With the new term underway, our focus at Turnitin is on helping educators dedicate more time to what truly matters: teaching and engaging with their students.
Gradescope helps you do just that by speeding up feedback loops and making them more robust for many types of assessments, from handwritten work to programming projects.
By combining AI-assisted grading with powerful, dynamic rubrics, graders are more consistent and provide more effective feedback.
With this goal in mind, we have new Gradescope features to share with you! These updates, based on your feedback, help with grading, security, and accessibility, and we're excited to show you how they can make your job a little easier.
Here's a look at what's new and what's on the horizon.
What's new in Gradescope?
Lock rubrics for more consistent grading
Managing a team of graders or simply want to make sure you don’t unintentionally change a rubric item? Ensuring every submission is graded consistently can be a challenge, especially with dynamic rubrics that update submissions retroactively as edits are made. This is particularly true in large courses with multiple sections that administer the same assessments and need to apply the same scoring criteria.
Previously, all staff in a course could edit the rubric. This gave TAs flexibility but could also lead to inconsistencies if changes were made without the entire team being aware.
Now, you can lock your rubrics to feel confident the criteria you set will be consistently and equitably applied by all members of your grading team, including those who may be new to grading. This feature helps prevent accidental changes and ensures all students are graded on the same standards.
You can lock the rubric for all assignments, including the bubble sheet answer key. When creating or editing an assignment, you will find new options under the rubric settings.
- All staff can edit rubrics: This is the default setting, mirroring how Gradescope has always worked, and it allows instructors and TAs to make changes to the rubric.
- Only instructors can edit rubrics: This is an excellent option for instructors who want to maintain full control over the rubric. It prevents TAs from making changes, ensuring the rubric remains consistent across the entire grading team.
- No one can edit rubrics: This is the most secure option. Once an assignment is created and the rubric is finalized, this setting prevents any staff member from making changes, protecting against accidental edits by all graders.
This new level of control gives instructors peace of mind, knowing that the integrity of their assessment criteria is maintained from start to finish.
Require LMS/SSO access for enhanced security
Many institutions put policies in place to ensure sensitive information always stays in the right hands.
To enhance the data security of our customers, we’ve implemented a change that gives administrators the option to require that all students and staff access Gradescope courses exclusively through their Learning Management System (LMS) or Single Sign-On (SSO) integration (thus restricting native access to Gradescope).
This new capability helps protect sensitive data and supports crucial security measures like two-factor authentication (2FA), providing an added layer of security for web-based access.
Authenticating through an LMS or SSO connection streamlines login for educators and students accessing other applications like Gradescope.
Please note that this update does not affect mobile app logins.
Pro tip: You can maximize the screen space for Gradescope within your LMS by adjusting the settings so it loads in a separate tab. This makes navigation easier for both instructors and students.
Access the localized bubble sheet template in Korean
Fill-in-the-bubble (Scantron style) testing is a reliable option for assessment that’s fast to score so students receive timely feedback. In Gradescope, instructors can freely download answer sheets and import them from any standard office scanner for grading.
Now, those with their account language set to Korean will see the 200-question bubble sheet template in their language on the Create Assignment and Answer Key pages.
This template can also be found and downloaded from the help article on our Guides site.
Enjoy the support of continuous accessibility enhancements
At Turnitin, we design, develop, and test for conformance to accessibility guidelines that help people navigate and interact with their assignments. This is an absolute requirement for some, and ultimately benefits all educators and students.
We're always working to make Gradescope more accessible for everyone. Recently, we released improvements in areas including:
- Create Rubric page reflow
- Manage Submissions page reflow for Homework/Problem set, Exam/Quiz, and Bubble Sheet assignments
- Review Answer Groups page reflow
- Review Ungrouped Answers page reflow
- Assignment settings page reflow
- Student submission of Homework/Problem Set assignments reflow and resize
Reflow enhancements improve the layout of pages to adjust more dynamically to different screen sizes, making it easier to use on a variety of devices.
Resizing enhancements ensure content can be zoomed in for better viewing.
Our commitment to accessibility is ongoing. Next, we’re working on an updated VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) to provide a comprehensive overview of how Gradescope conforms to accessibility guidelines.
What's on the horizon in Gradescope?
Automatically sync due dates with your LMS (LTI 1.3)
For those using Gradescope through an LTI 1.3 integration in their LMS, it’s important to have a single source of truth for assignment information. This means educators don’t have to update information in multiple places, which reduces the risk of students misunderstanding expectations.
In an upcoming release, instructors will be able to effortlessly keep due dates in Gradescope aligned with changes made in their integrated LMS.
With this update, the assignment due dates (and section due dates, when applicable) in your LMS will automatically be reflected in Gradescope. This ensures students always see the correct information and your course administration is streamlined.
Achieve greater peace of mind with greater platform security
Security is a top priority, and we're continuously working to protect your data, ensure Gradescope supports the latest software versions, and meet important security specifications.
You will experience an even better Gradescope as we work towards official certifications, such as TX-RAMP - a rigorous security assessment program that ensures cloud service providers meet the highest standards for data protection.
The series of improvements we are making to meet these standards is often unseen but are of vital importance to the security of all our customers around the globe. These updates will strengthen our platform's infrastructure and ensure a more secure environment for everyone.
Make Gradescope even better
Your feedback is crucial. We’re continuously reviewing the valuable input customers have given us over the years to determine what we release next.
We encourage you to give your feedback on upcoming Gradescope features on the Gradescope Roadmap and subscribe to individual features or the Status page to receive updates.
Thank you for being a part of the Gradescope community. We look forward to continuing to build a better grading experience with you.