Gradescope (by Turnitin)

Gradescope, powered by Turnitin, is an AI-based exam-grading tool that specializes in rubric-based grading. The tool scans student answers, including handwriting, and groups similar answers together. This way a teacher grades one representative answer per group and applies the score to every student who gave a similar answer, instead of grading each exam separately line by line. According to the maker, this method can reduce grading time by up to eighty percent.

The tool is aimed mainly at teachers and lecturers with a high grading volume, such as high school teachers grading hundreds of matriculation exams or university lecturers managing large classes. Thanks to its ability to also process scanned handwriting, it’s especially useful in science and math subjects where students write out free-form solutions rather than just answering closed questions.

Unlike most tools on this list, Gradescope isn’t sold directly to an individual teacher but only through institutional licensing with Turnitin, so a teacher who wants to use it needs their school or institution to purchase a license. The adoption process can be slow at smaller institutions without a dedicated budget for it. In addition, the method of grouping similar answers still requires the teacher to carefully review each group, to make sure the algorithm didn’t miss subtle differences between answers that look similar.