Grading Quizzes, Tests, and Exams

We do not respond to student or parent requests for information. All inquiries must come from the instructor or an authorized teaching assistant.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING FORM COMPATIBILITY: The Test Scoring office can only grade quizzes and tests that are filled out on the pink/raspberry Scantron form with the UCF Pegasus logo (Scantron Form No. 209161). This answer form is double sided, supports up to 100 questions, up to 4 different test versions (A, B, C, or D), and may be filled out with a pencil or with blue or black ink.

DROP-OFF PROCEDURE:

1. Fill out a Request form. This form will contain your basic contact information, the course number and section, and the quiz/test name as you want it to appear in the gradebook, along with any special scoring instructions. You can fill out the request form(s) in advance and bring it with you, or we have some at our office that you can fill out when you get here. A separate request form is required for each quiz, test, or class section, unless they are being scanned as one batch into a combined gradebook.
2. Place the answer key(s), the students’ answer sheets, and the request form into an envelope. You will need to provide a set of answer keys bubbled in on the same UCF scantron forms that the students use. Any questions that you do not bubble in answers for, or any that are bubbled too lightly, will not be graded. If giving a quiz, test, or exam with multiple versions, each version must have the same total number of questions. The students’ answer sheets should be stacked neatly together, facing the same direction, and bundled securely together using rubber bands or binder clips. Forms facing different directions may delay processing and for very large classes, we may refuse to score them at all until you or an assistant correct this.
3. Enter the same information from the request form into an online service request form using our kiosk computer located on the front cubicle’s desk in our office. This will create a service ticket letting us know there is a request waiting to be retrieved from the drop box, and it will also give us an accurate timestamp indicating when they were dropped off. Submissions are scanned in the order they are received, so if you do not fill out the online service request form, your request will just sit in the drop box until the next time we decide to check it, and it’s place in the queue (and turnaround time) will be determined based on when it was discovered rather than when it was dropped off because it will not have a timestamp.
4. Place your envelope(s) into the drop box, or hand it directly to the Test Scoring staff if they are available / not busy. Please do not interrupt the Test Scoring person if scanning is currently going on because it requires focus to avoid mishandling the forms and causing errors. Thank you.

THE PROCESS:

Instructors or other designated individuals should bring their quiz or test materials to the Test Scoring office, Monday – Friday between 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. A Request form will need to be filled out for each class section, either in advance, or when you get there. Any special instructions for grading* should be mentioned on that form, and then everything (request form + answer key(s) + students answer sheets) should be placed in an envelope, sealed, and placed in the drop box or handed directly to a Test Scoring staff person.

In addition to the physical paper Request form, filling out the online service request is also needed because it creates a digital record that something was placed in the drop box. Without that record, you have no proof anything was ever dropped off if your materials go missing. We have always tracked submissions with an online system in addition to the paper request forms, but in the past this step was done by the support staff, which we unfortunately no longer have full-time.

When we receive the email notification that a submission has been placed in the drop box (created when you enter the information into our kiosk), we will retrieve them for scanning and grading. We may occasionally check the drop-box throughout the day anyway, but without a computer entry, there is no guarantee when that will occur. To receive your results as soon as possible, don’t forget to submit the online service request form. Our goal is to always have them graded within two business days, but only once we know they are here.

After we have finishing scanning and grading your request(s), your results will be uploaded to Webcourses unless you request that we not do that. The scores will be posted to the gradebook for the students who provided their correct UCFID number on their answer sheets, but any student sheets that did not contain a valid UCFID number will receive a -1 until the instructor enters their scores into the gradebook manually. The report/output files will be uploaded to the Files area of your Webcourses account, under a “scantron results” folder. You will also receive an automated email when the upload has completed, usually within 15 minutes after being scanned. Your physical materials, consisting of the scantron answer sheets, your answer key(s), and any print outs, are then ready to be picked up from the office.

Once we have finished processing your job request, please pick up your materials as soon as possible. Although the scores are uploaded to your gradebook, you should still pick up your materials as soon as possible because any forms with errors will not have their scores uploaded until you do it manually. This is especially important after final exams, because you will need to enter those scores before grades are due. Any materials that have not been picked up before the end of Add/Drop of the following semester will be destroyed.

If you arrive relatively soon after your grades have been posted and have not yet received a follow up email containing locker information, your results might still be in the scanning office. Otherwise, you will be able to retrieve them yourself from whatever locker(s) they were placed into. Look for an email with the subject “Locker information for…”.

Due to limited staffing, if you need assistance, please come to the Test Scoring office Monday – Friday between 10:00 a.m. to noon or 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. We are not able to guarantee a staff person will be there during other time slots. If a staff person is not there to assist you though, please email testscor@ucf.edu, or you can call the Tech Commons support desk at 407-823-4357 if the matter is urgent.

* SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR GRADING:

Our default scoring option is just to upload the number of correct answers, which we refer to as the “raw score”. However, we also offer several other scoring options. We can score with a point value multiplier for each question, both integer and decimal values (each question is worth 2 pts each, 2.5 pts each, 3 pts each, etc.). Or by total points (exam is worth 100 pts total, 150 pts total, etc) and we will calculate the individual point value automatically. Or by question ranges (questions 1-10 are worth 2 pts each, questions 11-20 are worth 3 pts each). Just mention your preferences in the Special Instructions section of the request form. Please note however that we are unable to give partial credit for questions answered.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING GRADE MUTING:  

If you create a gradebook assignment column yourself and do not want the scores to be immediately visible to your students, you must change the Grade Posting Policy to “Manual” before Test Scoring uploads the scores. The default is “Automatic” release, and once that happens, you will not be able to hide them again. However, if you do not create the gradebook column yourself, the upload process will create it and mute it automatically so the scores remain hidden until you release them.

THE RESULTS:

Our scanning machine does not print the results directly on each answer sheet, because it only does scanning. The grading is only done after all answer sheets have been scanned. We then use custom software that scores the results and pairs those scores to the forms based on the ID NUMBER that the students have bubbled in. If that number is missing or does not match a student record enrolled in that class, then the scores are matched to the form serial number instead. 

After processing, all of the results are written to two Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) reports files. The first file includes the Summary Report, the Error Report, the Blanks Report, the Scores for each student, and the Item Analyses (a set of statistics for each test question and version that can be used to identify potential errors on the answer keys). This file is always printed and returned in an envelope along with your other materials. The second file is called the “Individual Student Reports” (ISRs), which contains a separate report page for each student showing their score and their answers for each question. In order to save on paper costs, this file does not get printed unless you specifically mark that checkbox on the request form. These files, as well as the raw form responses, can be found in the Files section of your Webcourses account in an appropriately named subfolder.

If you have submitted a job and have not received any notifications within two business days, please check your online gradebook. If the scores are there, your request is complete and your materials are ready to be picked up. If the scores are not there, please contact the Test Scoring Office by email at testscor@ucf.edu or call 407-823-5493 for assistance.