What Is Gradescope?
Gradescope is a grading tool that helps instructors grade more consistently and efficiently for any assignment type, including quizzes, in-person exams, homework, or scantron-style assessments. Gradescope can be used for many types of assignments, such as solving equations, drawing diagrams, pseudocoding, translating languages, identifying countries on a map, or writing musical notation.
This Gradescope video provides a brief overview in under 2 minutes.
Why Use Gradescope?
- It works well for large classes or smaller courses in any modality — online, in-person, or hybrid.
- Flexible rubrics ensure every grader applies the same criteria, increasing fairness and clarity for students.
- Students can see exactly where they earned or lost points, which reduces confusion.
- Multiple instructors, TAs, or readers can grade simultaneously with no overlap, dividing grading labor in your teaching team easily and equitably.
- Faster grading means students can apply feedback while the material is still fresh.
- Detailed analytics highlight trends for both the entire assignment and individual questions, helping you identify where students struggled.
- Simple programming assignments can use an auto-grader for instant evaluation.
- Gradescope is integrated with Canvas and supports pass-back to the Canvas Gradebook.
Resources
- Gradescope Guide: Get Started
- Transitioning to Gradescope Bubble Sheets (replaces Scantron scoring)
- Sample Syllabus Language for Gradescope: just a starting point, customize for your syllabi
- Gradescope Roadmap: submit new feature requests or amplify existing ideas
Video Resources
- Recorded Webinars:
- Handwritten Exams: covers assignment creation, uploading and managing scans, matching names, building rubrics and grading
- Bubble Sheets: covers creating assignment, marking answer key, uploading scans, matching names and grading submissions
- Use Cases from other instructors (shared by Gradescope):
Support
UCSC Support: For support with this tool, visit Instructional Technology Office Hours or contact ITS (UCSC ITS Gradescope page).
Gradescope Support can be reached at help@gradescope.com. It helps to include the course and assignment name, what went wrong, and which browser you were using.