Grading

We grade on Gradescope. The standards below keep grading consistent across graders and fair across students.

Full credit means as good as the solution

Award full credit only to work that is as good as the solution. Work that is almost right, or right for the wrong reasons, loses at least some points.

Every penalty should make sense to the student

A student should understand exactly why they lost each point. Use Gradescope's comment-at-a-position tool to place a comment on the student's page, right where their error is.

Build the rubric around common errors

Group student errors into rubric items as best you can, so that each item describes one mistake many students made.

All students can see every rubric item, so write items for the whole class. Don't talk to an individual student in a rubric item; leave them a comment instead.

Don't use point adjustments

Don't use the Point Adjustment feature. A point adjustment applies to just one student, while a rubric item applies to everyone who made that error. If we later change a penalty (say, from -3 to -2), every student with that rubric item gets the change, but a student penalized with a point adjustment misses out. If an error doesn't fit an existing rubric item, add a new one.