In the last few years, I have been working with my students Federica Zoe Ricci and Catalina Medina on developing the R package gradetools. I have realized that I have never mentioned this package on this blog. We developed the package to grade and provide feedback on assignments that are open-ended and where feedback cannot be provided by autograders (at least yet).
gradetools aims to do two major things:
- Automate the grading workflow not the feedback.
- Minimize switching between different interfaces (grade book, student’s work, GitHub etc.)
I thought I would share a few resources about the package on this blog that might serve as an introduction to this package.
Video For those who prefer to watch videos, we had offered a workshop on zoom. The recording of the workshop is available on YouTube.
Technical documentation For those who prefer to use the package right away, there are multiple vignettes with plenty of examples.
- How to grade with gradetools: For beginner users we recommend starting with this vignette.
- How to regrade assignments with gradetools: This vignette shows how to change previously assigned grades.
- Extended gradetools Capability: Team Grading: This vignette is only relevant for grading assignments that are team-based.
- Extended gradetools Capability: Assignments on GitHub: This vignette is only relevant for assignments that are on GitHub.
- Comprehensive example of grading with gradetools: This is a showcase of most of gradetools’ capabilities.
Manuscript Last but not least, we published a manuscript in the latest issue of Technology Innovations in Statistics Education where we go into pedagogical aspects of the package. Even for those who do not necessarily use gradetools, the manuscript might be helpful in designing their own workflow automating system or understanding an example of such a system.