After students complete the assessment, you can grade their submissions from the Grading area.
You can grade the assessment By Question or By Student. To grade by student, follow the instructions below. To grade by question, please see Grade by Question for Assessments.
To grade student attempts:
- Open the assessment and click By Student from the Grading area.
- Click the student submission you want to grade in the table.
Alternatively, open the student’s assessment by clicking the puzzle piece icon in the gradebook cell corresponding to the student row and assessment column.
Note: Instructors may also enter submissions on behalf of students using Observational Grading for Assessments.
By Student Table
The By Student area displays information about students and assessment attempts.
- From the Filter dropdown menu, choose to display all students, or only students who haven’t yet submitted an attempt.
- The total number of students assigned the assessment displays in parentheses next to the Students column label. Click the down-arrow menu to the right and choose to display students by first or last name, and in alphabetical or reverse-alphabetical order.
- The Gradebook Points column displays the students’ points earned for the assessment over the total number of points possible. A dash displays for unsubmitted or ungraded assessments.
If you’ve enabled multiple attempts, Gradebook Points displays the points for the version you set in Final grade is determined by in the Student Settings area: Highest Score or Last Score.
This is also the score that displays in the student assessment view and the course gradebook.
Note: If the number of points you designated in the Create Assessment screen is different than the total number of combined points for all the questions in the assessment, the total displayed in Gradebook Points will reflect this difference. For example, if you make the assessment worth 100 points in the Create Assessment screen, and the combined total of all the questions is 90, the number in Gradebook Points will update to a 100 point scale. A score of 75/90 on the attempt, for example, will display as 83.3 in Gradebook Points, as 75/90 = 83.3 on a 100 point scale.
Change the assessment score manually by clicking the score for the assessment in the Gradebook Points field and adding a new score. In this example, the instructor has entered a score of 75 for the assessment. Click clear override to remove the manually entered score.
The Attempts column indicates the attempt number for each assessment, with the most recent attempt at the top. For example, if a student has submitted three attempts for the assessment, the third displays at the top of the student’s row with 03 in the Attempts column.
Student submissions may be in one of four statuses:
- Scores Pending – Once the student submits an attempt, the assessment enters Scores Pending status for a brief period while questions are automatically graded.
Note: Schoology generally expects score processing times to be within 2 seconds. If you notice score processing times exceeding 2 minutes please contact Schoology Support.
- In Progress – The student has started an attempt but has not made a submission yet.
- Needs Grading – If the assessment contains subjective questions, it updates to Needs Grading status and the course admin must grade the subjective questions.
- Completed – After all questions have been graded, the status changes to Completed, and the score updates in the course gradebook and in student views.
- The Last Modified column shows the timestamp for the most recent time the student made changes to the assessment, including month and day, year, and time.
- The Elapsed Time column shows how long the student has spent on the attempt.
- Tap or hover over the More Options menu and select from two options:
Submit/Unsubmit: For submitted assessments, select Unsubmit to place the attempt back into In Progress so that the student can resume it. Any work the student had previously completed is saved for them to come back to.
Grading a Student Attempt from the Assessment
Click anywhere on a student’s submitted attempt to open it for grading. Add scores in the box next to student responses:
- Grade any subjective questions that require manual scoring.
- Overwrite any auto-scored questions.
- Click clear override to remove the score you entered. If the question already had an automatically calculated score, remove the override to revert back to this score.
The Attempt Score field in the upper-right corner updates automatically as you add or change question scores.
- Attempt score is a tally of the number of points achieved over points possible for each student attempt – you cannot edit it directly.
- To change a student’s attempt score, manually increase or decrease the points awarded on individual questions. To change a student’s overall assessment grade, change the gradebook points from the By Student view or from the Course Gradebook.
- If you need to make a change to the correct answer setup (for example, changing the correct answer) after students have submitted the assessment, you can opt to automatically rescore the existing submissions.
Add Feedback
You can provide feedback on each students' responses to help students improve their outcomes.
Click Add Feedback next to each item to enter your comments:
To add text and images, use the Rich Text Editor in the Text/Image area.
To add audio to your feedback, click Audio and then the record icon to begin recording.
To add video, click Video and then Record to begin recording. Learn more about recording audio/video in assessments here.
Switch between tabs to use all three feedback options in your response.
Once the feedback is saved, you may edit or delete it at any time. Click the pencil or trash can icon next to your feedback to edit your comment or delete it entirely.
Student View
Students can access the feedback directly from their submission once Allow students to view results after an attempt is submitted is enabled in Student Settings.
Grading a Student Attempt from the Course Gradebook
From the gradebook cell for the assessment attempt in the course gradebook, you can complete a number of grading functions:
- Click the score and add a new one to overwrite the overall grade for the attempt. If you change this grade, the override is indicated by an orange pencil
in the lower-left corner.
Click the pencil to clear the override.
- Click the puzzle piece icon
to view the student assessment submission.
- Click the flag icon
to add an exception to the submission.
Neither Excused nor Incomplete exceptions factor into the student's overall grade in Schoology. From a calculation perspective, marking a gradebook cell as Excused or Incomplete is the same as leaving it blank. Applying either does not penalize students or affect their overall grade.
The Excused and Incomplete exceptions act as a visual reminder to the course admin that the student has either been excused or their submission is incomplete, to help avoid later confusion as to why that cell for that student is blank or unscored.
Marking a cell as Missing, however, does penalize the student's grade. Giving a student a Missing is the calculation equivalent to giving the student a zero. Selecting the Missing exceptions also adds a zero score in the cell.
- Click the Comment
icon to add a comment to the submission.
Your comment saves automatically; click the x in the upper-right of the pop-up window to close the comment. You can also check the box to Display to Student (optional). The comment icon persists for any cell to which you’ve added a comment.
Comments and exceptions appear in the student grade report, which you can open from the Graph icon
to the right of the student's name. Comments for grading periods and the overall column also appear on student report cards unless you have selected the Hide overall grade from student reports and/or hide grading period grade from student reports checkboxes in the course Grade Setup area.