How To Make Grading More Tolerable: Tools

Image credit: Alberto G.

In the last post, we looked at ways in which we could change grading policy to make grading take up less of a central aspect of teaching, as well as to bring it more in-line with contemporary and equitable classrooms. Here are some tools that can be used to assist you in achieving your grading goals.

• Engrade 

Engrade is a proprietary online tool that is free to use and can really simplify grading workflows. It does all of the calculation for you based on the constraints you put in under Options > Grading Settings, and keeps your grade book as a virtual entity that can be accessed from anywhere and shared with individual students. 


Although this was designed for K-12 grading, I used this for two semesters at the undergraduate level and had no issue with the interface for use with university learning. It is quite intuitive and easy to use, but is ultimately a specialized and user-friendly spreadsheet. 





A detail view of Engrade (note that this is not all of the data)



• Google Sheets 


Many universities today are integrated with Google for Education, providing teachers, students, and administration with Gmail and Google Drive across campus. Though, like Engrade, this is a free and proprietary tool, if you choose to use Google Drive, you may consider using Google Sheets for your grading purposes.


Since Engrade is more or less a specialized spreadsheet, adapting a more traditional spreadsheet, like Google Sheets, can be done with a little bit of spreadsheet knowledge. Grading calculations can be set up prior to the start of class with some simple formulas in columns of the spreadsheet.





Screenshot of Google Sheets



What I most appreciate about Google Drive is how easy it is to share and collaborate on documents, presentations or spreadsheets. Because of this functionality, I recommend creating two versions of the spreadsheet to share with students -- one that will be the un-editable version for the student to view, and another version that the student can play with to see how certain assignments and specific grades will effect his final outcome in your class.


A simulation grade book can allow students to be very aware of how they are being evaluated, so that there are no surprises in the end. A very transparent use with a digital tool like this can drive equity in your classroom to ensure that students know what to focus on if they have limited time and resources due to outside work or other constraints.




• Assessment Documents

Any private document-sharing tool will work for this one (I did use Google Docs, but you could try MoPad or a project-management tool) -- this is simply to keep an ongoing record of your comments and assessment of each student's work throughout the semester.


You may either choose to lock editing completely, or allow students to comment on the assessment in turn (or write comments as "suggestions"). This allows for continued transparency throughout the semester and a record to ensure that both you and the student are on the same page.