To grade students’ work in Scholar, go to Grade Center -> Full Grade Center.

Then you have two ways that you can get to the assignment.  To grade starting with the first student in the list, click the dropdown next to the column title and choose Grade Attempts.  To grade a specific student’s work, click on the dropdown next to the Needs Grading symbol () in the appropriate cell and choose the attempt that you wish to grade.

You’ll then be taken to the Grade Assignment Screen where you can view and annotate the assignment, read the SafeAssign report, and assign a grade.

Annotating Assignments

The first time you access a submission, you may see a link that states that the assignment is still processing.  If you do, just click the refresh button on your browser () or press F5 on your keyboard and it should show up.

If your mouse is over the paper, you’ll notice that there are magnification and page controls at the bottom.  Click the magnifying glass with the minus to zoom out, the one with the plus to zoom in, or the arrows next to the page numbers to switch between pages.   The icon all the way to the right simply gets rid of the controls at the top of the page, so is probably not useful.

There are three ways that you can annotate assignments: point comments, text comments and highlighting.

Point comments are associated with a particular place on the document.  They can be anywhere on the document; they don’t take into account the location of text.  To create a point comment, click on the comment button on the toolbar.

Click anywhere on the document. Your cursor will become crosshairs and the top of the screen will turn black.  Click anywhere on the document and the comment window will open.

Type a comment in the box and click Post.  When you’re done commenting, click the Close button in the top-right corner of the screen.

Once you’ve done so, you can view the comment by hovering your mouse over it.  To delete the comment, click the trash can icon.

You can also post a reply in the box.  Students are not able to reply to comments.

To highlight text or create a text comment, simply select some text with your mouse and two buttons will appear.  If it doesn’t, try hitting the refresh button on your browser or the F5 key on your keyboard.

Click the highlighter () to simply highlight the text or click the comment icon () to enter a text comment.   Text comments have all the same tools as the point comments above.

To draw on the paper using your mouse or a touch screen, click the pencil icon.

Once you do, the bar at the top of the screen will turn black and your cursor will turn into a crosshairs.  You’re then able to draw on the student’s paper.

Each time you release the mouse, you can choose to save or delete the drawing that you made.  When you’re done, click Done in the upper-right corner.

Your drawing will be saved.

To delete a drawing, you can click on the drawing and choose Delete.

Downloading Assignments

To download a copy of your assignment with or without the annotations, click on the dropdown menu by the name of the file and choose either Download Original File or  Download Annotated PDF.

These PDFs work best in either Adobe Reader DC or the Chrome PDF viewer.  Other PDF viewers may have issues displaying some of the annotations. DO NOT OPEN THE PDFS IN PREVIEW, the Mac default PDF viewer, as that will make any point comments that you make unreadable.

Viewing SafeAssign Information

If you set up the assignment to check for plagiarism with SafeAssign, the SafeAssign score will be found under the Attempt section on the right.  If the student recently submitted the assignment, the SafeAssign score may take some time to become available. Keep in mind that the SafeAssign score by itself is not, by itself, conclusive evidence of plagiarism.  Instead, it can be used as a signal of whether a paper needs additional scrutiny.

If you wish to see the specific text that SafeAssign flagged, click the arrow next to the word SafeAssign.

Then, click View Originality Report.

You’ll be taken to the SafeAssign report.

You'll see the overview information on the right. Each separate course is color-coded for easy viewing.  The key to the sources is found on the right side.

To remove a source from consideration, click Select Sources & Resubmit.

Then, uncheck the boxes next to the sources you’d like to exclude, and click “Resubmit”.  The document will be reprocessed leaving out the unchecked sources.

In the text of the assignment, click on highlighted text to see the original source:

After reviewing the report, close it to return to the grading page.  

Entering Grades

To enter the student’s grade, simply enter the number of points into the Attempt box. Entering a percentage may not calculate correctly, and entering a letter grade will cause an error.

You can also leave general feedback that will appear to the student in the Feedback to Learner box.  Click the font symbol() to access the full text editor.

This feedback will be shown to the student in their My Grades module and in their view of the assignment.  It will not appear if they print the annotated PDF.

When you’ve entered the grade and any feedback, click “Submit”. You’ll be taken to the next user in the list.

To grade a different user, you can use the arrows at the top.

To return to the Grade Center, click Exit.