In today’s day and age, technology impacts all aspects of life. There is a vast difference in the technology used today compared to 10 years ago, and the impact it now has on society as a whole. Without technology, many parts of life that are now “normal” may have looked way different. Education is one area of life that technology has drastically improved in a short amount of time.
Although online learning has existed for quite some time, the way it was being used during the pandemic was like never before. The entire country relied on remote learning to better our students and their instruction. Educators were left scrambling to find the best products that worked for their students and classes. The technological divide did not help with this either. Many applications were developed to help with online learning, such as ways to provide work, assessments, and grades. Many of these applications have continued to be vital to teachers and their craft since returning to the classroom.
Grading applications have become a new norm for teachers to better their instruction and grading process. They allow teachers to grade faster, which leaves more time to focus on student learning and instruction. For me, grading applications has been one of the most useful tools from the pandemic. They are quick and easy ways for teachers to assess their students’ knowledge and provide feedback or constructive criticism to better student learning.
There are many ways that these grading applications can help to impact student learning and provide faster, easier results to many teachers. Having the data at a faster rate can only help to provide better instruction for student learning. This can then ultimately impact their education and hopefully change it for the better.
GradeCam
Many grading applications can help with grading in the classroom. One of them is GradeCam. GradeCam is an online application that allows teachers to create a variety of assessments to grade online with ease. The application makes the grading process and data collection much easier for teachers. GradeCam allows teachers to “customize and print forms, track existing and custom standards, scan and score assessments, aggregate and share data, instantly transfer grades, and inform instruction and decision-making.” (gradecam.com).
GradeCam is an excellent tool to grade assessments quickly and have data reports created for every single student. The data from GradeCam can help teachers check for student understanding. GradeCam can be used as formative assessments and create individualized student data to monitor student progress. Or it can be used as a summative assessment to determine student learning. The data provided by GradeCam allows teachers to understand student learning as a class or as an individual. GradeCam allows the teacher to connect to standards while creating the assessment or even afterward, which provides even more data.
GradeCam allows teachers to create multiple choice, true or false, open response, and fill-in-the-blank questions for assessments. It also allows teachers to create number grids, rubrics and even grade handwritten numeric responses all connected to updated answer keys.
Although there are many pros to GradeCam, there are some cons. The biggest drawback to the application is that most of these features only work for paid subscriptions, which can be costly depending on what is wanted or needed. When looking on the site, GradeCam allows teachers for a free 60-day trial and an additional 60 days for every teacher or administrator that is referred. Another con of this application is that it can easily time out, like many apps. GradeCam also uses the computer/laptops camera to grade. If the teacher’s device does not have a camera, GradeCam will not work.
Overall, GradeCam is a great tool for teachers that helps with grading; however, in my personal experience, it works best for multiple choice style questions, which is not always conducive to topics taught.
Turnitin
Another grading application that can be used in the classroom is Turnitin. TurnItIn.com is an online application that helps detect plagiarism and provides a platform to grade and provide feedback to students. Turnitin is a great way for students to upload paragraphs, essays, or papers in which teachers can provide feedback. Turnitin detects plagiarism and promotes academic and intellectual integrity. Sharing with students how the application works can help students to understand citations and how to write properly. Students and educators are made aware of any plagiarism that is detected. By using Turnitin, it can ensure the work is and promote confidence in their work.
Turnitin does not necessarily grade the paper itself but does detect plagiarism, which can impact a grade. It also impacts the time teachers spend grading and researching plagiarism. Teachers can provide feedback through Turnitin to help students to understand their grade. Turnitin also has a rubric feature in which a teacher can upload a rubric and use that to grade the assignment.
Like GradeCam, there is a free “version” but to detect plagiarism, there must be a paid subscription. Another con for TurnItIn.com is that its database must be updated to detect plagiarism. In today’s day and age, with ChatGPT and other AI tools, the Turnitin site may not be aware of where the information comes from and if it is being plagiarized. This defeats the tool’s purpose: to promote academic integrity and help students become better writers. Turnitin also caters to subjects requiring lengthy writing such as English or History/Social Science classes. It is not necessarily something that can be used cross-curricula.
