suggested groups you need to review, an answer preview for a group, the group name, how many student answers are in a group, as well as status indicators that let you know if the answers need to be reviewed for grading or if they are ready for grading.

• Edit an answer group name, locate the answer group, and choose Edit Group Name. Enter a new name in the field. 
• Merge Answer Groups -  select the relevant answer groups, and select Merge Groups. Select the group you want the answers to merge into and select Merge Groups.
• Ungroup Answers & Delete Group - To ungroup the answers from the answer group, select the dotted menu and choose Ungroup.

• Reset Answer Groups - Deletes all existing answer groups and forms new answer groups for you to review.

• Start Reviewing - You are taken to review the next unreviewed Answer Group.
• Continue to Grading - You are taken directly to grading each question and their answers. 

Part 1: Reviewing and Confirming Answer Groups

If you selected Multiple Choice, Math Fill-in-the-blank, or Text Fill-in-the-blank as your question type, Paper to Digital’s AI will search through your students’ submissions, detect similar answers, and group them by like answers.

The first step in the grading answer groups workflow is reviewing and confirming the suggested groups. 

To review and confirm an Answer Group:

1. To review an answer group, locate the group, and select Review Answers. You will be taken into the group to review and confirm the answers in it.
2. In the answer group, go to the Needs Review tab and make sure each answer is correctly placed in this group. 
3. To move answers, select the answer(s), and then select Move to or drag and drop them to another Answer Group in the side panel. 
   1. If you selected Move to, you’ll need to choose an Answer Group from the list, and then select Move Answers.

      Answer Groups are referenced by their number and not by their name. Keep note of which answer group has what Group number for easier moving. 

4. To remove answers from the answer group, select the answer(s) and then select Ungroup. Select Ungroup from the confirmation modal.

5. If all of the answers within the group look the same, select Confirm All Answers.
6. To create a new answer group:
   1. Expand the Answer Groups side panel. 
   2. Select Create Group.
   3. Enter a Group Name and select Create Group, in the Create Answer Group modal.
7. To mark an answer group as reviewed and ready for grading, select Confirm All Answers. Once confirmed, all reviewed answers are automatically moved to the Reviewed column.
8. To review the next Answer Group, select Next Group.
9. Repeat this process until all answer groups have been reviewed. If you realize you made a mistake, you can go back and re-review a group by selecting the Answer Groups link or Back to Answer Groups button at any time.

 Part 2: Grading Answer Groups 

1. Once you are done reviewing answer groups, select Continue to Grading to start grading all answer groups, or Grade group to grade a specific group.
2. From the grading page, create your grading checklist and scoring criteria for the question, and select to apply one or multiple.
3. To go to the next group, select Next Ungraded. You will be taken to your next ungraded answer group (or to the next ungrouped submission if all groups have been graded). 

Grading Ungrouped Answers

Answers are categorized as ungrouped because they either weren’t found to be similar to any other answers and couldn’t be grouped by our AI, or because you selected Other for your question type. 

Once you’re done reviewing suggested groups (if there were suggested answer groups to review), you will need to review Ungrouped Answers before grading them.

1. From the answer group dashboard, locate the Ungrouped Answers, and select Review Ungrouped. 
2. Go to the Needs Review tab and review the answers.  
3. If you want to move any answers into groups you can either create a new group or move them to an existing group:
   1. You can create a new group at any time by selecting Create Group from the side panel and then add in the answers or drag them into the new group.
   2. You can move any answers into an existing answer group by selecting Move to or dragging them to a group in the side panel.
4. If you want to keep the answers as ungrouped and grade each answer one by one and not grade them in an answer group, select Confirm Ungrouped.

Reviewing Grades

The Review Grades page has an overview of student submissions, their grades, and grading statuses. You can view, edit, publish, and download grades or download a student submission as a PDF. 

Viewing Graded Submissions

• To view a student’s graded submission, select a student’s name.

This is mostly the same view that the student will see once you publish grades, with the possible exception of hidden scoring items. 

Adjusting the score or feedback on one submission

Sometimes you want to give local, individual feedback to only one submission (e.g., you want to give one student a point adjustment for an entire assignment, extra credit or bonus points). You can do this with Submission Specific Adjustments, which allow you to add or subtract points as well as provide specific comments to a student’s submission. 

1. Go to the Review Grades page and change the points in the Score column. 
2. Find the student, and select edit next to their Score. This will open the Submission Adjustment modal.
3. Edit the Score Adjustment or Comments and then Save Changes.

4. You will need to republish grades when there are any changes to a score and a student’s original score has been already published. 

Publishing Grades

On the Review Grades page, you can publish and unpublish student grades. In order for students to be able to see their grades, grades must be published. 

1. To publish, select Publish Grades. When published, the student submission status changes to Published.

Unpublishing Grades

1. To unpublish grades, select Unpublish Grades.

Posting assignment grades to an LMS

When you publish grades, whatever LMS your institution has set up to integrate with TFS, the grades will automatically be published and synced to your LMS gradebook.

Posting assignment grades to the Turnitin website

Grades do not get passed back to the Turnitin gradebook, so students need to select View to launch their graded assignment in order to see their grades.

Downloading Grades

On the Review Grades page, you can download the assignment data to a CSV, which will allow you to view and manipulate the data from fully-graded submissions in a spreadsheet.

To download or export assignment data:

1. From the Review Grades page, use the checkboxes to select some or all students in the table.
2. Select the Generate CSV button at the top right. A panel on the right will automatically open and display the progress of generating the CSV.
3. Select the appropriate icon to download or delete the file.

Inside of the CSV file, you can find the following data:

• First Name: The student's first name
• Last Name: The student's last name
• SID: The student's ID, if one exists
• Email: The student's email, if one exists
• Total Score: The total score of the assignment
• Max Points: The maximum score that the student could receive
• Status: The grading status of each submission
• Submission Time: The date and time of the submission
• Each question on the assignment and its total point value