Submission navigation and keyboard shortcuts

This guide for instructors explains how to use Gradescope’s submission view tools and keyboard shortcuts to navigate, annotate, and grade student work quickly and efficiently.

In this guide:

• Submission view
• Keyboard shortcuts to speed up grading
• Keyboard shortcuts for annotations
• Keyboard shortcuts for the grading
• Keyboard shortcuts for the submission viewer
• Zooming tools

Submission view

When you hover your mouse over the Submission View, more options appear that let you manipulate the submission.

In the top left, you can toggle between the full page view and the question-only view. The question-only view allows you to change your view to the region that you set up during the Edit Outline step. The Full Page view allows you to see the whole page of the submission.

If a student wrote their response on a different page than the location that you expected, you can use the View Next/Previous page arrows to navigate to other pages of the submission. You can also click All Pages (bottom left) to view all the pages of the submission and jump to another page. For variable-length assignments, any pages the student selected for that question will be highlighted.

Keyboard shortcuts to speed up grading

You can speed up your grading workflow in Gradescope by using keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts for annotations

• M - Use the move tool to move the submission around. Also, move around any annotations or comments placed on the submission.
• C - Use the text tool to insert a comment on the submission.
• D -  Use the pencil tool to write freehand on the submission.
• S -  Use the shape tool to insert a variety of shapes on the submission.
• L - Use the emoji tool to insert a variety of emoji on the submission.
• X - Use the eraser tool to remove any annotation markups or comments from the submission.

Keyboard shortcuts for the grading

• , and . go up and down the question outline for an individual student’s submission
• The numbers 1-0 map to the rubric items that you create for each question

Keyboard shortcuts for the submission viewer

• Z goes to Next Ungraded (the same question or subquestion on the next student’s submission that hasn’t been graded or isn’t currently being graded by anyone on the staff)
• J and K go to the previous and next page of an individual student’s submission
• A displays the list of all student submissions for a given question
• shift+R rotates the student’s submission
• G and F zoom in and out of the student’s submission
• Right arrow goes to Next (the same question or subquestion on the next student’s submission), and left arrow goes to Previous
• B and N go to the previous and next submission by alphabetical order of students' first name
• Watch the video below for a demonstration on using keyboard shortcuts for faster grading.

To go to your last-viewed submission, you can use the back button in your browser. You may also open multiple tabs at once to grade multiple students’ submissions at the same time.

You can visit the Question Submissions Index by clicking on the total submission count, located in the lower-left corner. You can also access this page using the “a” keyboard shortcut. This page lists all the submissions for the question that you are on. It displays information such as the grader, the score that was given, and whether a submission was graded. If you are looking for a particular student’s submission to a question, this is an easy way to find it.

Zooming tools

There are also few ways to zoom.

• If you scroll over the submission you can zoom in/out
• You can click the plus (+) and minus (-) button in the bottom right while hovering over the submission.
• You can use the keyboard shortcuts f and g to zoom in/out

If you move the submission around or zoom in/out and want to save this view to be the default view for that question, you can click Save View.

Lastly, you can rotate the submission by clicking on the rotate button next to the zoom tools in the bottom right corner.