Gradescope Bubble Sheet Assignment

This article shares specific steps to setting up and utilizing Gradescope bubble sheet assessments to help faculty and teaching assistants get started, in their Canvas courses.

As part of the Mines campus license, Gradescope offers an alternative to Scantron; a "bubble sheet" assignment which uses a Scantron-similar format. Simply provide students with a set of questions and a copy of the bubble sheet, then collect, scan and upload the sheets. 

To help instructors and teaching assistants get started, below are the specific steps to setting up and utilizing Gradescope bubble sheet assessments in their Canvas courses. Gradescope can be used used without Canvas, if interested in learning more, please submit a request and let us know.

Need to give a bubble sheet exam right now? Take a look at the quick start guide and come back to this detailed guide when you're ready to grade!

Before the Exam: Setup

1. If you have not used or set up Gradescope in your current Canvas course, please first link your Canvas course with Gradescope and sync your roster. 
2. If you would like to sync grades back to the Canvas gradebook, navigate to your Canvas course and create a new Canvas assignment. For the Submission Type, select External Tool. Click the Find button and select Gradescope from the list. Save and publish the assignment. 
3. Navigate to Gradescope via the link in your Canvas course navigation menu and click Assignments in the left-hand toolbar.
4. Click the Create Assignment button in the lower-right corner. For the Assignment Type, select Bubble Sheet and click Next.
5. Name the bubble sheet assignment and select instructor to upload the submissions. 
6. On the Bubble Sheet Answer Key page, you will set the default point value for each question and determine whether scoring is exact, partial credit, or either/or.
   1. Exact - Full credit is awarded only for the exact correct answer.
   2. Partial - Partial credit is awarded for marking each correct letter. If any other letter is marked, the total score becomes 0.
   3. Either/Or - Full credit is awarded for marking any of the correct letters. If any other letter is marked, the total score becomes 0
   4. Note: You may click the gear icon next to each question and adjust the points or scoring option for just that question
7. Click through to select the correct answers to each question. You can select multiple correct answers for each question. While the template contains 200 questions, you only need to fill in the answers to the number of questions on your exam. Note: You can edit the answer key at any time before or after the exam. Simply, open Gradescope and select the assignment then select Edit Answer Key from the left-hand toolbar.
8. If utilizing multiple versions of the exam, click the +Add Version link at the top of the page to create up to 5 answer keys.
9. If you are planning to post grades back to the Canvas gradebook, click the Settings link in the left-hand toolbar. Under the Canvas Assignment heading, click the Link button. From the drop down menu, select the associated Canvas assignment and click Link Assignment. Click the Save button. You can close out of Gradescope and Canvas at this point until after the exam is complete.
10. Provide copies of the Gradescope Bubble sheet templates for your students OR require each student to print and bring the bubble sheet template to class. If you are utilizing more than 100 questions on the assessment, you will need to print the template double-sided or print two pages.
    • Copies of the Gradescope bubble sheet are available for Instructors to request and pick up  at the Mines Service Center (MSC) located in CTLM 156.

During the Exam

1. On the bubble sheet, have each student legibly print their first and last name in the Name box and their campus wide ID (CWID) in the ID box on the bubble sheet template.
2. Optionally, you may require students enter information in the Section, Date or Other boxes to help uniquely identify the student. For example, if students from multiple sections are taking an exam at once, you may want to have them enter their section information to make collating and scanning easier for individual sections later on.
3. If using multiple versions of the exam, make sure students fill in the bubble associated with their version
4. After students have completed their exam, collect the completed bubble sheets from each student.

After the Exam: Scan and Upload

1. Scan all student submissions into your computer--ideally as a single batch PDF file. You can use any scanner (campus scanners or personal scanner) to scan, as long as the file is saved as a PDF.
2. Navigate to the bubble sheet assignment you created in Gradescope and click Manage Scans from the left-hand toolbar. Upload the single PDF in the designated area on this page. If you have multiple pdfs of submissions, you may upload multiple files at once. When you have uploaded your PDF(s), and Gradescope has finished processing them, click Manage Submissions in the lower right corner.
3. On the Manage Submissions page, Gradescope will attempt to automatically match the students to their bubble sheets. If Gradescope is unable to automatically match names/CWIDS, you can also manually assign names to student submissions. If needed you can also replace individual submission PDFs and remove submissions. Use the tab key to quickly go through the name assignment fields.

Returning the Exam: Grading

1. Clicking the Grade Submissions button will begin auto-grading bubble sheet submissions. This may take a few minutes. If some submissions are not graded or graded fully, that is because the Gradescope AI was not confident enough in the student answer.
2. If Gradescope cannot identify a student's answer, it will display a message at the top of the Grading page stating "Review the remaining uncertain marks."  To review uncertain marks, click Uncertain Marks at the top of the Grade Submissions page or next to each question. You’ll see an image of the student’s answer and Gradescope’s proposed identification. If any of the suggestions are incorrect, click the correct bubbles. Click Confirm All Marks to grade all the submissions with uncertain marks.
3. Once submissions have been graded and you've reviewed any uncertain marks, click Review Grades in the left-hand toolbar. You may select individual students to review their grades or if needed manually adjust points for individual questions.
4. If you would like to post grades back to Canvas, click the Post Grades to Canvas button at the bottom of the screen. It may take several minutes, but the assignment grades in Gradescope are being transferred to the associated Canvas assignment. Once Gradescope indicates grades have successfully posted to Canvas, click Close.
5. To ensure students can see their scores in Gradescope, click the Publish Grades at the bottom of the screen. More specific information about reviewing grades is available in Gradescope's Reviewing Grades documentation.

Review Statistics

To better understand how your students did on the assessment and gain insight into how well they understood the content, Gradescope assignments include statistics and item analysis for bubble sheet assessments. To access either, click on the assignment in Gradescope. From the left-hand toolbar, click the statistics or item analysis link.

Interested in using learning more about Gradescope?

Check out the full Gradescope guide and/or consider leveraging Gradescope for more than just bubble-sheet exams.