Edulastic
A third grading application that teachers can use is Edulastic. Edulastic is a live website in which teachers can create formative and summative assessments and check-ins, do-now’s, and other questionnaires to assess student learning and understanding. Edulastic has question banks based on state standards or topic areas. Teachers can type in a topic and be given questions created by other educators.
Edulastic is a free application but similar to other online grading apps, the paid version provides more for both students and teachers. When teachers create assessments, they can use pre-made questions or create questions of their own. From experience, both are really great features that help to assess student learning. The purpose of Edulastic is to help students to master topic areas that they are learning. There are many styles of questions that teachers can use to assess student learning.
Edulastic allows teachers to create multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank, open responses with short answers or long paragraphs, and it also allows graphing and different mathematical questions. As a math teacher, the equation tools that Edulastic has are one of the best that I have ever seen. A nice feature of Edulastic is that it is a live site in which the teacher can see student responses as soon as they answer the question, regardless of the style of the question. From the teacher’s point of view, you are able to see the entire class, which question each student is on and how they are doing on each question — correct, incorrect, or partially correct. Since this is live, it helps students in the moment of solving.
I use this app as a way to practice as well as a way to give formative assessments. Edulastic creates a library of assessments, so year after year, you can use the same assessment or even edit an assessment from the previous year without having to start from scratch. Edulastic also allows students to upload their work. There is a style of question listed as upload, where students can take images of their work and upload it for credit. Different data pieces are also given based on students’ responses. It is a nice way to see what the students know, or don’t know.
The cost of this online application is the biggest con. However, the way certain questions are graded is also a fault. I have found that the short answer and open-response questions can be marked wrong even if the content is right. If the student does not type in the answer the same way the answer was inputted, Edulastic marks them wrong or partially wrong. However, a teacher can go into each individual’s assessment to change the grade and change answers that were initially marked wrong to be then marked correct. During this process, teachers can also write comments on each question and provide that feedback to students, which is a pro. Edulastic also allows the teacher to input alternative answers, which can help better match students’ phrasing.
One last thing that might deter teachers from using Edulastic is that it needs a set day and time to be given. Edulastic requires each assessment to be “opened” for a determined amount of time. The main issue that I have found with this is if a student needs extended time on the assignment. If it was not already calculated to give the time, it takes a little more time and effort to make the switch. Edulastic does have a lockdown browser feature for an additional cost. This makes the assessing process more secure and diminishes cheating while using the application. Overall, Edulastic is a great tool to assess students’ knowledge, grade their work, and provide data.
Learning Management Systems
Many learning management systems (LMS) provide ways to collect students’ work and grades. LMS’s such as Schoology, Canvas, and Blackboard are a few examples of these. However, there is one ultimate LMS that many districts use — Google Classroom. Google Classroom is an online site that allows teachers to manage a classroom and provide resources to students (and parents). Using Google Classroom, teachers can post assignments and resources and students can complete and upload assignments. The teacher can grade an assignment on Google Classroom and provide comments and feedback. Google Classroom uses all of the Google Suite products, such as Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Forms, to enhance the learning experience.
Google Forms has a quiz option to assess students on any topic. The quiz option allows a teacher to create an assessment with an answer key in which student work will be graded upon submission. There is not a variety of styles of questions but enough to be able to assess student understanding. Like Edulastic, open-response questions can be marked incomplete if the response is not word for word. It is typically best used for multiple choice, true or false, or fill-in-the-blank styled questions because of this. It also limits the amount of text that can be inputted and image size. It also is not a secure way of assessing students as there is no lockdown browser to ensure students cannot look up answers.
Google Quizzes gives an overall summary of the answers for the entire class. Turning the Google Form/Quiz into a Google Sheet to get better data points can help provide more. A plus side to Google Forms is that it is free; however, Google Forms only works with Google products and can only be integrated with Google products, like Google Classroom. If your school or district does not use the Google Suite, then, it eliminates this option. Overall, Google Forms is a quick and easy way to assess student knowledge in a formative way.
There are many online applications that can help educators to grade and provide feedback for students quickly. Like many things, most cost money and require a subscription to see the full benefits. Some provide great data points, others less. Some work for some subjects, others less. No matter what educators are looking for, there is an application (or two or three) out there that will help to better assess students, grade the assessment, and provide ways to give feedback to better student learning and understanding as well as free up time to truly focus on the students and teaching.
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