GradeDescent

Fermat wrote in a margin: “I have a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.” With GradeDescent, the margin has room for feedback.

Feedback on every page, right in the margin.

Upload your LaTeX worksheet. Students upload photos or PDFs of their work. GradeDescent reads each solution line by line and writes the kind of comments a great TA would — the first mistake, a question that leads to the fix, and what they did well — right in the margin of their page.

Start with $10 of free credit No card needed. Usually under $1 per submission after that.
A student's solution to a linear algebra problem
12
1Nice
Writing out all three equations before solving any of them made the structure easy to see.
2Question
Before solving — could you have predicted there’d be exactly one pair (α, β)? What does that say about v and w?

1.Start from your .tex

Drop in the worksheet you already have. Problems are split out automatically; add a sentence on what you care about, or a solution sketch, if you like.

2.Students just take photos

Phone photos or scanned PDFs work, and problems can be in any order. Blurry or cut-off pages are caught at upload, so students can retake them before submitting.

3.Formative, not just a score

Comments point at the exact line, ask the question that leads to the fix, and don’t hand over the answer. Scores are there if you want them.

You stay in charge of what students see

By default, feedback waits for your review. Edit any comment, add your own, adjust a score, then release — one student at a time or the whole class at once. Anything the grader was unsure about is flagged for you first.

Pay for what you use. Your balance is charged per graded submission. An 8-page, 10-problem submission costs under $1.

Student work stays private to you and your course staff.