Creating an Outline

Creating the Assignment Outline is the first step in the assignment creation workflow for Exam / Quiz and Homework / Problem Set assignments. To get started, you will need to upload a blank version of your assignment to Gradescope when you’re creating your assignment. Note that students will be able to view and download this blank template from Gradescope if you’ve allowed students to upload their own work and enabled Template Visibility via your Assignment Settings. For instructor-uploaded assignments, students will never see the template file or any other part of the assignment until grading is complete and you click Publish Grades.

You will see the Template PDF on the left and an empty outline on the right. To start creating an outline click + new question to begin adding questions. You can title your questions and add point values. As you build the outline, a total point tally for the assignment will appear at the top of the page.

In addition, you can create subquestions by clicking the teal “add subquestion” icon (to the right of the red “x” delete icon), or by dragging a question into another one. You can also drag a subquestion outward to turn it into a question.

You can always remove a question, a subquestion, or a group of subquestions by clicking the red “x” delete icon next to each of these items. You may also replace the template PDF at any time by going to Settings in the left sidebar. Replacing the template will preserve the outline, any region boxes, and any grading you’ve already done for that assignment.

If you’d like to create extra credit questions, simply set the point value for these questions to be 0 on this page. You’ll then be able to disable the score ceiling during grading and award students points above 0 during grading. If you’d like more information on how to set up outlines that account for extra credit questions, assignment-wide point adjustments, and/or scoring schemes where students answer ‘x out of y’ questions or have their lowest scores dropped, please send us an email.

If your outline is for a student-submitted, variable-length assignment, then you are done once you list all of your questions/subquestions and assign point values. When your students upload an assignment, they will mark the location of each question on their submissions (Submitting an Assignment). If your outline is for a fixed-length assignment, you will need to set name and question regions on your template.

Name Region and ID Region

When creating outlines for fixed-length assignments, you can set the regions where students will write their names and student IDs. Creating either a name region or an ID region is necessary for the Manage Submissions step of assigning names to submissions. Having both is optional, but providing both a name and ID region can help increase the number of students that are automatically matched to submissions.

Click the Select Name Region button to create a name region which covers the area of the template where students will write their full names. If you’ve already selected the region, the button will say Edit Name Region. You can do the same for student IDs by clicking Create ID Region. For greater submission matching accuracy, make sure your name and ID regions do not overlap. Just like manipulating a question box, you can drag and resize the name and ID boxes over the desired area of the PDF.

Question Regions

For fixed-length assignments, you will also need to specify the areas where students will write their answers. You can do this by resizing and dragging question boxes on your Template PDF. You can also create new questions and subquestions by clicking and dragging on the PDF. Note that if you ever replace the template PDF (from the assignment’s Settings page), all of your question regions will be preserved.

When grading an assignment, the viewer will automatically zoom to the region you designated. It’s generally helpful to create regions that are slightly larger than the actual area you expect students to use.

Labeled Printouts (Beta)

Currently in beta for instructor-uploaded Homework/Problem Set and Exam/Quiz assignments, the Create Printouts button on the Manage Scans page allows you to generate a single PDF file containing labeled copies of your Template file. You can download and distribute the labeled printouts to give each student a copy of the assignment with a unique label on each page. Students will then complete their work on those labeled pages. When you scan in students’ submissions, Gradescope will use the labels to automatically group the pages of each student’s submission together, no matter the order they were scanned or uploaded in. For step-by-step instructions on this feature, see the Managing Scans help page. To have this feature added to your courses, please contact help@gradescope.com.