Instructor Support for Educational Systems

Grading Quizzes

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Quizzes can be graded in several ways in Brightspace. This article explains how to use each of the possibilities.

  • Manual Grading
    • The basic method of evualuating a student's quiz attempt.
  • Automatic Evaluation
    • Automatic evaluation for quizzes is a helpful time-saving tool. It will grade any questions on completion of the quiz, allowing students to see their grade immediately.
  • Unbiased Marking
    • This allows you to evaluate students' attempts without potential bias.


Please take into account that simultaneous horizontal assessment (per question) with multiple markers is not possible. If you want to grade quizzes per question with other colleagues, please make sure you do not evaluate the same student at the same time. Your evaluation of a question might be overruled by your colleagues when you grade the same student, even if you grade different questions.

Please see here for more information.

Manual Grading

  • Click Course Tools in the navbar of your course. 
  • Click Quizzes.

You will be navigated to the Manage-Quizzes tab. 

ScreenSteps - Google Chrome
  1. Click the fold-out arrow next to the quiz you want to assess.
  2. Click Grade.

All attempts made by each student are displayed. There are options to create a nice workflow when grading quizzes. The status Pending Evaluation is given for attempts with questions that are not auto-graded (i.e. open questions) and need an evaluation. 

  1.  Within an attempt you can filter on questions that are in need of manual evaluation. This can be done by clicking on an attempt and selecting Pending Evaluations underneath Question View. This enhances the workflow of grading per question (horizontal grading).
  2.  In the tab Users you can filter on Published, Saved as Draft, Pending Evaluations, and 'empty'. You can do this by clicking on Show Search Options. This will enhance the workflow of grading a quiz per student (horizontal grading). 
ScreenSteps - Google Chrome
ScreenSteps - Google Chrome

Click on the attempt 1 to open the quiz attempt in full screen mode.

  1. Here you will see all meta data of the students attempt
  2. Under Grading Feedback you manually edit the final score for the quiz
  3. Optional: Add Overall Attempt Feedback
  4. Under Quiz Results you can review all the students answer on each question.
ScreenSteps - Google Chrome
  1.  After evaluating you can save the grade and feedback as draft or publish immediately per student.
    • Note: If you want to release all feedback and grades to all students at the same time, choose for Save Draft
  2. Select the forward chevron to see the next student's attempt.
ScreenSteps - Google Chrome

Click on Back in the upper left corner to return to list view of all the attempts.

ScreenSteps - Google Chrome

Finally, select all student attempts and click on Publish Feedback to release all grades and written feedback.

ScreenSteps - Google Chrome

If needed, the quiz can also be exported in an Excel or .CSV format for further evaluation as this displays all attempts and corresponding results.

Automatic Evaluation

 Note: If you use any quiz question types that can't be evaluated automatically (i.e. written response), don't opt for Automatically Publish Evaluation. Questions with a closed answer, like True or False, can be used in automatic grading. 

  • Go to Course Tools and click on Quizzes.
  • Click on the Quiz name you want to edit.
  • Navigate to the Evaluation & Feedback

You will see a similar screen as shown below:

Make sure the box Auto-publish attempt results immidiately upon completion is selected and click on Save and Close. When the students make this quiz, upon completion they will immediately receive their grade. You do not have to publish the feedback, as you would do under manual grading.

Unbiased Marking

Brightspace offers a feature to hide students' names in order to allow for evaluating responses without potential bias.

  • Click Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Quizzes.

You will be navigated to the Manage-Quizzes tab.

  1. Click the fold-out arrow next to the quiz you want to assess.
  2. Click Grade.
ScreenSteps - Google Chrome
  1. Navigate to the Questions tab
  2. Tick the box of Hide learners' names
  3. Click on the question you want to evaluate.
ScreenSteps - Google Chrome
  1. Review the given answer.
  2. Enter or adjust a score for this question.
  3. Add specific feedback on this answer.
  4. Click on Save and Continue to review the next attempt (of another student) on this question.
  5. Use the drop down at the top to adjust the number of responses you will see per page.
  6. Finally, click on Go Back to Questions after you have reviewed all the responses on this question.

Have a look at the video below. In the tutorial they use Unbiased Marking while grading a quiz.

This video is made by Brightspace supplier D2L, using an older version of Brightspace. Some screens may look different from the University Leiden Brightspace, such as the 'Unbiased Marking' option, which in earlier versions is called "Blind Marking".

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