
Show HN: Gradefinity, Online Bubble Sheet Grader, Exam Builder and LMS - bradtx
https://gradefinity.com
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bradtx
Hey HN,

I built this because I was shocked at how inefficient the process of grading
and entering grades was during my time as a teacher's assistant in college. If
you've ever taken a multiple-choice test at a high school or university in the
U.S., you've likely used Scantron forms before. These are handy for
automatically grading multiple choice questions, but once they're graded the
task of getting these grades into the school's LMS (i.e. BlackBoard, Canvas,
Moodle) remains. As a TA, I would spend hours looking at grades printed on
Scantron forms, then manually hand-keying these grades into the school's
learning management system for dozens, if not hundreds of students a night. If
you've ever entered grades before, you know that entering grades is a long,
tedious, process.

Gradefinity makes grading easier in several ways:

1\. It can be used with a regular office printer and scanner, so no
specialized equipment (i.e. Scantron grading machine) is needed.

2\. Each bubble sheet is pre-printed with a student ID number. When bubble
sheets are uploaded, Gradefinity uses OCR to match the students' bubble sheet
answers to their identity in the database, then enters the grades for the
appropriate students.

3\. Gradefinity also captures open-ended responses from students and displays
this in an Assignment Review page for instructors to review, along with
multiple choice answers. Instructors can leave feedback on these open-ended
responses for the student to review later using their student log in
credentials.

It also supports online testing and has quiz building tools as well. Grades
can also be exported to .CSV from the online gradebook for further editing in
the instructor's spreadsheet program of choice.

Here's a quick demo that runs through the grading process:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vbDtFZeNM&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vbDtFZeNM&t)

I'd be super grateful if any teachers or professors on HN were to make an
account and provide some feedback. The site is still pretty new at the moment,
so despite relentless testing I apologize in advance for any bugs that you
might run into.

\- Brad

~~~
timvdalen
Hi Brad, the site is down right now but this looks really interesting.

From the video, it seems like you are also using some visual recognition to
match the correct answers on the scan. How are you doing this?

Are you calibrating the position of the sheets with some markers or are you
expecting specific coordinates? Is there some AI involved? How accurate is
your technique with real-life students filling in the boxes?

Is there some way to correct individual answers (and is there some feedback
mechanism involved to do better next time)?

Anyway, congrats on shipping, looks super interesting!

