Tech Tuesday – Use Doctopus to Save Time!

Have you heard of Doctopus? It’s a great Google extension that can save you a ton of time grading papers. Here’s how to  use Doctopus to save you grading time!

1. Create an assignment in Google Classroom.
2. Create a rubric in Google Sheets. The rubric can be as elaborate as you want but three rules must apply: 1. Cell A1 must be empty. 2. The scoring points must be in row 1. 3. The criteria must be in column A.
3. Create another Google Sheet.  I name them with the class period and the name of the assignment so that I can find it later. Click “Add on” and then search for add ons. When you find Doctopus, install it.
4. In your Google Sheet, click “Add ons” and then select Doctopus. You’ll first need to set up Doctopus for this assignment.
5. In the Doctopus menu, choose “Select Mode.” Choose “Ingest a Google Classroom Assignment” then select your class.Then choose the assignment from the drop down menu.
6. Select the assignment you want to grade then click “Ingest Assignment.” Doctopus will bring all of the submissions from your Google Classroom into your new grading super-station.
7. There are a few things you can do now, and they are all visible in the new grading panel that appears on the right side of your screen. You can search Google Classroom to see if any students submitted their work since you last ingested the assignment. You can add a coteacher who will have access to the submissions and will be able to do some of the grading for you. But the coolest thing you can do is add a Goobric. A Goobric is what Doctupus calls your rubric. If you created it in step 2, it’s ready to be imported. Click “Add a Goobric.” You’ll be taken to your Google Drive and then you can select the rubric that you just created.
8. Click “Attach” to connect the rubric to your students’ work.
9. Now you’re ready to grade. To grade the first student’s paper, click the link in that student’s row that says “Assess Document.”
10. When you open a student’s document, the rubric is on the same screen for you. Just click the box to assign the student a grade and it will be recorded on the spreadsheet. Hitting “Submit” sends the document with the rubric printed on it to the student’s email and enters the grade into your spreadsheet. It also moves you to the next student so you don’t need to keep opening and closing documents.
11. Adding the formula =SUM(N2:Q2) into cell L2 allows the points for each criteria in your rubric to be added together. Of course, if your rubric has more than 4 criteria, you will need to change Q2 to which ever box the last criteria’s score is in.

Doctopus takes a few minutes to set up and I can see why that might be a turn off. But it saves so much time because it adds the rubric to the assignment and sends it to the student while also keeping a record of grades for you.

Do you use Doctopus to save time grading? What’s your best grading secret?