The Gradescope integration with Sakai will be updated on December 20, 2021, in order to continue to improve overall performance of Gradescope as a tool and to keep Duke’s Gradescope functionality in line with the larger Gradescope user community.
We have updated our support page “Using Gradescope with Sakai as an Instructor” with more details, but we include an overview of prior recent changes (in case you missed them) as well as what changes on December 20.
Recent new functionality (in case you missed it):
Anonymous Grading: Further reduce unintended bias in the grading process by changing students’ names, email addresses, and other identifying information to randomized numbers and letters for any assignment. This feature is available for all assignment types.
Accommodate students with additional extensions: Set student-specific release and due dates using the Extensions tab in the menu within an assignment to help you accommodate individual student needs.
Duplicate courses: Instructors can now save time at the start of a new term by duplicating previous courses instead of re-creating assignments. This makes an identical copy with the same assignments, rubrics, and course settings.
December changes in Gradescope:
Link to individual Gradescope assignments directly from Sakai: The most significant change is the way in which students access Gradescope assignments after the the update. After December 20, instructors will create links to individual Gradescope assignments within the Lessons tool in Sakai (see detailed instructions).
Scores can exceed assignment maximum: If instructors try to post scores from Gradescope to Sakai that exceed the maximum point value (i.e. a score of 21/20 points), it will allow the score even if it exceeds the maximum (i.e. a score of 21/20 will stay as 21/20 on Sakai).
Delete Sakai Gradebook columns: Instructors will be able to delete Sakai Gradebook columns that have grades synced from Gradescope. (Note that instructors still can not edit individual student grades in Sakai; to make changes to grades, instructors must do that in Gradescope and re-post the grades into the Sakai Gradebook from there.)
Group/section identifiers: When syncing the roster from Sakai to Gradescope, all section/group identifiers for students will be included, rather than a randomly-selected single identifier.
Known issues after the update:
Gradescope “Student ID” field not filled: In a temporary change through Spring 2022, the “Student ID” field in Gradescope, which previously contained a netID@duke.edu email address, will be blank in rosters in Spring 2022 courses. If you use netID@duke.edu alone as the identifier on instructor-uploaded assignments in an approach to semi-anonymize assignments, this would impact you (in this case we recommend you use Gradescope’s new anonymous grading function). If you need Student ID to be added to Gradescope, you can do this by manually adding it to the roster via a .csv file upload (see the Troubleshooting section here for more details).
In Fall 2021 or earlier Sakai courses in which Gradesope was enabled, the Gradescope button in the Sakai site menu will no longer function. This is because when we changed to the new method for connecting Gradescope and Sakai, we needed to turn off the old method. The assignments and Gradescope grades are still there in Gradescope, and the grades that were posted over to the Sakai Gradebook are still there, though! If for some reason you need to update a grade in a Fall 2021 Gradescope site and post that grade into Sakai, you may do that using the new new Gradescope-Sakai connection method. If you have difficulty setting up the new connection, please contact us for assistance.Â
Sakai TA role not transferring properly to Gradescope: As of December 20, individuals with the Teaching Assistant role in Sakai will appear in the Gradescope roster (after roster syncing) with the Instructor role rather than TA role. In Gradescope, TAs and Instructors currently have nearly the same privileges, so this known issue won’t much change what the respective individual can do in Gradescope*. However, if course instructors wish, they can manually set the Teaching Assistant’s role to “TA” in the Gradescope roster (will need to do this after each time the roster is synced, until this issue is resolved).
*The differences between the Instructor and TA roles in Gradescope:
- Instructors appear in the list of Instructors in the side menu in Gradescope; TAs do not.
- Instructors see all regrade requests; TAs only see those from students they graded originally.
- Instructors can delete or duplicate courses; TAs can not.