Gradescope allows you to group students using a feature they call Sections. Once students have been added to the Sections, you can:
- Set different assignment due dates for each group of students e.g. Group A submits on Week 1, Group B submits on Week 2.
- Release an assignment to a specific group/groups of students e.g. The assignment is release to Group A only.
- Allow markers to mark by group e.g. Marker 1 grades all of Group A’s submissions and Marker 2 marks all of Group B’s submissions.
Gradescope has a feature to sync Blackboard Groups to Gradescope Sections. Currently this is not working and Gradescope are working to fix the problem. The guidance below is a workaround, explaining how to manually create Sections.
Manually creating Sections in Gradescope
Creating Sections is done via the Gradescope Roster. You can add sections by editing individual student’s details within the Roster, but the most efficient way is to download the Roster as a CSV file, add the Section names in a separate column, then re-upload the Roster to Gradescope.
Follow Gradescope’s guidance on manually creating sections using a CSV upload.
Using Sections to control the release conditions of an assignment
You can now use Sections to control the release of an assignment to specific groups, or set different due dates for each group. Some departments have found this feature useful for students who require extra time or due date exceptions. Note however that Gradescope also has a dedicated feature for granting extensions.
To see how this is done, follow Gradescope’s guidance on creating an assignment with Sections.
Grading by Section
The grade by course section option gives staff another way to view, filter, and grade submissions for a given question. When using this option, you are grading submissions of a specified section rather than grading all submissions in the entire assignment. This may be useful when grading is distributed between multiple markers.
To see how this is achieved, follow Gradescope’s guidance on grading by Section.