"Copy for Reference" Grading Option

Sometimes it's useful to have reference data in the Grades sheet. For example, you may have a "Grade by Hand" question and want to easily refer back to the student's original submissions to quickly enter scores as you run down the column. You could also use this approach to filter by the student's original submission, thus identifying common answers and assigning all of them the same score.

To do this, you can use a hidden grading option called "Copy for Reference". To enable it, first go to the Flubaroo "Advanced Options" menu (Flubaroo > Advanced > Advanced Options), and select the "Show additional grading options" checkbox shown below:

After this you will see two new grading options in Step 1 of grading. These are "Ignore" and "Copy for Reference":

The "Ignore" option simply ignores a column in the Student Submssion sheet during grading so that it doesn't show up in the Grades sheet, student emails, etc.

The "Copy by Reference" column will copy a column over to the Grades sheet, but in such a way that it won't affect actual grading. See the example below to see how this works.

Warning - The copy for reference column cannot contain a number. Consider using Hand Grading in the Student Submission Sheet. See Flubaroo Joe's tips and tricks. The 3rd video.

"Copy by Reference Example":

In this example, we have first duplicated in the quiz question "Homer Simpson often says this expression..." in our Student Submissions sheet. This is done by highlighting an entire column, copying its contents (Control+C), inserting a new column to the left, and pasting in that new column (Control+V). The result looks like this:

We then selected "Grade Assignment" from the Flubaroo menu, and chose "Copy for Reference" for the first duplicated question, and "Grade by Hand" for the second, as shown below:

After grading the assignment, you'll see in the Grades sheet that the first question shows up, but is in italics and grey font. This is to remind you that it's just there for reference, and won't affect grades. It will look like this:

You can now directly enter scores into the second column, as you would for any Grade by Hand question. But with the reference column to the left, this can be done much more quickly. Note that if you want to enter feedback comments that students will see, you'll still need to use the "Grade by Hand" tool from the Flubaroo menu.

Advanced Tip: Grading using Filters:

Consider using a spreadsheet filter to make grading even quicker. Just click the column header for the "Copy by Reference" question, as shown below:

And then select Data > Filter from the Google Spreadsheet menu, as shown:

You'll now see that all the column headers have little blue triangles like these:

These triangles are called "filters". You can click on the one in the reference column and you'll see a list of all the different values in that column. You can then check only the ones you want to see. Click "OK" afterwards and your entire Grades sheet will now be filtered according to what you checked.

Why do this? For example, you could check only the values that are considered correct. Then click "OK" and quickly enter "1" point into all of those rows. Then all you'd have left would be the incorrect answers to grade! A quick update of the filter will get you those values.

To see all values again, click "Select all" in the filter window, or just turn off the filter entirely from the spreadsheet's Data > Filter menu:

Filters also offer you a great way to view a list of unique submissions made by students, allowing you to quickly scan the types of submissions made.