5 Pro Grading Tips That Will Save Teachers Time

Grading often takes far more time than it should, especially when you are juggling multiple classes, large assignments, and tight deadlines. With the BookWidgets grading dashboard, you can streamline the entire process and grade more efficiently. This powerful tool helps teachers save time grading and focus more on delivering meaningful, high-quality feedback to students. In this article, you will discover five pro tips to optimize your grading workflow, reduce administrative work, and take full control of your grading process.

The BookWidgets Grading Dashboard

The BookWidgets grading dashboard is the central hub where you review student work, provide feedback, and monitor progress. Every assignment your students complete automatically appears in this dashboard. From here, you can open any submission, check answers, add comments, give partial scores, and return work instantly.

This also helps you stay organized and up to date with your assessments. You can filter, sort, and compare results to get a clear overview of student performance and identify where extra support is needed. In short, the grading dashboard brings all student work together in one place, allowing you to grade faster, work more accurately, and provide more meaningful feedback without switching between different tools.

📍 You can access the grading dashboard through Website > Review > Recent Submissions.

Are you new to BookWidgets or just getting started? Make sure to go read this blog post first. Already using BookWidgets, but not familiar yet with the grading dashboard? Go take a look at this tutorial first.

5 Time Saving Tips You Can Start Using Today

1. Save Time with Auto Grading

BookWidgets offers 37 question types, 31 of which can be graded automatically, saving you a huge amount of time. The easiest questions to grade are, of course, those that are automatically corrected. Even with auto-graded questions, you can still adjust points if needed and add feedback at any time, giving you full control over your grading process.

🎙️ Please note that audio feedback only works when BookWidgets is integrated with your learning management system (LMS), allowing you to provide rich, personalized feedback directly within your workflow.

Discover all our question types on our website, or open this widget to see them in an activity.

2. Optimize Your Manual Grading Process

While most questions can be graded automatically, some still require manual review. With the right settings in the widget editor, even these answers can be assessed smoothly without slowing down your grading. Here are three ways to make manual grading more efficient:

Add a rationale: Students will see this rationale when reviewing their answers, whether they were right or wrong. You will also see it in the grading dashboard. Having your model answer visible makes it easier to compare your answer with the student’s response and ensures that your feedback stays consistent and grounded in the same criteria for every student.

Add keywords: For certain question types, you can add keywords in the widget editor. These can be important terms or concepts students should include in their answers. In the grading dashboard, any used keywords are automatically marked, and you can select or deselect them as needed.

You can also use keywords for elements like grammar or spelling. While reviewing, simply check off these keywords manually, helping you stay organized and give targeted feedback on specific aspects of student responses.

Add a scratchpad: This gives students a dedicated space to show their thinking. They can write out calculations, add notes, draw diagrams, or upload photos of their practice work. Everything they add appears in the BookWidgets grading dashboard, giving you a clear view of student reasoning and learning. This helps you provide accurate, personalized, and meaningful feedback while efficiently tracking student progress.

💡 Want to see manual grading in action? Watch our webinar recording on open-ended questions and rubrics for efficient assessment. You can also check out a separate webinar to learn how to give feedback on whiteboard and photo questions.

3. Choose the Best Review Mode for Your Workflow

The BookWidgets grading dashboard offers two review modes that can streamline your grading workflow: grade student by student or grade question by question. Choosing the right mode helps you match your workflow to the type of assignment and the level of detail you want to focus on.

Grade student by student when you want to stay in the flow of one learner’s work. This mode gives you a clear view of student reasoning and makes it easier to review longer responses or tasks where context matters. It is perfect for providing detailed, personalized feedback. You can also customize the student feedback view, deciding whether to show total points, points per question, correct/incorrect indicators, or the correct answers themselves. This flexibility supports your formative assessment approach and helps you create a strong feedback loop: return the work with your comments while keeping correct answers hidden, so students can revise and resubmit their responses for real learning and reflection.

Grade question by question to stay consistent and efficient. Viewing all responses to the same question at once lets you compare answers quickly, spot common errors, and grade large groups or short-answer tasks faster. This mode also works well for open-ended questions, and in this mode you can use the “Group Identical Answers” filter to help you speed up your workflow. We will explain this filter in more detail below to show how it can make giving feedback even more efficient.

4. Use the Filters Efficiently

When grading a large activity, scrolling through every answer or repeating feedback for similar responses can quickly become time consuming. Our filters make this process much more efficient, helping you focus on the responses that need your attention most.

The Correct Answers filter, located at the top of the dashboard, hides all correct responses, allowing you to focus on the answers that need your attention. This makes it easier to identify areas where students need the most support and improve your grading efficiency. Keep in mind, if you also want to give positive feedback on correct answers, leave this filter off, as those responses will be hidden.

The Group Identical Answers filter automatically groups all matching responses from your students. This filter is only available when grading question by question. Each set of identical answers appears only once in the dashboard, and you can see how many students submitted that exact response. This lets you write a single feedback comment that applies to all of them. Responses that differ remain in separate groups, allowing you to move quickly through the class while still providing precise, targeted feedback.

Individual student names aren’t shown by default, which makes the process more anonymous and unbiased. To see exactly who submitted a particular answer, simply click on the number of students.

5. Use Correction Labels to Speed Up Review

In the image below, you can see several options you can use while grading your students’ work 👇

Correction labels are an effective way to reduce grading time. These short, standardized codes help you quickly flag recurring errors or highlight areas for improvement. Instead of rewriting the same feedback over and over, you can apply a label to keep your workflow smooth and your comments consistent. This clarity helps students understand your feedback more easily and learn from their mistakes.

Even with correction labels, personal feedback remains fully possible. You can still add tailored comments for each student while using labels to streamline repetitive tasks. This approach allows you to reduce grading time without sacrificing meaningful, individualized guidance.

💡 Watch this short video to see the correction labels in action. If you want to learn more about them, be sure to check out this blog. We share examples of correction labels that you can use in your own lessons.

Wrap Up

Everyone knows that grading takes time, but with these tips for using our grading dashboard, your workflow becomes much more efficient. Whether you rely on auto grading, smart filters, or manual strategies, you can work faster, stay organized, and focus on giving meaningful feedback to your students.

We would love to hear from you. Share your experiences and tips with us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram, or join our Facebook teacher community to exchange inspiration with educators from around the world. And if you’d like to stay connected, feel free to follow me, Chelsey, on LinkedIn as well! 👋