# Grading Guidelines
We will use [gradescope](https://www.gradescope.com/) to handle homework submissions and grading. There [FAQ page](https://help.gradescope.com/category/t4mtl2if8n-instructor-faq) and [youtube page](https://www.youtube.com/@Gradescope) has some excellent tips, so do check it out.
## 1. Philosophy
Try to reward ideas and efforts. Typos and simple mistakes, which are easily fixable, should not cost too many points. It takes a lot of time and effort for a student to produce a HW submission. Grade it as if it is yours.
## 2. Rubrics
A consistent grading needs to have a rubric. A good rubric should be:
1. General: Covering most common mistakes.
2. Concise: Only has about 10 items or less.
Here is an example of a rubric. The maximum number of points for the question is 15.
![](https://i.imgur.com/Cjyuw0M.png)
Due to the generality, the rubric only highlights the kind of mistakes that a student made, but not the precise detail.
## 3. Giving Feedback
Giving feedback to the students is **very very** important for their learning. The rubric only gave some indications of the kind of mistakes they made, but typically we need to provide more context for each submission. If you really think the rubric is self-explained, (for example: incorrect/blank solution), then you don't have to provide further comments. However, it is often not the case, and a short comment helps **tremendously**. Here is an example. (I masked the sensitive part of the comment.)
![](https://i.imgur.com/wW8rNYT.png)
## 4. Using Point Adjustment
There is a point adjustment that you can use for (rare) submissions where no rubric item applies. If you use point adjustment, make sure explaining in the comment for the student to know why.