🐝BusyBee Grading Assistant

What Content Can the Grading Assistant Provide Predictive Grading For?

BusyBee's Grading Assistant reviews student work and suggests scores and feedback. Here's a breakdown of what it supports, how eligibility works, and how to get the best results from it.

The Grading Assistant can evaluate a range of student work submitted through Assignments, Custom activities, and Assessments:

In Assignments and Custom activities, students can submit:

• Comments typed directly into the submission box (the "Allow comments" box must be checked)
• Uploaded PDF files, including fillable PDFs and PDFs containing images
• Uploaded Word documents (DOCX), including both text and images
• Uploaded images in JPG, PNG, WEBP, or static GIF formats (*note that low-resolution or unclear images may reduce accuracy)
• Attached Google files, if Google Workspace integration is enabled

In Assessments, the Grading Assistant supports essay questions. Teachers looking to build these can pair this with BusyBee's Question Assistant to help generate essay prompts.

Importantly, the Grading Assistant only suggests scores and feedback, it never overwrites scores or comments a teacher has already entered.

Not every submission qualifies automatically. The system checks eligibility and offers suggestions in these scenarios:

• A new submission where the teacher hasn't yet entered a score, and the student has either had it returned or saved as a draft
• A resubmission where the Grading Assistant previously suggested a score that the teacher hasn't changed or returned
• A resubmission following a teacher's "Allow retry" action

Since fillable PDFs are commonly used for submissions, following a few design principles helps the Grading Assistant interpret responses accurately:

• Include instructions in the PDF: Add clear directions within the document itself so both students and the Grading Assistant understand what's expected.
• Clearly mark answer areas: Use labeled fields, tables, or outlined boxes so it's obvious where responses belong.
• Use a consistent layout: Keep formatting and field placement uniform throughout the activity to make answers easier to interpret.

The Grading Assistant doesn't grade in a vacuum, it draws on specific content tied to each activity or assessment.

For Assignments and Custom activities, it references:

• The Activity Content field
• Any connected Rubrics
• Learning objectives aligned with the activity
• The activity's Description field

For Assessments, it references:

• The Essay question and its Example answer
• Any attached Passage
• Any Rubrics connected to the Essay question
• Learning objectives aligned with the assessment
• The assessment's Description field

By pulling from these sources, the Grading Assistant aims to produce suggestions that reflect the specific expectations set for each activity, while leaving final judgment in the teacher's hands.