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Submitting to a Gradescope Assignment

When accessing directly via the assignment from a Blackboard course, the assignment will open directly after clicking Launch from the pop out window.

gradescope Assignment link in Ultra course

When submitting an assignment the options are to Submit images to answer questions individually or a single PDF for all. Don’t forget to assign your PDF pages to their corresponding question. This has to be one upload for the whole assignment.

When submitting an assignment the options are to submit images or a pdf.

When you go into Gradescope from a course, you will see any assignments for that course which are currently available.

Gradescope Course Link
View of the Gradescope Course assignment dashboard.

Gradescope assignments for exams will only become visible on the day of the exam.

Click to access the assignment you need.

There are two types of Gradescope assignment your lecturers may use:

1. ‘Variable length’ assignments

This will be the most commonly used type. For this type of assignment you will normally write your answers by hand on paper, then scan your work and upload it to Gradescope.

  • You should use a scanning app to scan your handwritten work and combine all of the images into a single PDF (see ‘Scanning your work’ below).
  • If you have typed your answers in Word you will need to save the file as a PDF before uploading it to Gradescope.
  • Please note that you need to tag the pages you upload – see Tagging pages below.

See the Gradescope help page: Variable-length submissions.

Uploading image files

You may notice that Gradescope allows the upload of image files as well as PDF. While you are free to submit this way, you are strongly advised to submit a PDF if possible. This is for the following reasons:

  1. PDF scans will be more compressed than image files so, particularly if you have difficulties with your internet connection, a single PDF file will be quicker and easier to upload.
  2. If you submit images, you need to upload a separate image to every question. This will be more time-consuming and, crucially, with image files tagging your answers is incorporated into the upload process – so the tagging must be complete before the submission deadline (unlike with PDF files where the file needs to be uploaded before the deadline, but tagging can take place after the deadline).
  3. If you upload your answers as image files, Gradescope requires you to upload a file for every question, even questions you did not answer.
    In this situation, for questions you did not attempt, please upload a scan of a page saying “Not Answered”.
  4. If using an iPad, you need to have scanned your pages and saved the images to your device before you start uploading – if you use the camera to photograph your work as part of the upload process you can only upload one image per question (this will be an issue if some of your answers extend over more than one sheet of paper).

2. Online assignments

These are similar to Blackboard tests. They can contain multiple choice questions, but also some questions where you need to submit a file. Depending on the question, this might be a scanned copy of handwritten work, or a typed document. For Gradescope online assignments, the file you submit does not have to be a PDF.

See the Gradescope help page: Online Assignment submissions

3. Programming assignments

Gradescope programming assignments allow you to submit computer code.

See the Gradescope help article: Submitting code.


Guide last updated on April 16, 2024

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