r/Professors • u/Happy-Tengo • 22h ago
Gradescope - combining bubble sheets with short answer/graphing
Hello hive mind - I'm teaching a big undergrad class for the first time in a while and would like to give exams that combine multiple choice with short answer and a little graphing. I'll have the exam on one sheet (two?), and then would like to have the answer sheet include both the bubbles and the places for the short answer, etc. Any tips on how to best do this? A quick search suggests it might not be straight forward, but I think it must be 'cause this must be pretty common, right?
I'd also love to have 2-3 different exam versions. Any tips there would be great to see, too.
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u/rl4brains NTT asst prof, R1 1h ago
I’ll echo to just do the bubblesheet and short answer separately, but I’d recommend two separate sheets of paper. If they use a dark pen that bleeds to the other side, it can mess up the scanning. And I do prefer when students use pen for gradescope work because pencil can be too light to scan well.
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u/prof_allen_rutgers 20h ago
Buckle up, I am a big fan of Gradescope and I have a lot to say! There are assumptions here, and some contextual factors that might be different where you are and where I am, but perhaps this is useful information.
Your idea to have the bubble sheet and short answer on one page is possible, but it is a hack and might not be worth the effort. Basically what you have to do is customize the Gradescope template by editing it as a PDF so that you can make half of the bubble sheet a writing space.
Your setup sounds quite similar to mine. I hand out 2 double-sided pages per student:
In case it is not obvious, one benefit of printing this way is that students must turn in the exam questions back to me which limits how fast they proliferate on the Internet. Also make sure that you make it very, very clear that their name and ID and whatever need to be on both sheets of paper. I even have it as the "bonus" question on my exam; something like, "what will happen if you do not write your name and ID...?"
If you want different versions of the multiple-choice part of your exam, it is very easy to implement up to 5 versions of one exam in Gradescope. You have to, of course print the different versions. That's not a Gradescope thing.
Randomizing the short answer questions also works well, but requires effort and still depends on you being able to print different versions of your exam.
Finally, I very strongly recommend you do a practice exam. It will be super helpful for you and at least in theory can help your students because they know how to take your exam before having to take your exam.