Champions of Gradescope build a collaborative user community

Teaching Professor Jenny Amos, Ph.D., first began looking for a solution in 2018 which could save her time when grading. Her course in the Grainger College of Engineering was expanding rapidly, jumping from a cohort of around 40 students to 70 or 80.

Through the use of dynamically updated rubrics and splitting grading across the academic team, Amos immediately saw the time savings with Gradescope. “My first exam, as soon as I tried it, I saw huge grading efficiency,” Amos says. “We split out problems for myself and the group to grade [and] I could see everything in the system. We also noticed we were more consistent grading particular questions.”

Gradescope allowed Amos and her colleagues to scale feedback and get insights into how students were applying principles, even across large courses. After seeing such positive initial results, Amos was a convert; she, along with her colleague Dave Mussulman, an Instructional Technology Facilitator, worked within UIUC as trailblazers in digital adoption.

Not even a closed campus could prevent this cohort of faculty advocates from spreading the word. “There was a small group of us who were using Gradescope and we were asked to do a college workshop,” says Amos. “I trained one hundred and thirty people over the span of two weeks!”

After Amos showcased the different modes of use and helped people get set up, a Slack channel was created to field questions and share tips. A collaborative user community was born, where instructors could teach instructors and information could be shared freely.

Mussulman worked closely with Amos and was also eager to support increased adoption. “When we find tools that solve problems in a way that we can share easily and we can show the impact of using those tools,” he says, “the dissemination moves up.” Both Amos and Mussulman see the value of putting this tool in the hands of as many instructors as possible.

For Amos, chief amongst the benefits is the speed and variety of feedback which is available to students, as well as the ability to make accommodations for those students who require them, something which had been a cumbersome process with previous systems.

Amos also actively encourages colleagues to draw information and insights out of Gradescope to improve courses, something which she is excited to see others doing well.

Faculty champions within a strong network of sharing have made Gradescope a critical and widely adopted resource. And while this level of support isn’t needed to be successful with such an easy-to-use tool, it has meant that administrators have a lighter touch in managing this technology.